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Who Needs It More?

Mayor Joseph Maturo, Jr’s press release “S&P Reaffirm’s East Haven’s ‘A+’ Credit Rating” published Dec. 27 touting the Standard & Poor’s A-plus rating was clearly intended to whitewash the $1.4 million tax credit his administration gave to Winn Development, the company that will rehabilitate the old high school building and which, according to its website, “owns or manages real estate holdings valued at approximately $14 billion.”

As there’s no such thing as “free lunch,” we the taxpayers will ultimately shoulder the burden of making up for that revenue loss, which beggars a very sensible and relevant question specifically: What tangible economic benefit should our community expect to receive, in exchange for that sum?

I ask the question mindful of the various studies regarding the tax credit subject, which conclude that handing out tax breaks to businesses, most particularly to billion-dollar corporations, is worse than useless.

And then there is this matter of the law of diminishing marginal utility, which, in simplified terms, would be analogous to the commonly held belief that those who have more money, value it less than those who have little, which brings us back to Winn Development and the $1.4 million tax-credit.

Who could use that money more? The Town of East Haven or Winn Development?

From personal observations, there are infrastructures that could use serious improvement or maybe even a bigger pay increase for our town employees if nothing else.

But let us give credit where credit is due and in that regard praise our Finance Director Paul Rizza for the very fine job he is doing for us.

Oni Sioson

East Haven