Mayor Proposes 11% Tax Hike

Mayor Toni Harp is calling for a 11 percent tax increase and a $1 million reduction in the rainy day fund in a proposed new city budget that she described as the most difficult one she has ever had to draft.

It includes 11 new positions and assumes the city will receive millions of dollars in new contributions from big not-for-profits like Yale and labor union concessions.

The mayor unveiled her proposed budget Friday. It would cover the fiscal year starting July 1.

Harp said she hopes to counterbalance an anticipated decrease in state aid and building permit fees next fiscal year with concessions from municipal employees, intradepartmental efficiencies, and hoped-for increases in voluntary contributions from partners like Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital.

The proposed general fund budget of $547 million represents an increase of $8.1 million, or 1.52 percent, over last year’s final approved budget. The proposed capital fund budget is $79 million, an 18 percent increase over last year’s actual capital budget.

The mayor’s budget proposes that the city raise the grand list mill rate from 38.68 to 42.98, an increase of 4.30 mills, or 11 percent. The mill rate represents one dollar in taxes that city property owners must pay for every thousand dollars’ worth of assessed property value.

The budget includes a $5 million increase for the Board of Ed, which seeks a $10 million increase in order, it says, to cover existing expenses without cutting or adding services.

The budget would reverse a two-year trend of adding to the city’s depleted rainy day fund. The administration added $1.2 million to the reserve fund two years ago, then another $1 million this past year. The proposed budget calls for pulling out $1 million.

In the budget document’s opening letter addressed to the Board of Alders, Mayor Harp wrote that ​“this proposed budget is the most difficult one I have had to submit to the Alders and to the people of the City” in her four years in office.

An electronic version of the budget can be found here.

The budget now goes before the Board of Alders for review and revision.

Harp, City Controller Daryl Jones and Acting Budget Director Michael Gormany detailed the budget proposal Friday afternoon during a sparsely attended press conference on the second floor of City Hall. The mayor’s office finalized this first draft of the budget Thursday and presented some of its key details to the leadership team on the Board of Alders Thursday night.

Throughout the press conference, Harp, Jones, and Gormany called this proposed budget the first entry in an ongoing conversation with the public and the Board of Alders over the next few months. The Board of Alders must approve a final version of the budget by the first week of June.

“The noticeable difference in the percentage of the general fund increase and the mill rate increase is largely a function of sharply decreased anticipated revenue next year,” Mayor Harp said. ​“For example, in just two revenue line items, state aid and building permit fees, the city stands to come nearly $17 million short.”

“The state seems compelled to send additional resources to assist other Connecticut cities with dire financial straits of their own,” she continued, ​“instead of sending that to us. New Haven’s resulting revenue shortfall leaves the mill rate as the last, admittedly, and least desirable revenue option.”

In some quarters of City Hall, there is a feeling that the state is punishing New Haven for fiscal responsibility: While the city has largely balanced budgets and cut staff in recent years, Hartford veered toward bankruptcy. Now the state is giving Hartford a $40 million bailout while cutting New Haven’s aid.

“It goes without saying that Connecticut’s fiscal crisis, as exemplified by a State budget that was not adopted until October 2017 and then without the Governor’s sign-off, has had a major impact on our City’s finances. New Haven has sustained significant benefit cuts from the State and has had to make hard decisions,” Harp wrote in her budget letter.

Less Big Construction

Harp’s budget proposal anticipates a decrease of $4 million in building permits this coming fiscal year. Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson said that is because the city is coming off of a record year of big Yale University construction and building replacement projects.

He said that Yale’s replacement of the old Gibbs Laboratory with a new biology building was alone around a $200 million project bringing in around $6 million in permit fees to the city. He said that those one-time projects are a boon for the city, and will help bring the total building permit revenue for the current fiscal year to around $16 million. The following year will inevitably represent a bit of a drop.

“If you look at the mix,” he said, ​“we may have more private development this year than last year,” Nemerson said. Those projects just are not as high-dollar value as some of the recent Yale construction projects.

“We’re still the fastest growing city in the state,” he said.

Employee Concessions, Yale Aid?

The mayor’s proposed budget anticipates $3.6 million in savings as a result of municipal employee concessions and vacancies. The budget also anticipates a $6.1 million increase in aid from other ​“State, Voluntary Payments, or other City partners” such as Yale University and Yale New-Haven Hospital.

“We hope to begin negotiations with employees,” Harp said in reference to the $3.6 million in hoped-for concessions and vacancies. ​“We certainly don’t want to lay anyone off.”

She said that the city may look into rebidding its employee medical packages if it cannot renegotiate a better deal with its current healthcare provider, Anthem.

If the city is not able to succeed in lowering health care and other employee benefit costs through negotiations with Anthem and the city employee unions, then layoffs will be on the table, Harp said

In regard to the anticipated $6.1 million increase in voluntary aid, Mayor Harp said that she is in conversation with Yale University, Yale-New Haven Hospital and the state about bringing more money to New Haven in the face of expected decreases in state Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) reimbursements.

“We believe we have the most impactful delegation [in the Connecticut legislature] and are so disappointed that we’ve been the biggest loser when it comes to financial aid and assistance from the state,” she said. ​“We will be going to all of those institutional givers that are important for the city. The state, Yale-New Haven Hospital, Yale will all be hearing from us.”

Public Health Expansion

Mayor Harp and Public Health Director Byron Kennedy announced that the new budget proposes that the city expand hours and operations of the public health clinic that is based out of the Health Department’s 54 Meadow St. offices in order to meet an increasing demand for low-cost health services.

The mayor’s budget proposes increasing the Health Department’s ​“Other Contractual Services” budget line item by $468,002 so that the city can extend the department’s current public health clinic hours from 35 hours per week to 84 hours per week, or 12 hours per day for seven days a week.

Kennedy noted that the Health Department’s current clinical services include well-child visits, testing and follow up care for people with sexually-transmitted diseases, and follow-up care for residents who have contracted tuberculosis. Kennedy said that, in the past year and a half, the city’s clinic has also been offering health services catering specifically to LGBTQ patients.

Mayor Harp said that this increase would allow for the health clinic to operate as an urgent care center for New Haven residents. She said that the city anticipates that the health clinic should be able to pay for itself, and therefore be removed from the city budget, three years after the proposed expansion of hours and services.

Kennedy said that he anticipates that the clinic will see six patients per day when it first expands operations and that it should build up to seeing around 48 patients per day after two or three years.

More Mayoral PR?

City Controller Daryl Jones and acting Budget Director Michael Gormany said that the mayor’s proposed budget includes a net increase of 11 new positions to city government, bringing the total from 1,508 to 1,519 on the city side (as opposed to on the Board of Education and schools side, which has thousands of employees funded under its budget).

One of those 11 new positions would be a public relations specialist for the mayor’s office at an annual salary of $50,000.

Gormany said that the public works department will eliminate two relatively high-level positions according to the proposed budget: chief of operations (paid $91,983 per year) and deputy director of engineering ($93,897).

He said that the savings from those two cuts will help fund the creation of four new positions: three in public works and one, the public relations specialist, in the mayor’s office.

After the press conference, mayoral spokesperson Laurence Grotheer said that this new public relations specialist would be charged with marketing the city and attracting new business and additional investment.

“[The new staffer] will be more proactive and fold in some of the digital technology that the mayor feels would be an area in which her office could grow and expand its accountability,” he said.

“We Can Do Better”

In response to the mayor’s proposed budget, several alders noted that this document is just a first draft. The Board of Alders must now review and adjust the proposals so that the city can maintain comparable services for its residents without further, significant tax increases.

“It’s a proposed budget at this time and the first step before many public hearings and potential change,” Amity/Beverly Hills Alder Richard Furlow, the board’s majority leader, said. ​“The mayor and her staff have worked hard to create this budget, and now the Board of Alders will work hard to make sure it is the best possible budget to keep our city moving forward for our residents. It’s good to note that even with this potential tax increase, our mill rate is still lower than many other cities our size in the state.”

“I know about the proposals,” Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison said. ​“That’s exactly what it is — it’s a proposal. Our job is to look under every block, find whatever we can as far as resources and not hurt our constituents. Through the budget process, we’ll go through everything thoroughly and see what the board can do hopefully to find some relief. Our budget relies on the state so with the state cutting then all those kinds of cuts will trickle down to the municipalities.

“Our job as a board is to go through this budget process look at everything to see what kind of relief we can find. You never want to cut services and support to the constituent. I see what she is proposing, but I hope that we can do better. “

Markeshia Ricks contributed reporting.