FORMER MAYOR STEWART ATTACKS MAYOR O'BRIEN FOR HIS USING HIS RE-VIEW MIRROR RATHER THAN MOVING FORWARD!

After months of reading and watching the new administration’s distorted public relations campaign, I can remain silent no longer. An intense amount of criticism has been levied against me and my administration for allegedly leaving the city with an enormous financial deficit with respect to this year’s budget. Politicians, employees and others seeking to profit from the City have continued to levy charges of financial mismanagement, structural deficits and other situations that have brought me to write this letter telling the people of New Britain the truth.
For several years (including before my administration) have relied on one time revenues to balance the city’s budget and largely have been successful in doing so. Unfortunately many cities like New Britain have had to rely on revenues outside of the ever decreasing state budget. Continued state and federal mandates with shrinking revenues have caused significant concern amongst many cities throughout the state over the past several years. During my eight years as mayor I not only did not raise taxes during that period of time but also produced budget surpluses in seven of my eight budget years. In fact last year the city finished the fiscal year with a $2.5 million dollar surplus that was added to the fund balance because of a policy that was set in place during my last term in office bringing it to nearly our goal of 5% of total expenditures.
As is the case for every annual budget, last year’s budget was adopted by the Democratic controlled Common Council by a vote of 11-1 with the only no vote being Alderwoman Mary Morocco the lone republican in attendance at the hastily called budget adoption meeting on a Friday evening in late June. Two items of particular interest in this budget were the sale of city property and a line item that was put together to reflect various savings mechanisms from city union concessions and unfilled vacancies in various departments. For the record, these two items are the responsibility of both the Mayor and Common Council to work together to find savings in an already stretched thin budget. All parties including the City Finance Director were involved in these budget discussions prior to its adoption. Over one million dollars was added to the sale of property at the last minute to ensure compliance with a federal grant to hire police officers. Now fast forward to mid-November and week two of Mayor O’Brien’s administration.
During his state of the city speech Mayor O’Brien referred to a visit from the Finance Director to discuss the state of the City’s finances when it was revealed that the city was facing a deficit of nearly $11 million dollars. The question I continue to ask myself is if this truly were the case why didn’t Mr. Curry come to me prior to leaving office to tell me of his concerns? At no time did Mr. Curry ever express any level of concern towards the state of the city’s finances except with regards to cash flow a couple of years back that was addressed by the tax collector.
Suddenly as if a meteor hit the city head on, the situation is so drastic that the Finance Director and the Mayor need to address the crisis with a deficit mitigation plan. Stealing $10.5 million from the Water Department Reserve Fund to balance the city’s books is the only way to accomplish this herculean task. Included in this plan is $180,000 additional monies for the Mayor’s own office and strangely enough around $3 million would come from existing accounts deemed surplus by the Mayor’s office. Wow, wasn’t that the purpose of the line item in the budget that was adopted by the Democratic controlled council last June? This was only six months into the fiscal year and $3 million was already generated from savings? Looks like if they had done nothing that $6 million in savings would have been met and there would be no deficit in that line item. Another $1.8 million was generated from the sale of 17 acres of land at Pinnacle Park off of Slater Road to CREC to build a regional magnet school. This was also accomplished during my tenure and not closed on until the next administration. Add to this over $1 million sitting in a fund for a program to assist seniors that the Democratic controlled council has never adopted and the not yet quantified savings from various health care policy changes in many municipal contracts, renegotiated energy contracts and the results from yet another municipal spending freeze and I firmly believe that I would have been able to make that budget work without resorting to the pie in the sky tactics that Mayor O’Brien has used for the past several months.
In a recent article where the Mayor cited a recent rating upgrade from Moody’s Credit Service from A1 to A3 with a negative outlook, Moody’s stated that years of structural budget deficits would need to be fixed? Can somebody tell me what that means? If the city experienced years of surpluses then where are the deficits? Some revenue accounts underperformance was supplanted by surpluses in other areas because that is what is done when a budget document is reconciled at the fiscal year end, not six months into the year. The fact is this was not a rating increase but only a national recalibration of the municipal ratings market resulting from several class action lawsuits filed against them over the past three years. All municipal agencies across the country, not just in New Britain, received a bump in their ratings because of this fact. Furthermore, ratings agencies rely on the municipalities to inform them of all debt obligations, budgetary performance, policy decisions and anything else that might impact the City’s financial performance including their analysis of the City’s political climate.
Working within the framework of a budget is part of the responsibility of the mayor and I believe that he has neglected to do his job in a professional and ethical manner. The constant blame he levies against my administration shows his lack of problem solving ability as well as his willingness to politicize the many issues that affect the hardworking people of New Britain. When I initially took office in the fall of 2003 it would have been very easy to look backwards and levy criticism on the prior administration but I made a conscious effort to focus on moving forward and tackling the issues in a more professional manner than this administration has. I suggest that the current administration do the same as the challenges facing New Britain can’t afford to wait until the political game playing is over!