🔒Killian vows to rein in Hartford’s property taxes

Robert Killian Jr., 68, will have to add a campaign button to his office desk lampshade — one with his name on it — to join the dozens pinned there already that he's collected from past elections.

The Hartford native, longtime lawyer, and recently retired probate judge is among Democrats vying to unseat Hartford Mayor Pedro E. Segarra in the Democratic primary. Killian is a partner with Thomas “T.J” Donohue Jr. in Killian & Donohue, which occupies space at 363 Main St., above Peppercorn's Grill.

“I'm not content with the path we've been taking the last few years, and I'm not talking just about during Pedro's tenure,” Killian said. “I'm talking about longer than that, when we've kidded ourselves about the reality of how history is changing the role that Hartford plays in the Greater Hartford region.”

Killian, whose practice areas include corporate law and real estate development and who serves as a mediator, began his full-time law career in the '70s at Gould, Killian and Krechevsky in which his father, the late Robert Killian, was a partner. His father was also a former Connecticut attorney general and lieutenant governor.

Killian, a Georgetown University law graduate, was elected probate judge for the District of Hartford in November 1984 and held the post for 30 years until stepping down in April to run for mayor.

He is married to Candace, a paralegal at his firm. They have two grown daughters.

How would you assess Hartford's current economy? What are your top two economic development priorities to improve the city?

Disastrous. Downtown Hartford and the city as a whole have seen property values in a free fall for different reasons. We dramatically overbuilt downtown Hartford commercial property over the years, and we have created challenges for the neighborhoods where most of our people live. We're going to face a state-mandated revaluation in a couple of years, and it's going to further skew our disastrous slide in terms of property values. If we don't turn things around, we're going to be bankrupt within the next two or three years. That's a reality.

We're going to have to show some real fiscal discipline — a difficult thing to do when you're in a city with as many challenged people as we have in Hartford, but the one way I know you can't do it is by pumping whatever discretionary money you think you have into amenities like ball fields. I hate to be a crepehanger, but I don't believe that in the foreseeable future any of the housing components of the so-called DoNo [Downton North] project will ever be built without extraordinary governmental contribution.

Economic development is a misnomer. If you're asking me what new major projects am I going to build, the answer is pretty simple, probably none. We don't have the money to fund new initiatives, nor do we really have an idea of what new initiatives would be worthy of funding.

What can be done to reduce the 74.29 mill property tax rate that businesses are subjected to?

It's the single greatest impediment to growth in Hartford. This magical thinking that if we engage in some kind of an economic initiative, manufacturing will come here, or anything else, it's folly if you're going to saddle it with a 74-mill tax rate.

First of all, I would hope we're going to be able to convince the state government, which has been very generous to us, that they have to relook at how the PILOT [payment in lieu of taxes] program is handled. Currently it pays 30 cents of a dollar for some but not all state-owned property.

For example, the convention center and Adriaen's Landing are not part of PILOT, and I think that should change. That's not going to be a game changer, but if we were to also get the [PILOT] payment up to 50 percent, that would be approximately a 10 mill reduction in our mill rate, from 74 to 64.

With multiple transportation projects in various stages of completion, what is your long-term plan for how people will move to, from, and around Hartford?

If you're talking about 10 or 15 years, the average person is going to come to work in Hartford by car. That's a reality.

We're going to have to do an awful lot to improve the nature of our mass-transit systems in order to entice many people out of the car into a bus or some kind of light rail. It's an issue of convenience.

The Capital Region Development Authority has taken a lead role in the city's economic development. How would you assess CRDA's work so far, and how would you work with CRDA to further improve the city?

CRDA's decision to dramatically enhance the investment in and the conversion of empty commercial space into new residential was inspiring. The arrival of perhaps another 1,200 or 1,400 residents to downtown Hartford is a wonderful amenity, and it will add to the vitality of the city, and I think it will have its own impact on some of the retail stores and the like here.

But fundamentally what [CRDA] should do is stop the plummeting values of commercial real estate.

There is a desire to come to an attractive, vibrant downtown area. We're becoming a major educational center, and that's something that people overlook between the University of Hartford, Trinity College, St. Joseph's pharmacy, UConn Business School, UConn School of Law, the UConn Hartford branch. This makes us rival any other city our size in terms of what we're doing for education.

All these institutions are situated, however, in tax-exempt structures, but that's OK if we can get some of our other existing taxpayers back to value, and if we can get PILOT bumped up a little bit. And I would work with CRDA on almost anything they want to do.

How will you grow the momentum in downtown brought by the new housing developments and projects like Front Street?

I don't know. I'm not going to grow them. The city of Hartford isn't going to grow them. Front Street is a heavily subsidized project, both by the state of Connecticut and by ESPN, which had a plan there and left a lot of money on the table when they changed their direction. I think that the whole Front Street area will be further enhanced by UConn's arrival.

I hope that what we have done will stem the downward spiral of real estate prices.

But the next impetus for housing has got to be something that private developers do because we just cannot continue to make everything subsidized by the city or the state.

What's your opinion on the Downtown North development, including the new baseball stadium? How would you improve or leverage the development?

It's disastrous and stupid. I hope it's a huge success, but I doubt it. I just think, not only was the idea bad, but how they came up with the idea was even worse. Government has to be transparent, and we shouldn't spring $300 million surprises on the taxpayers and residents of Hartford. That's just not the way that government should do business.

On my watch, they're not going to get another dime for it in public dollars. It's going to have to be private money, and it may be some while before more construction goes on down there. We don't have dollars to put in it, and if something is built, we have an obligation to provide it with services, and if it's not paying taxes, that means we're soaking the people who have previously invested in Hartford with additional mills to pay for the new expenses.

What must Hartford do to attract more businesses?

Hartford has to show that it wants to be hospitable to business. I think we also have to be realistic. It's highly unlikely that we're going to have a major infusion of manufacturing dollars in the city of Hartford. We are the second most significant financial center in New England after Boston. That's a position that will consistently be under challenge in the coming years.

We've got to consistently try to make the city work first of all for the people and the businesses that are here, and that means we've got to get this tax situation under some kind of control.

What should happen with the XL Center?

We need the XL Center. Personally, I kind of hope it stays right where it is.

I hope that if they redo it, they do it with the sensitivity that the civic center is one of the institutions that brings the entire region together. 

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