EDA Seeks Public’s Input

The town’s Economic Development Agency is seeking input from residents on how Canton should deal with the rising costs of local services, including police and education, and the possibility of declining help from the state, which is currently facing a significant budget deficit.

The following letter has been circulated to local media outlets. We present it unedited and in its entirety:

Dear Canton Residents,

We are Canton’s Economic Development Agency, a group of 5 volunteer Canton residents that are concerned with the responsible development of new commercial and industrial businesses for our town, as well as the retention and health of our existing business base. We believe that for Canton to prosper, we need to maintain a healthy mix of residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural tax base, as well as to preserve our open spaces and small town culture.

In this regard, during the next few years, our Town will be facing an ever-increasing dilemma as to how we pay for the rising cost of educational, protective, public works and social services. You see, we will soon be experiencing the renewal of municipal contracts for police, public works employees, and teachers. And there can be no doubt that these contract renewals will result in higher costs for our town. And with our State facing a $3 ½ billion budget deficit, we can expect little or no state help.

We really have only 3 alternatives to pay for these inevitable labor increases:

• Reduce costs in other areas of government. This is extremely difficult as our labor costs account for the vast majority of our total town budget.

• Increase residential property taxes, which are already quite high when compared to neighboring towns.

• Support substantial development of new commercial and industrial businesses. This would create additional non-residential tax revenues to alleviate some of the growing tax burden for our homeowners.

It seems that everything that matters most always involved a tradeoff. In this case are we willing to trade off some concessions with respect to our love of open spaces, and small town feel, for the additional tax revenues that could be generated from new commercial and industrial developments such as the Shoppes. Did you know that the Shoppes pay more taxes each year then our next 10 largest taxpayers combined!

We would like to hear from you. As a residential taxpayer, are you in favor of encouraging additional responsible commercial development (like a mixed use project on the site of the Collinsville Axe Factory) if it results in more modest residential real estate tax increases going forward? Or are you willing to bare more substantial real estate increases if that can better preserve our small town quality of life. We again stress that we would only support new commercial projects if they can be done in a tasteful and environmentally sensitive manner.

Your input will really help us determine our goals and objectives as a planning agency going forward. Please contact us with your valid input at Town of Canton Economic Development Agency, 4 Market Street, P.O. Box 168, Collinsville, CT 06022.

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