Congratulations to Ann Mikulak, President of the Citizens Property Owners Association of New Britain, and her membership as they make headlines in their continued struggle to protect the interests of taxpayers.  More recently,  she and her membership challenged union officials who vote on union contracts in their capacity as elected officials.   The Ethics Commission of New Britain supported Ann's position.  Taxpayers throughout Connecticut should work diligently within their own municipalities to establish similar criteria to eliminate conflicts by government employees who are elected or appointed to positions of influence.       Susan Kniep 

 

 

Aging Watchdog Group Fights To Keep Bite

 

 

Longtime Taxpayer Rebels Seek To Rally Others To Cause

 

 

April 4, 2004
By JOANN KLIMKIEWICZ, Courant Staff Writer

NEW BRITAIN -- For decades, a feisty watchdog group has battled city hall on behalf of the little guy.

It orchestrated a 1,000-person taxpayer revolt and battled and beat city hall over illegal pay raises. One of its presidents was charged with breach of peace on Election Day. Another scuffled with an alderman at a public meeting.

Now, the Citizens Property Owners Association, possibly the state's oldest taxpayer group, is at a crossroads in its 75th year.

There's no shortage of city issues. But longtime CPOA President Ann Mikulak worries that younger taxpayers don't care. CPOA membership has shrunk from 1,900 in the 1970s to 300 now. Few of its members are under 50.

"If they haven't died, they've moved out of town," said Mikulak, 79, a longtime CPOA member who became its first female president in 1992.

Some say the CPOA has lost its relevance.

But Mikulak, a tough-talking, flamboyant gadfly, and the graying CPOA membership reject that notion. They write fiery letters to newspapers and sift through public records looking for evidence of wasteful spending.

"Just like any group, they're not always right. But they do their homework and even if they're not right, there's a gem of truth in what they say," said Paul Carver, a former alderman who joined the tax group as a young man in the 1970s.

"The CPOA represents some of the tradition of what started America," Carver said. "They're all fighters and survivors, the people that represent New Britain's golden years. It's difficult, because these people are getting older. And if New Britain loses that voice, what's going to be left?"

Still, age hasn't kept them down.

Last year, the CPOA fought to make unions, the city credit union and other non-municipal agencies pay rent for city hall office space that has been free for years.

Earlier this year, the CPOA complained that a city alderman - who is also a municipal union leader - violated ethics rules when he voted in December on a contract between the city and another city union. The city's ethics commission this month ruled in favor of the group.

And CPOA members remain regulars at council meetings - and are rarely silent.

At one recent budget hearing, a grandfatherly council clerk motioned to tell Mikulak her 5-minute time slot was nearly up.

"Be a good boy, dear. Put your hand down," said Mikulak, dressed in her signature finery, her white hair coifed and her rhinestone earrings sparkling. She had plenty left to say, she said. The outgunned clerk sat down. Mikulak finished her discourse to chuckles and applause.

"She's got a lot of brass," said Helene Groman, CPOA's secretary for 20 years. "There are too few people in this world that have the courage to speak out and it seems as though they're so apathetic. It's frustrating, but if you feel strongly about an issue, you'll hang in there."

Maybe it's a question of a changing generation busy shuttling kids to soccer games and band practice, or an apathetic society parked in front of televisions and computers. Mikulak isn't sure, but she's trying for younger recruits.

She keeps an eye on the real estate news, sending new homeowners photocopied CPOA newsletters drafted on her typewriter.

"I'll tell you one thing, I don't keep track of time, I just keep thinking that I'm never going to get old," Mikulak said. "But once we pass on and the good Lord takes us, I'm just a little concerned. How are people going to monitor government spending? Because you people are not rushing to join."

Several prominent citizens founded the awkwardly named group in the 1920s. At first, it was more business association than tax watchdog. Membership grew and shrank for several decades before CPOA hit its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1976, when property taxes spiked 40 percent, CPOA's charismatic president, Walter Janus, mounted a tax boycott. About 1,000 taxpayers put their payments in escrow and returned "boycott"- stamped tax bills to city hall. In the end, a court ruled against the protesters. They had to pay their taxes and a penalty.

"It was quite an uprising. But, well, a lot of people got stung," Mikulak recalled. "The people said, `You made trouble for us. Now we have to pay extra taxes.' So a lot of them just stopped" being active.

But the CPOA was far from dead. The taxpayer group had a particularly adversarial relationship with Mayor William J. McNamara during his 12-year administration, which began in the late '70s.

Both sides exchanged barbs as the CPOA hammered McNamara with allegations of conflicts of interest and frivolous city spending.

In 1982, the CPOA accused council members of approving illegal pay raises for themselves and sued the city. Four years later, the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of the group.

On Election Day 1984, police arrested CPOA President John Gwiazda for distributing campaign literature within 75 feet of a polling place. So icy was their relationship that many CPOA members accused McNamara of trying to squelch opposition to a ballot question in that election.

CPOA's tactics, considered militant by some, prompted McNamara to dub them the "Communist Party of America."

"Watchdog is a self-glorifying term. I think they think they're watchdogs, but I'm not sure that politicians think so," McNamara said this week. "They were just sort of a voice blowing in the wilderness as far as I was concerned."

In the 1980s McNamara said the CPOA was against everything. They're "against Easter bunnies, Sunday funnies, Christmas trees and honey bees," he told a reporter.

Even today, some city officials consider the CPOA a cranky group of penny pinchers who count not only beans, but pencils and paper clips too.

Members shrug off that kind of talk.

"There was always a certain segment that just felt, `Oh, you're always complaining.' But we're always complaining because taxes are always going up," said Mikulak during a recent interview in the Daly Avenue home she's lived in since she was 9.

"I'll tell you something, I wish the city was like me. They'd have money," she said, pointing to an old $2.50 Sears-Roebuck wooden chair that her husband, Aleksander, fixed up after they found it in his mother's attic.

"I have great perseverance, see?" Mikulak said. "I don't drop anything until the battle's over one way or another. And I'll tell you one thing: I'll never have an ulcer, because I blow steam, I get it off and that's the end of it."

"I don't know what kind of impact we've had. I just feel I want to tell `em how we taxpayers feel," Mikulak said. "We've been nice watchdogs; we only growl every so often and we bark once in a while. But now we've got to bite."