Cheshire Town Council Candidates Pledge to Work to Avoid Tax Increases

Editor's note: This is the first part in a multi-part series of where the candidates for Town Council stand on a number of issues discussed at Tuesday's candidate forum.

No one wants to see taxes rise, and the candidates for at-large seats for the Cheshire Town Council all pledged Tuesday that if elected, they will do whatever they can to keep that promise.

The Cheshire/Wallingford League of Women Voters hosted the forum, which included the candidates for Town Council for both parties. On Monday, the Cheshire Townwide PTA Council will host a similar forum for Board of Education candidates at 7 p.m. at Cheshire High School Commons.

The candidates at Thursday's forum included at-large incumbent Republicans Tim Slocum, Sylvia Nichols and James Sima, and incumbent Democrats Michael Ecke and Patti Flynn Harris, and challengers Democrat Dan Nowak and Paul Bellagamba and Republican Robert Oris Jr. 

"I think the services that we receive are very beneficial," Bellagamba said, "and I think the taxes that are collected are well used.

"As far as tax increases go, obviously we don't want any," he said. "We need to maintain services without raising taxes and shift the tax burden to commercial and retail and get it off backs of homeowners."

"I think that the taxes are well spent, and as we see in the last few years we have kept rate increases less than rate of inflation," Nichols said."We are always concerned with balancing what are essential, critical services with the wants people think would be nice to have, and I think we do very good job of that."

"Every town and any government has the responsibility for the education, welfare and public safety of its citizens, and those are the services that are expected," Flynn-Harris said, "and think we try to fund that as well as we can but don't always do so."
 
"We have done a very goo job with taxes," Sima said. "We have kept the increases under the rate of inflation and if I am reelected I will continue to work to do that."

"The bud is probably the largest thing the council handles, and taxes are on the top of minds of residents so they are at the top of our minds," said Slocum, who has served as council chairman for the past four years. "Keeping taxes to moderate inreases based on operating cost incrses and realistic expetations, we have to be prepared to limit that the best we can."

"The important thing to do is to find creative ways to ease tax burden in town so we can maintain services and have cutting be last resort," Nowak said, "but we need to be very fiscally responsible in these tough economic times."

"I believe we need to be fiscal prudent and keep tax rates as low as possible, and that's the basis upon which I will govern," Oris said. "We need to balance the budget by keeping expenditures within revenue means, and I believe we can do more with our existing resources  and expand the grand list with quality economic development to take the tax burden off the residential tax base."