Schools, cops, taxes: Bridgeport Council has tough budget choices

BRIDGEPORT — A divided City Council began the final week of budget season debating which of three spending areas should be their priority: The failing schools, the under-staffed police department or Mayor Joe Ganim’s small election-year tax cut.

The emotional Monday meeting, attended by 15 of the 20 council members, was supposed to focus on compiling a list of potential reductions to Ganim’s proposed $565 million 2019-20 fiscal plan.

But it instead turned into 90 minutes of drawing lines in the sand and speech-making. Even council budget committee co-chairs Maria Zambrano Viggiano and Denese Taylor-Moye were sometimes on opposing sides.

“I from the beginning have been against the tax cut,” Viggiano told her colleagues. “My taxes are ridiculously high but I just don’t think giving people back a few dollars a month will change their lives.”

According to the Ganim administration, the average household will save $150 a year in taxes. But Viggiano and some other council members argue the $4.5 million cost of the tax break would be better invested in other priorities — like education.

The school district sought $16 million more than its current spending plan, but Ganim’s budget flat-funded education at $247.7 million for the fourth year in a row.

“I would rather cut the taxes,” Taylor-Moye said. She and like-minded colleagues claimed they want to give more dollars to students, but expressed distrust of Board of Education spending.

“If we give them $16 million right now, they’re still going to complain,” said Councilwoman the Rev. Mary McBride-Lee,...

from News https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Schools-cops-taxes-Bridgeport-Council-has-13807768.php