By Daniel M. FitzPatrick
So reads the vintage necktie I wore to the recent Greenwich Sentinel Award gala. It was quite a hit (both the gala and the necktie) and a number of people asked where they could get one (the necktie, not the award). Shep/Ian and Scott Mitchell take note: I’ll gladly lend you the tie as prototype in exchange for a contribution to a charity of my choice!
Greenwich IS great. Particularly on beautiful days like those we’ve enjoyed this past Fourth of July weekend. We are blessed to be bordered by Long Island Sound, with multiple parks, beaches and even ferry service to a town-owned island appropriately named Island Beach, where bathers can enjoy the sight of sailboats and other watercraft crisscrossing the blue water as if in an aquatic ballet. Our public amenities are first-rate, our schools are many and varied, and SafeWise.com just ranked Greenwich as the #1 safest town in Connecticut to raise a child.
We have exceptionally dedicated and professional police and fire personnel, an outstanding, award-winning ambulance/emergency medical service, and easy access to some of the very best doctors and medical facilities in the world. Our property taxes, while inching higher each year, are still less than half that of Connecticut as a whole on a percentage basis (City-Data.com), which is a tribute to the tradition of fiscal prudence which has long been a guiding principle of town government. (If only that example were followed state-wide; but more on that later).
I must confess to having been unsure about moving to Greenwich some 20 years ago. (If you read or listen only to what is said and written about Greenwich, you could easily be misled.) I have since discovered that there is not one single Greenwich, but several. Greenwich is like a great big layer cake, with many facets and multiple communities, neighborhoods, common interest groups and social organizations all co-existing within its 47.8 square miles of municipal responsibility. It is surprisingly diverse, on just about every criteria, and most everyone can find some aspect of Greenwich to be a fit.
Our residents include some of the wealthiest people on the planet, and we also have residents on public assistance. We have slightly more women (52.4%) than men (47.6%), and almost twice the percentage of our residents are foreign born (19%) than in the state overall (10.9%). At almost 60% of the population, Christianity is clearly the predominate religion, but you can find houses of worship of just about any religious tradition as well. A very international town (due in no small part to its proximity to New York City), many Greenwich residents hail from foreign lands, and it is possible to hear just about every language known to man when walking down Greenwich Avenue. It is a veritable melting pot, and no wonder that in 1946 the United Nations selected Greenwich as its first choice for the new organization’s headquarters (without, it should be noted, first seeking input from Greenwich residents – that is yet another story).
Who would ever want to leave this idyllic place?
We do have some residents who choose to summer elsewhere. While I don’t completely understand that (to my mind, summer is the best time to enjoy Greenwich), I do enjoy the seasonal respite from local traffic, the shorter movie lines and easier restaurant reservations, and – sweetest of all – the open parking spots on lower Greenwich Avenue. Like all good things, this comes to an end just before Labor Day and the beginning of a new school year.
More troubling – and this is where things get serious – is the mass exodus of residents establishing domicile in other states for tax purposes. This is real. I see it every day. For evidence, just look at the number of cars in town with (mainly) Florida license plates – it is highly unlikely they are just tourists passing through.
Yet who can blame them? The Yankee Institute for Public Policy has been sounding the warning bell on this issue for many years: in 2009, they estimated that over the prior two decades, one in 10 Connecticut residents had left the state, and of those who remained, 45% said they had considered moving out of state due to Connecticut’s high taxes. Politicians in Hartford disputed and then ignored these findings, preferring to ”whistle past the graveyard.” Incredibly, they also ignored similar warnings from large corporate employers who ultimately did leave the state, taking hundreds of good paying jobs with them.
Eight years later, the problem remains, and is likely to get even worse given the woeful condition of the state budget and continuing cries for more taxes from the tone-deaf politicians who got us in this mess to begin with. Where do you suppose they will look to get those taxes? I’m guessing a town with 2015 median household income almost twice — and median house or condo value more than three times – the state median will be on that list. Want to guess what town that is?
We are fortunate in having exceptional representation in the form of our elected local delegates to Hartford. They are a hard-working team fighting every day for the best interests of the state and its residents. But they and their like-minded colleagues are outnumbered in Hartford, and it is sadly all too easy for representatives of other communities in the state to vote for programs and policies where benefits inure to some while the associated burdens are borne by others. It is economic redistribution in the geographic sense.
“No taxation without representation” was a rallying cry of the American Revolution, the start of which we celebrate every Fourth of July. While not technically the case, it feels like we in Greenwich are in a similar position, at least effectively. If this continues, or worsens, I fear we will continue to see fellow residents leave our great town for reasons unfortunate and possibly avoidable. We need a miracle in Hartford to fix our fiscal mess.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a good, practical solution short of praying for that miracle. I do have a somewhat fanciful suggestion, inspired by our recent holiday. What if Greenwich, or the entirety of Fairfield County for that matter, left Connecticut to form a new, 51st state – the State of Greenwich? Existing taxes would likely be more than enough to pay for the operation of a state government, particularly if it were managed in the fiscally prudent manner we’ve enjoyed in Greenwich. We could keep government small (I’d start with our current representatives) and exceedingly responsive to its citizens. We might even consider adopting the tax and other polices that other states have used to attract our citizens, reversing the aforementioned trend and creating new waves of in-migration! Sounds pretty good to me. If there’s enough interest in this idea, I’m happy to take a stab at drafting the Greenwich Declaration of Independence!
Dan FitzPatrick is an active member of the community and a volunteer. He serves on the board of Greenwich Emergency Medical Services, Inc.
