While other factors have significance, quality of life issues are the most important factors residents and businesses weigh when determining whether to relocate to or remain in a state. Factors such as quality schools, an educated workforce, safe neighborhoods, reasonable property taxes, and safe and reliable roads and bridges top the list of “must haves” for citizens and employers. In addition, all residents believe that laying the foundation for quality education, police and fire services and safe roads are core government responsibilities. No government service is placed above them. These are the services towns and cities provide — which is why the state budget and aid to towns and cities is so critical for the future of our state.

Property taxpayers should be heartened by the fact that Gov. Dannel Malloy has stated he would not sign anything that “balances the state budget on the backs of towns and cities and schools,” and that both sides of the aisle have placed property taxpayers foremost in their minds when crafting budgets.

The state budget must maintain municipal aid as a top priority and hold property taxpayers harmless from state aid cuts. Simply put: cuts in aid to towns means cuts in essential local services, employee layoffs and property tax hikes. To avoid those outcomes the budget approved by the legislature and signed by the governor needs to maintain priority school funding, increase education aid, restore the state-local partnership of the resident state trooper program, and reinstitute groundbreaking municipal revenue sharing.

But there is also a “To Do” list left for legislators to truly help property taxpayers. That list includes supporting new state revenue sharing as proposed in Senate Bill 1; avoiding costly additional workers compensation benefits for select interests; and fighting for mandate relief.

Municipal officials say this time and time again, but it’s worth repeating time and time again: towns and cities, because of state statutes, are relegated to the property tax to pay for local services. Connecticut is the most reliant state in the nation on the property tax to fund essential services like pre-k through grade 12 public education. In just the last six months, there have been three entities that have focused on Connecticut’s broken property tax system: (a) in December, the State Department of Revenue Services released a tax incidence study that confirmed the property tax is the most burdensome and regressive tax on Connecticut residents and businesses; (b) in March, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spoke of education disparities in the country — and singled out over-reliance on the property tax for public education as a major culprit; and (c) the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston just released a Connecticut “fiscal disparities” study that highlights how our property tax-only system of raising revenue for necessary local services contributes to fiscal stress. More sobering news is expected to come out of the Legislature’s Finance Committee’s Tax Study Commission in December.

Over-reliance on the property tax coupled with unfunded state mandates, including an ever-increasing list of state-mandated property tax exemptions (77 and growing), place Connecticut towns and cities in a very tenuous position.

If lawmakers want to ensure the state’s economic competiveness, they must start with sustaining Connecticut’s towns and cities. Local government is responsible for providing the majority of public services in our state: education; public safety; roads and other infrastructure; elderly and youth services; other human services; recreation; and wastewater treatment, among others.

Connecticut’s property-tax system only works fairly — urban, suburban or rural — if two conditions exist: the property and income wealth of a community can generate enough property tax revenue at a reasonable cost to taxpayers to meet the need for services — and or state aid is sufficient to fill local revenue gaps.

Troubling is the fact that several bills remain which, if passed, would raise property taxes or result in reductions in needed local services by inflicting more unfunded state mandates on towns and cities. Most notable are the workers’ compensation-related special benefits where presumptions take priority over substantive evidence and prevent adequate consideration of the financial burdens placed on property taxpayers. Approval of these mandates could cost property taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.

With only weeks remaining in the legislative session, municipal officials will work relentlessly for the best deal for their communities — ensuring critical levels of state aid are sustained, meaningful relief from existing mandates is enacted, and property taxpayers are protected from costly, new unfunded state mandates.

Joe DeLong is the executive director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities.