Commentary—

Gonna Move Me To Greenwich!

By William A. Collins

Our town’s rich,

With taxes low;

We’ll work hard,

To keep it so.

Poor Greenwich!  It’s taken a lot of heat lately. And why not?  Other Nutmeggers do feel a bit put down by its adamancy that we’re not to set foot on its beaches.  The first selectman promises to fight to the Supreme Court to keep outsiders where they belong –  outside.  As well she might.  If she didn’t, voters would surely seek a new first selectman who did.  You pay a bundle extra for a house in Greenwich, so you might as well demand all the perks.

The biggest perk, though, is not so well publicized.  That’s the tax rate.  Greenwich has the lowest.  On the state’s equalized rating scale, it comes in at 8.71 mills.  Only four other towns join it below 10.  They are, in order, Sherman, Waterford, Lyme, and Darien.  All are rich except Waterford, whose delicious rate is based on a devil’s deal of hosting nuclear power plants.  With one now closed and the other two at middle age, its taxes will one day zoom again, dispersing residents almost as fast as a radiation leak.

My own town, Norwalk – Connecticut’s candidate for paradise – provides an instructive contrast.  Our mill rate, 18.66, is just double that of Greenwich, and much higher than those of our surrounding posh suburbs. Not surprisingly, our citizens are given to grousing about that. In their hearts they know that our rate comes from having oodles of poverty-stricken citizens who can’t pay taxes at all. Still, that knowledge doesn’t make their tax bill any easier to swallow.

Less yet do our good burghers care about Bridgeport or Hartford. Their equalized mill rates are 38, twice ours.  And New Britain and New Haven lie not far behind at 34. We all know that’s because these towns have mostly poor people, so those few who can afford to own property really get socked.  Norwalk citizens are duly sympathetic, but being absorbed with our own problems, we don’t set aside much time to lobby for the well being of others.  By the same token, Greenwich citizens, similarly self-absorbed, don’t give a…um…darn about us.  Each town settles mostly for stewing in its own juice.

Except, naturally, for their mayors and first selectmen.  They want the state to level things out a bit, without, of course, taking anything away from anyone else.  The organization that represents them contains rich and poor communities alike, so it can hardly take strident positions.  It properly rails for more state aid to respond to specific social needs.

And yes, the legislators from high-tax towns also work toward leveling things out.  But not too hard.  Voters judge them mostly on state taxes, not local mill rates.  Besides, there aren’t many of them compared to suburban legislators; and some, because of gerrymandering, even have parts of suburban towns in their own districts.

For all these reasons, things don’t change much.  The state did pass out $34 million of its bloated surplus to the towns this year, but not proportioned anything like the mill rate differences.  And the state does pay about half of Hartford’s overall expenses, what with all the state buildings there.  But even so, Hartford’s mill rate is twice the state average and four times Greenwich’s.

Meanwhile in Bridgeport, class size is high, test scores (like incomes) are low, 1,900 families are waiting for subsidized housing, and 30 percent of the elementary school kids change schools each year.  Clearly Connecticut’s tax system is not aimed at facing these inequities.  It looks like the only solution is for everyone to move to Greenwich.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut.)