How We Write Wallingford's Next Chapter

Leaves are changing color, days are getting shorter, and before you know it Election Day will be upon us. After months of campaigning to be Wallingford’s next mayor, I’ve spoken to thousands of you while going door to door. My platform of modernizing town hall, repairing our crumbling infrastructure, and lowering taxes, has resonated with just about all Wallingford residents. The most common question I’ve received, however, is “how are you going to pay for these improvements.” That “how” is exactly what today’s column is about.

Let’s set the table for this discussion with some context. Wallingford has endured 18 consecutive years of proposed tax increases from the current administration. There has been no increase in the quality or quantity of public services offered to justify these increases, but rather they are the consequence of poor fiscal policies.

Budget

Our budgets consistently overestimate expenditures while underestimating revenues, often by millions of dollars. This artificially creates a surplus by raising taxes with no honest expectation of spending the additional revenue, the definition of overtaxing. While we’ve all been facing record high inflation and increases to the cost of living, my opponent has successfully voted to raise taxes every year he’s been in office.

My first priority is to freeze the mill rate. Using historical budget data, incorporating expected increases in wages and inflation, this reliably leaves us with more than a million dollars a year to work with. A decent start, but much more can be done.

Pension Fund

A far bigger, albeit less talked about, problem with our current fiscal policy is the mismanagement of the pension fund. The good news: we currently have about $245 million in the fund, about 75% of our liability. The bad news: the investment returns have been abysmal. Over the last decade, this fund has averaged 6% annual returns. Over this same period, the S&P 500 (widely used as the market standard) has returned over 12%.

A fund this size should consistently outperform the market if managed properly, let alone match it. The difference in these percentages, even for just one year at the current balance, is $15 million. With compounding interest, the gap only gets worse the wider the view you take. Over five years, that gap grows to over $100 million, and more than $300 million over ten years.

Before 2004, no tax dollars went into the pension fund; it was self-sustainable with employee contributions. Years of terrible investment, however, have resulted in us having to subsidize these lost gains with over $10 million from taxpayers each year, and this number only grows.

You get what you pay for, and it’s abundantly clear that the contract for managing this fund needs to go back out to bid for competitive results. Over 30% of the fund currently resides in assets (receiving virtually 0% interest), which is substantially greater than would ever be needed to insulate against a multi-year recession. The other 70% still significantly underperforms the market average. By addressing these problems alone, we can simultaneously establish a pension fund that removes any future burden on taxpayers, while also ensuring our civil servants’ pensions are protected for generations to come.

Technology

Wallingford’s Town Hall is one of, if not the most antiquated in the state of Connecticut. Needless to say, this wastes money. Online bill pay services, for example, would pay for themselves. They have proven to increase the percentage of bills paid on time, and require fewer resources to process. It may only come out to a few thousand dollars saved, but it’s also a long overdue convenience for residents.

In a similar vein, but with a greater fiscal impact, is direct deposit for town employees. The money spent on the paper checks, stamps, and efficiency costs alone are estimated to be nearly $200,000/year. Additionally, some employees have thirty minutes of paid leave built into their contracts to go pick up their checks each week, which wastes an additional estimated $100,000/year. Switching over to direct deposit is a win-win for taxpayers and employees, and should have been implemented years ago.

Grants

The absence of a full-time grant writer costs us millions more in state and federal funds. This is a position that, when done well, pays for itself 100 times over. It’s common sense. Wallingford currently has a reduced capacity to apply for grants, so we apply to fewer than we should. Even out of the grants we do apply for, we have a worse success rate because we are relying on already overstretched employees to fill out these applications internally.

Many towns of comparable populations and socioeconomics are receiving 2-3 times as much in state grants per year (totalling nearly $50 million). For a recent example of this, look no further than the $56 million that was available for air-conditioning in public schools. Wallingford didn’t even apply. The Record Journal reported last October that our Board of Education did not pursue the grant because they were unable to put together an application in the short timeframe provided. A grant writer to do the bulk of this work would solve that issue.

Before any naysayers claim we wouldn’t have been awarded that grant anyway because of our comparable wealth, let’s look at a couple of towns that were: Guilford ($1.25 million) and Fairfield ($6.2 million). In addition to both of these towns having significantly higher average incomes than Wallingford, what else do they have in common… dedicated grant-writing positions.

These changes to our fiscal policy ultimately only scratch the surface of how Wallingford can save money. There’s additional millions to be saved from increased efficiencies, better planning, innovation, growing our grandlist, and so much more. The bottom line is Wallingford can make progress without raising taxes, and without mortgaging our future. It won’t be easy, and it will take time, but it is more than possible under the right leadership with the right plan. This is how we write Wallingford’s next chapter.