by | Jun 15, 2018 2:40 pm | Comments (37)
Daryl Jones, John Rose Jr.
Mayor Toni Harp gave raises to top non-union managers and confidential employees, in some cases their first raises in four years. The move prompted outraged alders to launch an investigation.
by | Jun 12, 2018 7:57 am | Comments (38)
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Controller Daryl Jones delivers the news Monday evening.
• Helps close $14M hole in this fiscal year’s city budget.
• Also, Yale University ups annual contribution by $2.5M.
• Jones: Pension switch aimed at avoiding bigger downgrade.
• Festa: “We have a spending problem.”
by | May 30, 2018 8:08 am | Comments (68)
Thomas Breen Photo
Abby Roth (right), one of the amendment-firing 3 Musketeers, with Legislative Services Director Albert Lucas at the budget vote.
The Board of Alders voted overwhelmingly Tuesday night to approve a final new city budget with an 11 percent tax increase after beating back three determined alders’ last-ditch attempts to cut expenditures.
by | May 18, 2018 8:08 am | Comments (29)
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Alders Ernie Santiago and Tyisha Walker-Myers check out the numbers.
In a first pass at amending next year’s budget, alders recommended shifting $5 million from the schools to help cover public employee medical benefits, and they signed off on a proposed double-digit tax increase … for now.
by | May 16, 2018 12:12 pm | Comments (8)
Thomas Breen file photo
City Controller Daryl Jones (left) and FRAC chair Mohit Agrawal.
Cut the accounting gimmicks. Don’t backload pension payments. And watch out for money lost to active investment fees.
by | May 10, 2018 1:51 pm | Comments (9)
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Finance Committee Alders Adam Marchand and Evette Hamilton at Wednesday night’s hearing.
Fifty New Haveners seized on their last public chance to influence next year’s budget by offering a litany of concerns with a proposed double-digit tax increase and the riskiness of borrowing a quarter of a billion dollars to fund city pensions.
Continue reading ‘Budget Watchdogs: No To Borrowing $250M For Pensions’
by | May 8, 2018 8:38 am | Comments (23)
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Ed board’s Ed Joyner, Joe Rodriguez, Darnell Goldson Monday.
A small high school that can’t attract required white suburbanites and two alternative schools that can’t keep traumatized students in class should be shuttered this year, a school board committee suggested.
by | Apr 26, 2018 1:07 pm | Comments (5)
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Esperina Stubblefield and Julie Johnson.
The city’s proposed new family justice center will not only make it easier for domestic violence victims to access legal help, housing assistance, childcare, and clinical and sexual assault services. It will also minimize the number of times victims have to share their stories and relive their traumatic experiences as they seek help.
Continue reading ‘Planned Domestic Violence Center Aims To Avoiding “Re-Victimization”’
by | Apr 20, 2018 8:00 am | Comments (30)
Controller Jones pushes proposed pension fix Thursday night.
Walker-Myers: Back it up.
The city’s pension funds should have over $1 billion in the bank.
They have under $500 million.
That’s a problem. How to fix it?
by | Apr 16, 2018 8:03 am | Comments (22)
Thomas Breen photo
The city plans to increase the fine for the most common type of parking ticket by $5, with the hope of raising at least $300,000 in additional annual revenue for strapped municipal coffers.
by | Apr 13, 2018 8:15 am | Comments (4)
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Local 3144 members vote Thursday at Fire Training Academy.
The contract-less city’s management and professional employee union voted to approve a new five-year pact by a nearly two-to-one margin — following a labor trend of trading increased medical costs and added health care responsibilities in exchange for raises.
Continue reading ‘City Union Votes 175-93 To Trade Health Givebacks For Raises In New 5-Year Pact’
by | Apr 10, 2018 8:01 am | Comments (14)
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Retrieving salt at DPW headquarters during recent snowstorm.
Pescosolido testifies Monday.
The Middletown Avenue building that houses the city’s snow plows, street sweeping trucks and most public works staffers is crumbling under years of sustained exposure to salt, propped up by an “aluminum forest” of temporary support beams, and desperately in need of a $10 million comprehensive redesign and rehabilitation.
by | Apr 5, 2018 8:45 am | Comments (39)
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Alders hear public budget testimony Wednesday night.
Doyens slashes away.
Opposed to a tax increase, Gary Doyens slashed New Haven’s proposed city budget Wednesday night. He zapped a new social media expert. Canceled the “Escape” teen center’s lease. Killed a health clinic expansion. Took an axe to the police force.
by | Mar 29, 2018 12:31 pm | Comments (14)
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54 Meadow St., the home of the city health department.
City Public Health Director Byron Kennedy pitches alders for extended hours and operations for public health clinic.
Does the city need to run its own public health and urgent care clinic for 12 hours a day, seven days a week, at a time when area providers are already working to consolidate their own primary care services independent of city involvement?
by | Mar 28, 2018 8:01 am | Comments (36)
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Daryl Jones (left) and Mohit Agrawal at Tuesday FRAC-down.
An independent review board blasted the financial assumptions in the Harp adminsitration’s proposed new city budget, saying it would need a 22 percent tax hike to balance — and provoking a heated response at a City Hall square-off.
by | Mar 27, 2018 3:04 pm | Comments (4)
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Thomas Breen Photo
Clerk Michael Smart (with deputy May Gardner-Reed) sounds alarm. Top: Voters waiting hours at polls in 2016.
Budget cuts will cause no problems at election time this year — or else they’ll prove “catastrophic.”
It depends whom you ask.
by | Mar 26, 2018 2:01 pm | Comments (8)
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Police Chief Campbell (right) testifies before the Finance Committee during a budget workshop on Thursday night.
Festa: “What happened?”
What started as a “mind-blowing” year in police overtime is ending up as somewhat less extreme, as the department has implemented new cost-saving protocols that should lower the bill for the coming fiscal year, the police chief told weary alders.
Continue reading ‘Cop OT Less “Mind-Blowing” Than Projected’
by | Mar 23, 2018 1:36 pm | Comments (30)
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Youth Services Director Jason Bartlett at Thursday night’s budget workshop.
Two years after the city planned to open a youth activity center and homeless shelter on Orchard Street, the director of the project said that the new open date is just three months away.
Well, three months away from a date in the near future.
If the project receives some new cash in this coming year’s capital budget.
by | Mar 23, 2018 8:18 am | Comments (21)
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Grotheer pitches alders.
Lawmakers didn’t press “like” as they questioned a proposal to spend $50,000 a year on a new mayoral Facebook/Twitter/Snapchat specialist while raising taxes 11 percent.
Mayoral officials responded that in a social media-saturated era of vanishing news reporters, City Hall must become more of its own news outlet.
by | Mar 20, 2018 8:10 am | Comments (15)
Allan Appel Photo
Birks at first Finance meeting.
On the evening of her first day on the job, new city schools Superintendent Carol Birks got a long earful about deficits, the budgeting process, and whether money might be saved in transportation costs if high schoolers took public transit and routes were reconfigured.
by | Mar 16, 2018 12:18 pm | Comments (6)
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Acting Budget Director Michael Gormany (left) and City Controller Daryl Jones at Monday night’s Finance Committee meeting.
The city is still wrestling with a projected $14.4 million deficit for the fiscal year that ends June 30, according to a recent financial update from the city’s budget director. The projected deficit is evenly split between the city budget and the Board of Education budget.
Continue reading ‘City Projects $14.4M Deficit For Current Year’
by | Mar 16, 2018 7:57 am | Comments (24)
Ricks, Breen Photos
Clockwise from top: Harp, Nemerson, Looney.
According to one new calculation, the state is filling New Haven’s coffers to the brim with cash.
According to another calculation, the state is starving New Haven of cash, leading the city to consider raising taxes 11 percent.
by | Mar 13, 2018 8:18 am | Comments (57)
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Gormany (left) and Jones at Monday night’s hearing.
The Harp Administration pitched alders on granting permission to borrow up to $250 million this coming fiscal year to help shore up an underfunded city employee pension fund that is struggling to keep up with spiraling unfunded liabilities.
by | Mar 6, 2018 8:53 am | Comments (25)
Thomas Breen Photo
Department heads at tax-hike budget announcement.
Whether or not other mayors join her, Mayor Toni Harp has instructed her legal staff to prepare a lawsuit against the state for failing to reimburse New Haven fully for revenue lost on tax-exempt properties.
by | Mar 2, 2018 5:49 pm | Comments (74)
Mayor Harp at Friday’s budget announcement.
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.