West Haven’s plan to boost car tax revenue has stalled
WEST HAVEN — Last summer, Mayor Nancy Rossi informed City Council of an initiative to increase property tax revenue by informing full-time residents that they are required by law to register their vehicles with the town. It now appears that the initiative is stuck in neutral, as officials do not know if it has generated results.
The initiative was delegated to an intern from the municipal corporation’s solicitor’s office to compare a list of land sales against a list of places where vehicles are registered and see if there were any inconsistencies. Company attorney Lee Tiernan told council members at the time that the bureau was more interested in education than law enforcement at first.
However, Tiernan said the intern took a job in the state and he wasn’t sure the plan had any impact. An attempt to contact the former city legal intern failed.
Rossi said any questions about the program’s impact would be best directed to the municipal tax assessor.
Tax assessor Ann Marie Gradoia was out of the office but told the Register in an email that she had no information about the initiative, which was an idea of Rossi but overseen by the office of the company lawyer.
Bridgette Hoskie, chair of the city council’s finance committee, said she had no comment on the initiative or its potential impact because she didn’t know anything about it.
By state law, when a vehicle is regularly parked in a city for four or more nights a week, it is deemed to be registered in that city.
In fiscal year 2022, the city approved a motor vehicle tax of $10.4 million, an increase of 3.97% over fiscal year 2021. Neither the fiscal year budget 2021 nor that of the city’s fiscal year 2022 have been fully audited after auditing firm CliftonLarsonAllen dropped the city as a client in April. Auditors from CliftonLarsonAllen overlapped with auditors from CohnReznick, who were conducting a forensic audit of the city’s coronavirus relief fund grant and its financial practices, on behalf of the Office of Policy and Management of the state earlier this year. The city recently hired a different auditing firm to perform its required annual audit.
In the city’s planned budget for fiscal year 2023, which must be approved by the Municipal Accountability Review Board by June 15 or the board of supervisors can implement its own budget, the city plans that it will receive about $1.1 million less in revenue from its motor vehicle tax — just $9.4 million — because of Gov. Ned Lamont capping the motor vehicle tax rate. However, the state is offering an additional scheduled reimbursement of $1.63 million to the city.