Mayor Ganim and Mayor Chess Issue Joint Testimony in Support of H.B. 5500; Seek to Refund Tax Interest Payments to Success Village

Bridgeport & Stratford, CT - Today, Bridgeport Mayor Joseph Ganim and Stratford Mayor David Chess issued a unified call for state legislative action to provide financial relief to the more than 920 families residing at the Success Village housing cooperative.

In joint written testimony submitted to the Connecticut General Assembly's Planning and Development Committee, the two Mayors voiced their strong support for House Bill 5500: An Act Concerning a Waiver of Interest on Certain Delinquent Municipal Property Taxes. The bill seeks to refund tax interest and penalties accrued since July 1, 2022-costs incurred not by the residents themselves, but by documented financial mismanagement that left the cooperative in a state of crisis.

"The residents of Success Village are the victims of this mismanagement, not the cause," the Mayors stated in their joint testimony. "For years, these families paid their monthly common charges in good faith... To penalize them further for a financial failure they did not cause is a double victimization that we must rectify."

"We also want to thank the state legislative delegations of both Bridgeport and Stratford for their hard work promoting this bill," stated Mayors Ganim and Chess. "Working together at all levels of government, we will help Success Village be the thriving housing cooperative that has been for generations."

The joint effort follows a tumultuous period for the cooperative, which saw a near-total collapse of its heating and hot water infrastructure in late 2024. The crisis prompted both municipalities to take the extraordinary step of seeking a court-appointed Receiver to stabilize the association's operations and deal with its crushing debts.

By waiving tax interest and penalties, H.B. 5500 would provide the Court-Appointed Receiver Attorney Barry Knott with the necessary fiscal "breathing room" to address critical infrastructure upgrades and restore the cooperative to long-term stability.

The full text of the Mayors' joint testimony is provided below:

JOINT WRITTEN TESTIMONY TO: The Planning and Development Committee

From: Mayor Joseph P. Ganim, City of Bridgeport & Mayor David Chess, Town of Stratford Re: In Support of H.B. 5500 - AN ACT CONCERNING A WAIVER OF INTEREST ON CERTAIN DELINQUENT MUNICIPAL PROPERTY TAXES

Date: March 11, 2026

Co-Chairs, Ranking Members, and Distinguished Members of the Planning and Development Committee:

We submit this joint testimony to express our unified and strong support for House Bill 5500. As the Mayors of the two municipalities who represent the residents of Success Village, we urge this Committee to approve this critical piece of legislation to provide long-overdue relief to over 900 families in our two communities.

Success Village is the largest housing cooperative in Connecticut-home to nearly a thousand households across the Bridgeport-Stratford line. However, as has been well-documented in the news, a catastrophic failure of leadership and severe financial mismanagement within the association led to a near-total collapse of its boiler infrastructure and fiscal stability in late 2024.

Throughout this crisis, our towns have stood shoulder-to-shoulder. Together, Bridgeport and Stratford took the extraordinary step of seeking a court-appointed Receiver to stabilize the cooperative when its boiler system failed, leaving thousands of our constituents without heat or hot water. We have also provided loans to the cooperative to provide them with essential financial assistance in their time of need.

Ultimately, the residents of Success Village are the victims of this mismanagement, not the cause. For years, these families paid their monthly common charges in good faith. They fulfilled their obligations with the expectation that those funds would cover the association's municipal taxes and utility bills. Instead, those funds were diverted or mismanaged, leaving the residents to face the prospect of double victimization: first by the loss of basic services like heat, and now by the mounting interest on taxes they believed they had already paid.

House Bill 5500 is a fair and targeted remedy. By authorizing the refund of tax interest and penalties from since July 1, 2022, this legislation accomplishes three vital goals:

1. It relieves residents of a punitive financial burden resulting from malfeasance they could not have controlled;
2. It provides the court-appointed Receiver with the necessary breathing room to balance the association's budget and reinvest in life-safety infrastructure; and,
3. It ensures that Success Village remains a viable, affordable community for the many students, seniors, families, and veterans who call it home.

We recognize that the refunding of tax interest and associated penalties is an unusual request. However, the situation at Success Village was an unprecedented failure of a major housing cooperative that required an unprecedented municipal and state intervention.

This bill is another essential piece of the puzzle in our joint effort to right the ship. We thank the Committee for its partnership in this recovery and strongly urge a favorable report on House Bill 5500.

Respectfully Submitted,

Joseph Ganim Mayor, City of Bridgeport

David Chess Mayor, Town of Stratford

For more information:

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