New Haven Independent

“What are you willing to see?” he asked the more than 100 people who had turned out for the conference held over the weekend in Branford. Besides residents, the audience included a strong showing of state and town officials, including Democrat State Sen. Ed Meyer and his opponent in this fall’s campaign, Republican Ryan Suerth. The public officials represented communities from Branford to Madison to Essex. First Selectman Unk DaRos welcomed them all.

Sharkey, who heads the General Assembly’s Legislative Task Force on Property Tax Reform and Smart Growth, asked the group: “Are you willing to see your town combine with other towns to come together on a purchasing cooperative for example?” Tthe cooperative would purchase supplies: sand, salt, asphalt, perhaps even fuel.

Raise your hands, he said. Up went all the hands in the room.

“Great,” he said.

“What about jointly purchasing office products? Up went the hands again.
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“How about computer systems, financial systems and information… say your town joins with other towns to help keep costs down by figuring out ways to combine financial services?” All the hands went up.

These would be voluntary choices, Sharkey said. Any town that didn’t want to do it wouldn’t, but then that town could not share in state supported financial incentives for using the initiative.

One resident raised his hand. “What about combining insurance needs on a regional basis?” he asked.

“Good idea,”Sharkey replied.

Philip J. Miller, the first selectman of Essex, stood up. He cautioned: “I believe there is a grassroots incentive in a lot of towns that regional efforts harm our own autonomy, and that is a very real thing when we speak to them about this.”

Sharkey: “You have put your finger right on the button.”

Connecticut has 169 municipalities. Sharkey told the group that this method of governance worked 300 years ago, but it isn’t working now.

“This small state we live in still maintains very firmly this idea that each town has to create its own form of taxation and each town has to create its own method for police, fire protection, education, public works, but the basic government we rely on is not the most efficient way to do this. We look around and know this,” he said, alluding to duplication in services and high budgets that are among the factors that drive high property taxes.

Hitting “Dangerous Ground”

“Let’s go to another level. How many of you would be willing to look at your fire departments, and for example, merge your fire department with a neighboring town?”

“Dangerous ground,” replied one resident.

“Who is against merging fire departments?” A group of hands went up. But not all.

What about police departments? Or boards of education?

“Right now,” said one woman, referring to the Branford Board of Education.

“Who is against that?” asked Sharkey. No hands went up, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t in the future. “I can guarantee you that there are a lot of people who might be against that, particularly with kids in school,” Sharkey said.

The dialogue was now underway. For many in the room this was the first time they had been asked to think about these questions. “These are the kinds of issues we have to start thinking about. We have to get out of the box of our 169 towns and start thinking about ways to make ourselves more efficient,” Sharkey said.

The conference was organized by RTM member Lonnie Reed along with Heidi Green, the president of 1000 Friends of Connecticut. Reed is running unopposed for the 102nd House seat now held by Rep. Peter Panaroni. Although he held the seat for 12 years, Panaroni did not challenge Reed in a primary or seek an independent run. He did not attend the conference.

Reed said she organized the conference, the first of its kind on the shoreline, in order to form a bipartisan coalition to examine the property tax system and its impact on all other functions of town life.The other legislators said they were grateful to her for doing so.

“This is a beginning meeting, where we want to raise the possibility of cooperation among towns, much like the shoreline YMCA model in Branford that is the product of a group of adjacent towns. We don’t give up our private power but we cooperate for the benefit of the all,” she told the group.

Sharkey’s task force intends to produce a package of a dozen different bills that will seek to overhaul how the state raises money and how it handles development. Towns will be urged to cooperate with one another in an effort to reduce duplicative services.

Regional cooperation may well become a necessity. Sharkey said he had just learned that in 2009-10 the state will have a projected $1.2 billion deficit, a fact that will loom large in subsequent state budgets. “And we only have 1.3 billion in our rainy day fund.”

Other topics raised at the conference will be discussed in future articles.
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