Lack of a state budget and its effects on Cheshire
As of October 4, 2017, the state still has not passed a budget. Despite the fact the Senate and House both passed the Republican budget, the governor’s veto put us back to square one.
What does this mean for Cheshire?
The Cheshire Town Council’s adopted budget for fiscal year 2018 included $14,816,010 in funding from the state. This was, what was thought to be, a conservative number. As the summer progressed into the fall with no state budget, things started to look bad for all towns in Connecticut, especially Cheshire. In May, the governor proposed a budget that would have meant an over $11,100,000 loss in state funding. In June, he lowered it even more which would have meant we would lose over $13,100,000 in funding. In August, he made it even more drastic. Basically, under the governor’s orders, the state will be depleting the majority of the funding to Cheshire to just under $1,000,000. This means we can lose over $13,800,000.
These funds include the following:
- PILOT-this is money given to towns where there are state prisons, colleges and hospitals to offset the loss of property tax that the towns would typically get. For prisons, that number would be 100% but the state was only going to give us 45% of that amount, which would be $1,580,065 for the prison and $83,924 for colleges and hospitals.
- Budgeted: $1,663,989. Due: September 30-Received: $0
- Will we get it back if they do pass a budget? Not likely.
- Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan Fund Grant– This annually distributes a grant to each of the state’s 169 municipalities. The distribution is based on numerous factors including, but not limited to, the value of state-owned property, private college and general hospitals, population, equalized net grand list, and per capita income.
- Budgeted: $2,039,432 paid in 3 installments. Current Proposal: $0–1 st installment due in December
- Special Education
- Budgeted $3,399,099. Current Proposal: $0
- Adult Education
- Budgeted $25,964. Current proposal: $24,964
- Education Cost Sharing (ECS)- is intended to equalize state education funding to towns by taking into account a town’s wealth and ability to raise property taxes to pay for education.
- Budgeted: $6,098,405(a decrease by over $3,500,000 from 2017). Current Proposal: $943,667
- 25% of this funding is due in October. Traditionally, they would send it towards the end of the month. On October 3, we received $235,917. This is the governor telling us we don’t matter to him and his budget.
This means that out of a total of $14,816,010 that we thought we would get from the state, we are only getting $969,631, unless a new budget is passed and these numbers change drastically.
How can we handle a loss of $13,846,379?
Luckily, we have a Town Manager, Finance Director and great staff who have put us in a good position to temporarily deal with these losses, but, we will have to deplete the majority of our savings and make difficult decisions to withstand this loss in revenue in the long run.
Everything will be put on the table from hiring freezes to budget cuts in all departments to even a possible supplemental tax bill. We will need to make up over $13,000,000 somehow.
The state legislators, especially the governor, have not done their job and are putting all towns in jeopardy of losing vital services and people.
Let’s hope something gets done soon. The governor has asked that they have a new budget in place by October 13, but based on their track record, I doubt they would adhere to that.
If they can overturn the current budget veto, Cheshire stands to get all the above mentioned in the “budgeted” area back. That’s the best case scenario. No guarantees on that happening though.
I strongly suggest that all of you reach out to your local representatives and ask them to vote to overturn the governor’s veto so that all 169 municipalities can survive. It is truly disheartening to think that we have gotten so close to a budget and one man, with the swipe of a pen, can end it.