By Callie Gale Heilmann & Gemeem Davis, Published in The Connecticut Post, April 28th, 2022

BRIDGEPORT – Over the past seven years, Bridgeport’s municipal budget tells a sad and disturbing story. Think of our budget like a pie and our tax dollars like the ingredients that make up that pie. If we want to bake a small pie to serve a small group of people, we need relatively few ingredients. But if we want to bake a big, fat, juicy pie to feed a large group of people, we’ll need to increase our ingredients.

Since 2014, Bridgeport has been prevented from making a big pie (i.e. an adequate budget) because revenue from our taxes has remained essentially flat, due to poor leadership, very weak economic growth and divestment from education.

Therefore, when large and fast growing city departments ask for a larger slice of our pie, the mayor simply picks and chooses which slices to make smaller, rather than focusing on innovative ways to increase our tax base and equitably balance the budget.

Click here to read the full Op-Ed in The Connecticut Post

Year after year, we at Bridgeport Generation Now have been very vocal that the choice to give the Board of Education a smaller slice has consistently led to cuts to Bridgeport public schools. And the large, fast growing slice has been the Bridgeport Police Department — a department that is decades deep in a crisis of misconduct, corruption, abuse, and racism.

We need transformational leaders with the courage to propose and pass a budget that tells a new story — a story of a city determined to eliminate racial and economic disparities by making bold investments in public education and social services so all of us can enjoy a big, fat, juicy pie.