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Dear West Hartford Community,

As the budget season concludes, your Republican elected officials would like to take a moment to reflect. This was an extremely difficult year, and we are proud of our efforts to balance the need for critical town services with meaningful property tax relief – though much work remains.

On the Board of Education side, Republicans Ethan Goldman and Miriam Bleich have been focused on identifying and addressing inefficiencies in the school staffing model. Most notably, West Hartford has an unusually high number of administrators and support staff compared to our peer towns, and our BOE budget is growing much more quickly than those same peers. Additionally, Miriam has been and continues to be a champion for educational technology reform, which is both a budget and a crucial learning issue.

On the Town Council side, Republicans John Lyons, Jason Wang, and Gayle Harris have also been extremely hard at work identifying both individual line items and larger structural trends which are contributing to unsustainable growth. During this budget cycle, our team was able to identify that many service lines such as permitting, fire inspections, EMS, and parking do not cover their departments’ costs. As a result, even if we gain modest amounts of property taxes through new development and new businesses, we actually lose some of that money on the back end due to those town services not meeting their staffing and supply costs.

Our councilors have put forth numerous line items totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars for consideration. Several of these line items made it into the final budget, resulting in meaningful property tax relief without compromising core town services.

We have raised the alarm about high dollar amount software purchases that appear to create significant town dependence and vendor lock-in, resulting in very significant annual price increases.

We have been advocating with the state to provide financial assistance with unfunded mandates, some of which are absurdly broad and costly.

Finally, and very importantly, we have fought for budget transparency when a crucial committee meeting leading up to the final budget vote had neither meaningful minutes nor a video recording for voters to view.

As a minority party, we were not able to get many of our priorities through, but together we have been able to meaningfully sound the alarm and shape the conversation. We are mathematically confident that a Republican majority in West Hartford could have delivered a property tax increase at or below inflation this year. Nevertheless, even in a minority position, our Town Councilors and Board of Education members have been able to control the narrative in many cases, and deliver property tax relief in the form of a significant reduction in the rate of budget increase, from 6.6% to 5.3%, with an ultimate mill rate increase of 4.4%, against national inflation of 3.3%.

This is not enough. We know it is not enough. We understand that for many people in West Hartford, property taxes are one of their biggest expenses, and the current trajectory remains unsustainable.

A note on the final budget vote: John, Jason, and Gayle are steadfastly united in our working relationship. The split vote reflects an underlying contradiction: we have been able to negotiate a significantly lower budget much more in line with our peer towns, along with securing commitments from the majority party to address significant inefficiencies in the near future, but in this budget, too many of our line item and structural recommendations were set aside in favor of short term transfers and one-time fixes.

At the time of writing, we have received word that we may be receiving additional financial assistance from the state. We would like to thank our partners at the state level who have heard our concerns and have acted accordingly. If these additional funds arrive, we strongly advocate that they not be used to immediately “loosen the belt,” but to be treated as the one-time transfers which they are.

As we move into the future, our new caucus has clear budgetary priorities. We will continue to work on eliminating excess line item expenditures. We will continue to identify and address structural cost deficiencies. We will avoid the easy answers and avoid one-time budget fixes. We will continue to fight for teachers and core educational services, while rationally and respectfully examining the imbalance in administration and support staff within the school district. We will continue to push back against the saturation of classroom technology, which costs us millions while most likely harming learning. We will continue to advocate with our state to contribute its fair share in the face of onerous unfunded and underfunded mandates.

Above all, we will respect the taxpayer that makes this town possible.

We are not happy with this year’s budget outcome, but we have identified clear priorities and a path forward. Sunnier days are ahead. We appreciate the trust and the civic participation of our wonderful West Hartford citizens.

John Lyons, Jason Wang, Gayle Harris, Ethan Goldman, and Miriam Bleich