Hartford commercial taxpayers, don’t hold your breath — the city is launching a new committee to study ways to increase the grand list and lower taxes on businesses.
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Hartford commercial taxpayers, don’t hold your breath — the city is launching a new committee to study ways to increase the grand list and lower taxes on businesses.
If you’re thinking we’ve been here before, we have, many times. Hartford has empaneled numerous groups over the years to come up with recommendations to lower Hartford’s stifling property tax rate, which is currently 74.29 mills, by far the highest in the state and one of the highest effective property tax rates of any city in the country.
The lack of meaningful reforms over the years speaks to the complexity of the morass in Hartford.
The latest commission will include 13 members who will likely be chosen starting in January when the new city council meets for the first time, said Councilman Thomas “TJ” Clarke II, who proposed the committee.
“We need to figure out how to lower the commercial tax assessment rate so we can get more developers to come into the city to develop some of our vacant and blighted properties,” Clarke told me.
I commend Clarke for wanting to address the issue, but I’m skeptical any major reforms will come out of it.
At least that’s what past history tells me. Frankly, we don’t need another committee — we need an actionable plan.
There are no silver bullets for solving the tax and financial issues Hartford faces and the only way for the city to reverse course is through a grand bargain among the state, city, property owners and others.
Most likely everyone’s ox must be gored in order for a sustainable, long-term solution to be achieved, and that’s not always a politically expedient path to take.
The city’s small businesses in particular have felt enormous pressure from the high property-tax rate, part of the reason key commercial avenues — Franklin, Maple, Main, Albany, etc. — in various neighborhoods have lost their luster.
Making matters worse, Hartford has the state’s only bifurcated property-tax system, in which commercial property owners pay a higher tax rate than residential homeowners.
HBJ published a series of in-depth stories earlier this year that laid out in stark terms how Hartford’s high and unequal property-tax system has sapped economic growth. More importantly, we also presented five “solutions” on how to solve, or at least alleviate the problem.
We recommend the new committee take a hard look at our series before they put out recommendations.
The simplest and clearest path to reversing Hartford’s economic fortunes is to choose a competitive mill rate and adopt it over a relatively short time period. It would need to be done in close coordination with the state, which is currently overseeing the city’s finances following the 2018 bailout agreement. It also might mean homeowners pay higher taxes.
The committee has a tough task ahead but there are plenty of ideas from which its members can draw. I hope they offer a realistic blueprint that gains enough political support to actually get implemented, but I’ll believe when I see it.
