Early in September the CPOA submitted an FOI Request to the city of New Britain regarding certain revenue lines. After failing to respond within the required four day window, a point admitted later by Communication Director Phil Sherwood, I went before the Common Council and raised my concerns. The city finally released the information I requested, a full month after my original request.
What was in my request
My original request questioned the reliability of several projected revenue streams, such as the Anti-Blight Poor Condition Revenue line and the Transitional Revenue line. My guess was that these lofty figures were not realistically obtainable, and now that we are a quarter into the fiscal year I wanted to receive an update as to how much revenue has been generated.
What I found out
As I assumed, the actual returns on these lines is far below expectation. Out of a projected $425,000 in anti-blight fees less than $8,500 (or under 2%) has been collected, and these funds didn’t even appear in the account until after I made my initial request. The police and fire “hot spot” fees, which are expected to net close to $1.1 million have not yet generated a single dime. And while Phil Sherwood was quick to point out that these ordinances have just been enacted it doesn’t change the fact that they are now expecting to collect close to $135,000 every month from these fees alone.
Another contested issue, the Non-Owner Occupied Garbage Collection, which was originally supposed to raise close to $3.5 million, was abandoned. The Common Council instead passed a wide range of fee increases that will supposedly total $3.5 million. The problem with this plan is that the Common Council wasn’t told which fees would be raised by how much. This could result in drastic increases for building permits and other fees that would stifle growth and industry.
Trouble ahead
One area that we will continue to monitor is revenue projections versus actuals as the city moves forward. Currently several revenue lines in the budget have not reached 25% and we are over a quarter of the way through the year. This is to be expected, however, because certain lines generate more revenue in the summer while others generate more revenue in the fall, winter, and spring. It is somewhat troublesome that some of the licenses and fees the city recently moved to raise have not yet reached the 25% threshold so it makes me wonder whether or not the expectation that raising them will raise the revenues expected
To view the full documents released by the city click here and here.