Library Closing Bombs At Budget Hearing

Teachers, parents, artists, and bibliophiles lined up to blast the mayor’s proposed shutdown of Mitchell branch library, decrying the ​“absurdity” of threatening to close a core community institution that makes up only 1/20th of 1 percent of the city budget.

That public library defense took place Monday night during the Board of Alders Finance Committee’s first public hearing on Mayor Justin Elicker’s two proposed Fiscal Year 2021 – 2022 (FY22) budgets. The two-and-a-half-hour virtual meeting was held online via Zoom and YouTube Live.

Monday night represented the first opportunity this budget-making season for New Haveners to weigh in on Elicker’s $589.1 million ​“crisis” budget and on his $606.2 million ​“forward together” budget. 

The former is replete with service and staffing cuts along with a 7.75 percent tax increase that the mayor has proposed the city adopt come July 1 if Yale University and the state do not come up with an additional $53 million in their combined annual contributions to City Hall’s bottom line.

The latter version of the budget keeps City Hall functioning essentially as it does today, without a tax increase and with libraries, fire stations, and senior centers remaining open.

During the public hearing section of Monday’s meeting, many of those who spoke up zeroed in on one ​“crisis” version cut in particular.

That’s the proposed closure of Westville’s Mitchell Library, one of five branches of the city’s public library system.

An overview section of Elicker’s ​“crisis” budget estimates that the city could save $350,000 by closing that library branch.

The ​“crisis” budget’s $3,835,608 line-item allocation for a Mitchell-free library system, meanwhile, is only $184,241 less than the $4,019,849 set aside for a public library system that still has Mitchell open in the ​“forward together” version.

Whether shuttering Mitchell would save $184,241 or $350,000, it would devastate the community by shuttering an essential hub, speakers argued at Monday night’s hearing. And it wouldn’t make a dent in a projected $66 million deficit driven largely by employee pensions, healthcare, and debt service.

Bargaining Chip Rejected

Is the proposed library closing a trial balloon? Along with the proposed closing of the fire station on Whitney Avenue and senior center in East Shore, two other unpopular cuts proposed for high-voting neighborhoods? In order to generate public pressure on Yale and the state for ostensibly underfunding the city budget?

If so, it’s not a new tactic. (Click here to read about how a previous mayor floated the idea of shutting Stetson branch library in 2008 to try to make a point about how tax-hike opponents needed to recognize the consequences of budget cuts.)

If so, the trial balloon burst Monday night.

Time and again, public testifiers directed their disbelief and indignation not at Yale and the state but rather at City Hall for treating the national award-winning city library system like a bargaining chip.

“This is a baffling suggestion,” Westville Village Renaissance Alliance Executive Director Lizzy Donius said. She predicted that abandoning a city library building in the middle of Westville would have an ​“exponentially higher” negative impact on the city’s grand list and the neighborhood economic activity than a mere $200,000.

“More from Yale: Yes,” she said. ​“And more from the state. But don’t come for the library. It paints the library as a luxury,” and such a proposal, even if only hypothetical, undervalues the impact that the library has.

All for savings that add up to, at most, roughly 1/20th of 1 percent of the overall general fund budget?

City Point resident and city Library Board of Directors Board member Andrew Giering agreed.

“I was stunned by the threat of closing Mitchell Library to save less than $200,000, as proposed in the crisis budget before this committee,” he said.

Especially during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, he said, the library is an essential, necessary, popular, and well-used public service.

The Ives, Mitchell, and Wilson branches beam free WiFi within a three-block radius of their respective buildings, he said. Every library branch also offers Chromebooks and WiFi hotspots for rent for free to New Haveners in need of reliable Internet access while working or studying from home.

“During this time of remote work and learning, the library has helped level the playing field in our very unequal city,” he said.

New Haven allocates barely more than $4 million to its city library system, he noted. Bridgeport allocates $7.8 million, Stamford $9.9 million, and Greenwich $12.2 million.

He described New Haven’s library system ​“essential to equity and recovery.”

Richard Canalori taught at the Mauro-Sheridan public school in Westville for 20 years.

“I’ve walked to the Mitchell library my entire life.”

“It is the heart of Westville,” he said. ​“It is the soul.” For students, teachers, and neighbors alike.

“Without culture, New Haven is done. That library provides culture … Libraries in general are just an amazing thing. They’re no longer a place just to take out books. They’re cultural centers. Please make sure the library stays the way it is.”

Tina Menchetti has been the art director at Westville’s Chapel Haven for 25 years.

“We utilize the Mitchell Library so much,” she said about the students and graduates of the neighborhood nonprofit that serves young adults with cognitive and social challenges.

“It’s such a hub of activity. It’s a sense of community for our students.”

She said Chapel Haven students regularly use the Internet and computers at the library. They help maintain the library’s gardens, lawns, and patio spaces. They’ve volunteered working in the library to put books away, and have participated in annual art shows there.

“It would be such a hole in the heart of the neighborhood if Mitchell closes.”

Westville resident Tennille Murphy recalled going to the library frequently as she was studying to get her bachelor’s degree. She didn’t have reliable Internet or access to a computer at home. Not so at the library. ​“It was within walking distance for me to use the library and to do my assignments.”

She’s also hosted cooking classes at the library, and her daughter has attended playgroups there.

“There’s not many resources for the youth in this part of the town,” she said. How could the city propose cutting such an important resource?

Downtown resident Ethan Rodriguez-Torrent perhaps put it most succinctly.

Cutting a library to save $100,000, $200,000, $300,000, or whatever the final number in that range winds up being ​“is absolutely a bad deal, and shouldn’t be in either budget.”

“I’m amazed at the absurdity of this item in the crisis budget,” Westville resident Katie Jones said. While Yale can and must contribute more to the city to make up for its largely tax-exempt status, she said, ​“there’s no reason for the library to be at stake.”

In addition to closing Mitchell, the proposed ​“crisis” budget also would close the East Shore Senior Center and the Whitney Avenue fire station.

Pensions Push Past $83M

Much of the public hearing focused on outcry about the library and, at times, about Yale’s tremendous wealth and New Haven’s relative poverty. Several speakers also addressed a more expensive item: pensions. They identified city pension payments one of the largest line-item increases between the current year’s budget and next year’s. That’s regardless of whether the ​“crisis” or the ​“forward together” version is ultimately adopted.

City Budget Director and Acting Controller Michael Gormany pointed out that pension fund contributions in the current fiscal year’s budget total $67.2 million. That’s roughly 11.8 percent of the $567.9 million general fund.

City pension fund contributions in next fiscal year’s proposed ​“crisis” budget, meanwhile, would total $83 million — or 14 percent of the $589.1 million general fund. And pension payments in the proposed ​“forward together” budget would total over $84.7 million — or 13.9 percent of the $606.2 million proposed general fund.

That means that higher pension payments make up $15.7 million of the $21.1 million increase between the current budget and the proposed ​“crisis” budget. And they make up $17.5 million of the $38.2 million increase between the current budget and the ​“forward together” budget.

Gormany said that the $83 million set aside for city pensions in the ​“crisis” budget is the actuarially-recommended minimum contribution, also known as the Actuarial Determined Employer Contribution (ADEC).

That number is so much higher next year than this year because both the boards for both the City Employees Retirement Fund (CERF) and the Policemen and Firemen’s Retirement Fund (P&F) recently voted to reduce the annual estimate rate of return for their investments from 7.75 percent to 7.25 percent.

“Whenever you lower the rate of return, that’s going to increase your ADEC payment in any year,” Gormany said, because the money previously assumed to come in through investments has to be made up instead by employer contributions.

According to recent studies conducted by consultants for the respective city pension funds, P&F is currently funded at around 37 percent, with $558.2 million in unfunded accrued liability, while CERF is currently funded at around 39 percent, with a $281.8 million unfunded accrued liability.

And what about the slightly higher pension contribution included in the ​“forward together” budget? Board of Alders President and West River Alder Tyisha Walker-Myers asked.

Gormany said that the $83 million in the ​“crisis” budget is ​“the baseline. That’s 100 percent of making the ADEC payment.” The $84.7 million included in the ​“forward together” budget, meanwhile, would ​“enable us to put a little bit more money in beyond 100 percent, beyond the actuarially recommended” amount.

Are you concerned that 7.25 percent is still too high of an annual estimated rate of return for pension investments? East Rock Alder Anna Festa asked. Didn’t the pension fund actuaries want to reduce that number to 7 percent?

Gormany said that the ​“experience study” conducted by the city-hired actuaries — who looked at everything from mortality tables to cost of living increases to union contracts — did lead to an initial recommendation of 7 percent.

“But we’re also looking at the city’s financial ability to make that payment,” he said. Reducing the assumed rate of return by another quarter of a percent would have increased the recommended city pension contribution by millions more.

“We all felt that 7.25 percent was a reasonable rate of return and a justifiable rate of return,” he said.

Gormany also said that, while the city will likely receive roughly $94 million thanks to the federal $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan soon to be signed by President Joe Biden, City Hall will not be able to put that money towards underfunded pensions.

That federal aid will have to be treated like a federal grant, he said. That means that the money, which can be used to make up for both costs incurred and revenue lost due to the Covid-19 pandemic, cannot be used for general operating expenses.

“We cannot just say we’re going to offset for one year $94 million of operating costs,” he said. ​“That’s not how this federal stimulus funding works, or any federal grant for that matter.”