I Really Hope You Read This
Got My Mind on Our Money, and Our Money on My Mind
Hello neighbors,
Sorry I didn’t send out a newsletter last week. I had a lot going on and needed a bit of a break. That said, I’ve also felt a bit defeated, as despite a real effort to collaborate, there are still major barriers to getting basic information and moving things forward.
TL;DR
We still don’t have the financial data we’re legally supposed to have. Key reports are missing, incomplete, or quietly changed after being posted.
The proposed budget will raise taxes meaningfully, and for many households, that means real monthly increases that could be destabilizing.
We are operating without a safety net. Past budgets relied on one-time funds and surplus. That cushion is gone.
Council is being asked to review a $300M+ budget without a usable digital file. We literally cannot run scenarios or properly analyze it.
We are now two audits behind. There is no clear timeline, limited access to the auditor, and a concerning reliance on the Town’s former auditor to fill gaps.
We are being asked to approve a budget without fully verified financials while simultaneously asking residents to pay over $20M more.
This process is not functioning the way it should. There are real transparency and oversight issues, and they directly impact what residents are being asked to pay.
More detail below if you want the full picture.
Ongoing Lack of Financial Transparency
The Council is still not receiving most of the financial reporting required by the Charter, and what is posted to the Town’s Finance page is inconsistent, not communicated to the Council, and at times silently changed after the fact.
Recent examples include:
Missing February YTD Expense & Revenue Reports: A partial March report (through March 16) was posted and was presumably used to build the budget, but the February year-to-date report was never added. I flagged this on March 9 and was told February should be there. It still isn’t, nearly a month later.
Overtime Reporting (Required by Charter): For at least the past two years, the Council has not received Finance Department overtime reports, despite them being required. I formally requested them multiple times starting March 5, and only received partial data last week. Even then, it did not include the standard reporting that departments like Police, Fire, and Public Works routinely provide.
Missing Reconciliation Bridge: I have been requesting a reconciliation bridge since February 23 to understand how we arrived at the current projected fund balance analysis. The request has been acknowledged, but the document has still not been provided.
Yes, we now have a budget liaison and a finance director, and I’m hopeful that will improve things—some of it already has. But the reality is, this process is still fundamentally broken, and it’s a serious issue.
That said, there is no reason it should be this hard to access basic financial information we are legally entitled to review.
Real Costs, Real People
Mayor Adam Sendroff has proposed a $328.7 million town budget that would raise the property tax rate by 4.92%, from 51.88 to 54.43 mills. While some of these increases are driven by contractual obligations, it does not change what this actually means for residents. That said, I want to make sure that residents fully understand what this is going to look like in real dollars at a household level.
Using Ed Lee’s free updated tax calculator, here are just a few examples from random addresses I pulled across different parts of town:
Spring Glen: Increases from $156 to $251 per month.
Pine Rock Area: Increases from $126 to $222 per month.
Newhall: Increases from $98 to $165 per month.
Bear Path Area: Increases from $90s to $153 per month.
These are real, recurring monthly increases. For some, they may be manageable, but for others they will be destabilizing, forcing real tradeoffs and, in some cases, real decisions about whether they can afford to stay. That’s especially concerning in the context of a statewide housing shortage, where average rents in New Haven County already run about $1,750 to $2,100 for a one-bedroom and $1,950 to $2,400 for a two-bedroom, according to the New Haven Independent.
The severity of this reality for hundreds of households must be central to this conversation.
Our Fiscal Reality is Bleak
Last year, the Council approved the phase-in to help blunt the immediate impact, especially given how little notice residents had of the tax increase. To soften that hit, the town relied on available resources like fund balance and current-year cuts that could be carried forward (to be determined if those still exist).
In prior years, fund balance, external funding sources, and surplus were also used to absorb what would have otherwise been a much more severe increase.
This year, there is no cushion left to offset the impact. So what you’re seeing now is much closer to the full reality of the town’s cost structure.
Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
This also ties into the frustration many residents have about things like roads and sidewalks. Those improvements typically require capital funding, which means taking on additional debt. And we already carry a significant debt burden. So while those needs are real, funding them is not as simple as just deciding to do the work. It’s a difficult balance. This budget involves real tradeoffs, and your input matters.
The Budget Binder from 1982.
I have several issues with this budget, but one of the biggest is that the Council is being asked to analyze and make decisions without the tools to do so properly.
Right now, the only working document that we have is a 1980s-era-style budget in a large, hard-to-lug-around binder. Yes, a physical document—hole-punched and everything.
A Digital Copy of a Printed Copy of a Digital File
Now, to be fair, a “digital” version was shared publicly…but it is merely a scanned copy of another printed document (a PDF of a physical binder) that is such poor quality it’s difficult to read and completely unusable for any real analysis.
What’s most perplexing is that if this budget was clearly created using a computer, why can’t a digital file be shared?
Myself and several other Council members have repeatedly requested a working file so we can actually run scenarios, test options, and understand tradeoffs in a real way.
As of now, that still has not been provided, which is especially concerning given we are already halfway through budget season.
Coming from a corporate environment, this is truly beyond my comprehension.
What’s even more concerning is that this request is treated like an act of defiance, rather than a completely normal part of the budget process.
Missing Info, Errors, and Inconsistencies
Missing Critical Info: The document we do have also doesn’t include basic calculations like year-over-year changes by line item or department. To understand the true significance of anything, we have to manually calculate it by hand and cross-reference entirely separate documents. It’s painstaking and makes it nearly impossible to evaluate the budget as a whole or make informed recommendations. From a practical standpoint, this is not a serious way to review a budget of this size.
Errors & Inconsistencies: For example, there are lines where projected spending is already lower than what has actually been spent year-to-date. One of the more concerning ones is the Finance Department overtime line, which projects around $300,000 for the year, while Munis reports showed over $319,000 already spent as of March 16, with several months still left in the fiscal year.
Holding Out Hope: We have another budget meeting tomorrow to review the Mayor’s Office. Since materials are often provided last minute, maybe we’ll finally receive the Excel file needed to do this properly.
Let’s Talk About the Phase-in
Now here is the part about our budget that should really make you pause.
We are now in year two of the phase-in. The entire purpose of the phase-in is to gradually adjust how much residents are paying over time based on updated property values, so the impact of revaluation isn’t felt all at once. It doesn’t reduce taxes, it just spreads the change out over multiple years.
In simple terms, every year of the phase-in, many residents are already paying more based on those updated values, even if the tax rate stays exactly the same. So in year two, the town is already collecting more money from residents than it did last year.
And yet, on top of that built-in increase, the proposed budget is still raising the mill rate. That means residents are getting hit twice: once from the phase-in, and again from the mill rate increase.
Even if the phase-in were eliminated today, taxes would still be going up significantly because of rising costs.
In fact, without the phase-in, many residents would likely see even sharper increases right now, because the full impact of updated property values would hit all at once instead of being spread out over time. Even if the phase-in softens the initial jump, it does not change the underlying trajectory.
The only way to meaningfully blunt these increases is to stop spending money we don’t have and that taxpayers can’t afford. We are often told that’s not possible due to contractual obligations and inflation, and to some extent, that’s true. In any case, if we are not able to stabilize spending, residents will keep seeing increases year after year.
Over the full four-year phase-in, some households could be facing increases of hundreds of dollars per month. Again, those increases are not being caused by the phase-in itself—they are being driven by our underlying spending.
The Audit: Two Years Later…
I also have serious concerns about what is happening with the audit.
At a basic level, the process lacks clarity and transparency. The audit continues to be delayed, and we still do not have a clearly explained root cause. Communication to the Council has been inconsistent and incomplete, and there is no clear timeline or comprehensive update on where things stand. At this point, we are now two audits behind. That is a serious breakdown in basic fiscal governance.
We are being asked to build and approve a budget without fully verified financials.
And yet, at the same time, we are justifying asking residents to pay over $20 million more this year. That alone should give everyone pause, but the structure of this process raises even more questions.
Limited Access & Fragmented Communication
Right now, there is no single, reliable source for detailed, meaningful audit updates or a clear understanding of outstanding issues.
Most Council members do not have direct access to the auditor and cannot reach out to him. Instead, updates appear to be limited to a small group. The rest of the Council is left relying on secondhand, filtered information.
That is not how oversight is supposed to work, especially given that the Charter makes the full Council responsible for overseeing the audit.
Questionable Reliance on the Former Auditor
At the same time, the Town’s former auditor continues to play a central role in reconciliation and audit-related work, including acting as the primary intermediary between the Board of Education and the current auditor. This means the Council does not have direct access to this information—not even the small group that typically interfaces with the auditor.
Instead of information flowing directly, it is being routed through a third party that previously served as the Town and BOE’s auditor.
Our current auditor, CBIZ, appears focused on obtaining the information needed to complete the audit and is willing to accept it through this structure. But acceptance does not equal appropriateness from an oversight standpoint.
Contract Questions & Ongoing Involvement
Given that the contract for this work with our former auditor began in July 2025 at approximately $18,000, and considering the level of involvement since then, it is reasonable to assume those funds have likely been exhausted.
That raises an obvious question: under what arrangement is this work continuing? And more importantly, why is it being accepted?
If the Town and BOE Finance Departments are unable to provide information directly to the current auditor in a timely or complete manner, that is an issue that needs to be addressed at its source, not worked around by continuing to rely on our former auditor to fill the gap.
This concern is further heightened by the fact that the firm is currently involved in ongoing civil litigation in Connecticut’s Complex Litigation Docket, with allegations related to approximately $2.2 million in improper financial transfers. While those matters are unresolved, and the firm denies wrongdoing, it raises legitimate questions about whether continued reliance on this firm in such a central role is appropriate.
Proposed Changes to the Process
This does not have to be this complicated.
I have suggested that we implement regular, public-facing audit updates, including monthly meetings with the auditor where clear, detailed progress updates are provided to the full Council and the public. There should be a defined timeline, transparency around the details of outstanding issues, and direct access to information so that the oversight outlined in our Charter can actually occur.
Legislative Council Update
We have a budget workshop tomorrow, April 6 at 7:00 PM at Memorial Town Hall (with a virtual option). I hope to see you there!
On the agenda:
Mayor’s Budget Presentation: The administration will present its proposed budget and priorities.
Budget Process Going Forward: This remains unclear, which is concerning given where we are in the process.
Audit Update: Another “update” on the audit.
I’ll keep pushing for answers. More soon.
Warmly,
Councilwoman Grace Teodosio
Thank you for this detailed information and critique of Hamden's budget woes (and OUR budget woes as our taxes rise). The embedded GIF's helped leaven the bad news.
Grace, you are incredible. We appreciate the time and care you provide — not only to fight the good fight against chaos and obscurity, but also to communicate it all so clearly to us.