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Thomas Breen |
Apr 25, 2022 1:51 pm
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LCI Deputy Frank D'Amore tracking neighborhood blight.
LCI general fund positions in the mayor's proposed budget.
Will two more “neighborhood specialists” help cut down on blight, hold landlords accountable, and build trust in City Hall?
Or does New Haven need to rethink — and potentially overhaul — the structure of its anti-blight and housing-code-enforcement agency, before adding any more “generalist” positions to the city budget?
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Thomas Breen |
Apr 22, 2022 8:14 am
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Biz-district leaders at Thursday's Finance Committee meeting.
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Town Green's downtown domain.
Downtown’s business improvement district is looking for an extra $60,000 from city taxpayers — and a 7.5 percent surtax hike on downtown property owners — to help fund its ongoing efforts to beautify and liven up the city center.
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Thomas Breen |
Apr 18, 2022 9:33 am
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City Youth and Recreation Director Gwendolyn Busch Williams at budget workshop.
The recently reorganized city Youth and Recreation Department is looking to add two new deputy director positions to beef up programming and building maintenance.
Cop recruits take oath in November: Preparing to hit streets, cut OT costs.
The police overtime budget is slated to top $10.6 million next fiscal year, as the department grapples with its lowest number of sworn officers in decades.
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Thomas Breen |
Apr 1, 2022 9:23 am
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City Department of Community Resilience Acting Director Carlos Sosa-Lombardo presents at Wednesday night's Finance Committee hearing.
The Elicker Administration’s long-delayed plans to set up a non-cop crisis response team inched forward, as committee alders endorsed a $3.5 million contract with Yale and receipt of a $2 million federal grant.
Fair Haven Alder Ernie Santiago, Prospect Hill/Newhallville Alder Steve Winter, and Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers at budget workshop.
How low could the mill rate go if the mayor scraps his planned reval phase-in?
36? 32.7? Somewhere in between?
Top city budget officials and committee alders debated that question during the first “workshop” on Mayor Justin Elicker’s proposed $633 million budget.
Hailing Yale-city deal, clockwise from top left: Dolores Colon, Jahmal Henderson, Abby Feldman, Alejandro Rojas, Ken Suzuki, Rebecca Corbett.
A deal for Yale to increase voluntary payments to the city by $52 million over six years — and design and control a pedestrian plaza on High Street — won a key preliminary aldermanic approval, as supporters hailed a potential turning point in town-gown relations.
Patricia Wallace: Seniors, renters feeling the squeeze.
Even if the city phases in higher property values over the next five years, landlords will likely pass along higher rents next year — if the mill rate doesn’t drop further.
New York-based developer Nitsan Ben-Horin offered those words of caution during a virtual “town hall” about the mayor’s proposed Fiscal Year 2022 – 23 (FY23) budget. And he wasn’t alone, as landlords sounded an alarm.
The Corsair: FY23 tax bill with phase-in: $1.1M. Full FY23 tax bill at lower mill rate without phase-in: $1.6M.
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360 State. Phased-in FY23 tax bill: $2.2M. Full FY23 tax bill at lower mill rate: $2.4M.
Mandy-controlled four-family home at 310 W. Division. Phased-in FY23 tax bill: $6.3K. Full FY23 tax bill at lower mill rate: $7.8K.
(News analysis) A tax-assessment phase-in aimed at helping struggling homeowners would end up reaping some of the biggest bucks for two other groups in town: luxury housing developers and poverty megalandlords.
Watching YouTube or surfing the Web during class? Better watch out: New Haven public school teachers can now look at what students are up to on their computers when they should be doing school work, thanks to a recently adopted classroom online surveillance program primed for a three-year run.
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Thomas Breen |
Feb 16, 2022 1:03 pm
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Inside Adult Ed at 540 Ella T. Grasso Blvd.
The city’s Adult Ed program is likely staying put in its rundown Ella T. Grasso Boulevard building through 2025 — as alders reluctantly advanced a renewed lease that would see rent jump by tens of thousands of dollars each year, and that calls on the new landlord to repair an old HVAC system, leaky ceilings, and damaged carpeting.
High at Elm: Slated to become Yale-controlled ped plaza.
A deal for Yale to increase voluntary payments to the city by $52 million over the next six years — and design, convert, and control a publicly owned pedestrian plaza on High Street — has taken its first formal step towards potential approval, in the form of a package of legislation newly submitted by the mayor to the Board of Alders.
And just like that, there is now a new city department — charged with finding a data-driven, coordinated response to a vast array of social issues, from homelessness to mental health disorders to drug addiction to prison reentry.
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Thomas Breen |
Aug 10, 2021 3:40 pm
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Ralph Walker Skating Rink.
Alders unanimously advanced two proposed public-private accords — one that would keep a community health center in Dixwell for the next two decades, another that would bring an ice rink management company to Upper State Street for the next five years.
Rethinking government: Community Services Administrator Mehul Dalal discusses plans at press conference last week.
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The city’s pitch for a new Department of Community Resilience.
Alders unanimously advanced the Elicker Administration’s proposed creation of a new bulked up and reorganized social problem-solving city department — after debating using short-term federal cash to address long-term societal problems.
DuBois-Walton at presser: Mayor’s job is to find way to do what’s right.
If something appears wrong — like city government OK’ing, with almost no questions asked, $900,000 in state tax breaks for companies accused of fraud and controlled by an imprisoned sex predator — what should a mayor do?
Mayoral candidate Karen DuBois-Walton offered an answer Thursday that differed from the one offered by her opponent: Find a legal way to do what’s right.
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Thomas Breen |
Jun 4, 2021 11:57 am
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Mayor Elicker: “Fully fund the tiered PILOT program.”
The city’s fiscal future hangs in the balance as state lawmakers and the governor play chicken on municipal aid — and as Mayor Justin Elicker weighs whether or not to sign an alder-approved city budget that assumes a hefty fiscal bump from Hartford.
CFO Phillip Penn: Watch out for that funding cliff.
The New Haven Board of Education Wednesday night adopted a $198 million budget for the fiscal year starting July 1.
Though the board got millions less from the city than requested, this budget will not require layoffs or cuts, thanks to federal Covid-19 relief.
At the same time, a majority of board members voted down $5 hourly raises to parttime paraprofessionals, with the promise of some kind of raise before the end of the summer.
