New Haven’s long-discussed budget crisis turned into flesh and blood Thursday, as 82 city workers lost their jobs — while the mayor vowed that many more will join them unless union officials get serious about health care and pension reform.
The layoffs took place over a chaotic day of announcements, departure and protest. They were part of 96 positions (the rest of them currently vacant) that the DeStefano administration has eliminated in order to help close a $5.5 million gap in the city budget for the year ending June 30.
And that’s just for starters. City Hall and city unions are negotiating on new contracts for the next fiscal year, when the city faces a project deficit of over $20 million.
The layoffs included 16 beat cops, nine teaching positions, six school crossing guards, and three school nurses.
Seventy-six of the 82 laid-off workers were full-timers, six, part-timers.
“They were the best choices among bad choices,” he said.
And they “cannot be a surprise.”
DeStefano then went on to list a series of public speeches and labor presentations he has made since November warning of a deep structural hole in the city’s budget. Pension plans will run out of money in as soon as five years without major changes, he said. Taxpayers can no longer afford health plans and pension plans far more generous than “private-sector standards,” he said.
And he doesn’t have the option of raising taxes for a fourth time in five years, he argued. Not after homeowners have seen property taxes rise 39 percent over that time. And not in the wake of a proposed state budget that raises sales and income taxes — hikes that will, he said, send money back to New Haven to help avoid even more budget pain.
He was challenged at the press conference by AFSCME negotiator Kevin Murphy. He interrupted DeStefano’s presentation to argue that city unions offered to make the necessary changes to avoid layoffs, in part by contributing more money toward their pensions and changing to a less costly prescription drug plan.
DeStefano responded that those suggestions only began to address the enormity of the city’s budget challenge, a challenge faced by states and municipalities across the country. Police and fire union members already contribute more than other city workers toward their pensions, and their plans are the first at risk of going broke, he said. More fundamental change is needed to fix the problem, he argued: Calculating pensions based on salary, rather than total pay (including overtime), reducing cost-of-living increases, putting into “incentives” into health plans to limit costs of care, adding the number of years some people must work before retiring.
Thomas MacMillan Photo
Police protesters head from Union Avenue to City Hall Thursday.
The mayor’s press conference followed a morning and early afternoon during which labor critics controlled the news cycle. While City Hall quietly informed workers of the layoffs and released no public information, TV and Internet coverage was dominated by critics warning of dire consequences for New Haven.
The most dramatic protests came from city cops Thursday. Two hundred of them marched on City Hall behind the 16 patrol officers being laid off. An hour-long closed-door session between the mayor and the union failed to produce an 11th-hour deal to save the jobs. Read about that here.
Police union leaders advised New Haveners to pack weapons to protect themselves because of the layoffs.
DeStefano swung back at those calls in the press conference.
“Statements that citizens are unsafe, that they ought to arm themselves, they’re inaccurate,” DeStefano said. “They’re irresponsible. And they’re beneath the people making them. They aim to frighten and intimidate.”
Asked if New Haven will be as safe this weekend as it was last weekend, DeStefano and Limon said definitely yes.
Public safety has as much to do with how the city employs cops, DeStefano said. He and Limon said the department will move more cops onto the streets from “inside the building” work or other posts, such as school security. He said that improving schools and dealing with the “prison reentry population” — people returning to New Haven from jail, and returning to the drug trade — will have the biggest impact on combating street crime.
DeStefano also noted that even after the layoffs, New Haven will have as many or more cops patrolling the streets as it has had for more than a decade.
The 16 layoffs reduce the sworn force to 434 officers. At its highest point since 1999, in 2002, the city had 435 sworn officers, he said; in 2001 and 2003, it had 434. The number got as low as 384 over the past decade.
The 82 people included 33 from the Board of Education and 49 from the city.
The mayor’s office Thursday afternoon released the following list of the filled positions that were eliminated:
City-side:
Assessment control clerk
Planner I
Assistant coordinator of disability services
Economic development officer, business services
Project construction manager
Administrative assistant II
2 public health nurses
8 library aides
3 part-time librarians
Student intern
Housing inspector
Park ranger
Projects coordinator
16 cops
2 police records clerks
ROW Inspection enforcement administrator
6 school crossing guards
Board of Education:
2 truant officers
Dropout prevention
5 part-time clerical
5 school security officers
In-house suspension worker
4 drug education prevention workers
Cafeteria manager
Architect project manager BOE
2 assistant principals, one each at King/Robinson and Hill Central
Principal at ESUMS, the engineering and science school
Teacher — TAG/ISSP
Teacher — curriculum staff development
Teacher — guidance counselor
Co-teacher elementary
Teacher library media specialist
4 assistant teachers
Outreach worker
The 42 job cuts to education amount to an annual savings of $1.8 million, according to schools spokesman Christopher Hoffman. That’s the 33 layoffs and nine recently vacated positions that were cut.
“This is painful, but necessary,” said schools superintendent Reginald Mayo in a press release. He said the schools will also be hurt by city-side layoffs to nurses and school crossing guards.
The cuts will “make it more challenging” to implement the city’s school reform, “but we are deeply committed to attaining our goals of eliminating the achievement gap, halving the dropout rate and ensuring all students have the academic ability and financial resources to succeed in college.”
Of the nine teachers laid off from the Board of Ed, four were people who chose to resign, according to teacher union president Dave Cicarella.
“They were going to resign anyway, it ended up being helpful” Cicarella said.
Three others were teachers who “had certification issues; it was going to have to be addressed anyway,” he said.
The last two were a guidance counselor and a library media specialist.
Cicarella said school officials tried hard to minimize the impact of the layoffs on students.
Those let go on the city side included Stephen Harris, whose title is Planner I at the City Plan Department. He said city and union officials sat down with him at 10:15 a.m. Thursday and broke the news. The meeting was “short and sweet and to the point.”
Harris, who’s worked for the city for over 12 years, said he will be paid through the end of this week. He’ll get two weeks of severance pay and another month of health care coverage.
Thursday was his second time being laid off — Harris lost his job in 2003 amid another fiscal crisis. After nine months without a job, he returned to work for the city, taking a $5,000 pay cut.
Harris said he didn’t mind the pay cut — “I love this city, and I love what we do.”
He said it was tough to lose his job again, especially in a year when the city has continued hiring.
“I’m going to miss going to work, I’m going to miss all of my colleagues, and I’m going to miss trying to making New Haven better, which is what I was trying to do every day.”