“Crisis” Wanes: ​“Forward” Budget Advances

Alders cast the first of two votes needed to pass a new city budget — ditching a ​“crisis” version tax increase and library closure, embracing a ​“forward” version assuming the state and Yale will pony up an extra $53 million.

That was the outcome of Thursday night’s special meeting of the aldermanic Finance Committee. The hour-and-a-half-long virtual meeting took place online via Zoom and YouTube Live.

In an all-but-unanimous vote — with the sole objection coming from East Rock Alder Anna Festa — committee alders backed an amended Fiscal Year 2021 – 2022 (FY22) general fund budget.

It weighs in at $606,344,052 and includes no new tax increase. If adopted by the full board, it would go into effect July 1.

It’s an amended version of a ​“forward together” version of the proposed budget offered by Mayor Justin Elicker. The alders didn’t even discuss an alternate, ​“crisis” version of the budget Elicker had submitted, which would have allegedly considered a tax hike, deep cuts, and the closure of Mitchell Library, the East Shore’s senior center, and the Whitney Avenue firehouse. (See more on that below.)

Committee alders also voted in support of a two-year, $60 million capital fund budget that was identical to the one first proposed by Mayor Elicker in early March.

The amended operating budget, capital budget, and associated tax levies now advance to the full Board of Alders, which will take them up for debate and a final vote during a special meeting to be held on May 26.

Schools Cut; Legislative Priorities Funded

Unlike in previous years, committee alders made few changes to the mayor’s proposed general fund budget Thursday night.

The committee’s key amendment reduced the mayor’s proposed funding increase to the Board of Education from $3 million to $1.5 million on the grounds that the school board will be receiving a trove of pandemic-era federal aid this year. The total proposed general fund allocation towards the city school system included in the committee’s amended budget is $190,718,697.

The committee alders then put an additional $1 million into an expenditure reserve account to cover unexpected, pandemic-related costs in the fiscal year to come.

And they broke out the remaining $500,000 saved from the cut to the Board of Education increase into five new broad-based funds that correspond with the alders’ five top legislative priorities. 

Those include $100,000 for a job training outreach fund, $100,000 for a community policing forum fund, $100,000 for affordable housing studies, $100,000 for a health engagement fund, and $100,000 for an environmental education fund.

“I am so elated to see that we have the opportunity to really put some real cast towards our legislative agenda,” Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison said during deliberations on the amended budget. ​“We finally are going to be able to do some other things other than the status quo.”

Board of Alders President and West River Alder Tyisha Walker-Myers agreed.

“I think it’s reflective of the core values that we have been talking about in the city,” she said, referring to a recent aldermanic committee meeting where dozens of New Haveners came out to testify in support of the aldermanic legislative agenda.

People came out to say that good jobs, affordable housing, health equity, a safe city, and environmental justice are important to them, she said. ​“I think the budget should reflect that.

Festa: Don’t Bank On Yale Filling The Gap

Festa ultimately opposed the amended budget on the grounds that, even though the state appears poised to increase its annual municipal aid contribution to the city by $49 million, the alders should not assume that Yale University will increase its own voluntary annual contribution to city coffers by $4 million.

She castigated the university for gobbling up so much city property to the extent that more than half of the city’s grand list is tax exempt.

“Growing up in this city in what was considered a middle class neighborhood, it’s no longer that due to the taxes we have to pay,” Festa said. ​“The families in this city as a whole are now questioning whether they can afford to buy a house, educate their kids for college, since that expense is so high, and even live a decent life in this city. That has become incredibly complicated due to Yale” taking so much city property off the tax rolls and subsequently shifting the tax burden onto city residents.

Nevertheless, she also called on her committee colleagues to be ​“fiscally responsible” and to not assume that the university will increase its annual contribution by a dime. ​“Do I trust Yale?” she asked. ​“I don’t trust a lot of things, particularly when it comes to the wallet.”

Yale currently contributes a $13 million voluntary payment to the city every year. Mayor Elicker has appointed a team that has been negotiating with the university for months to try to secure a larger contribution. (Click here to read a response from Yale’s spokesperson about all that the university does contribute, financially and otherwise, to its home city.)

Festa’s colleagues ultimately disagreed with her take, and voted down several policy amendments she proposed that put forward several budget cuts to make up for the “$4 million gap” in the budget that she said the city should not assume Yale will fill.

They argued that baking the increased assumed revenue from Yale into the city budget book sends a ​“strong clear signal” to the university that the city expects more, as East Rock Alder Charles Decker put it.

“In all our public hearings, we’ve heard from our communities that spoke to the fact that we the residents of the city carry the tax burden for Yale University that’s not paying their fair share,” Finance Committee Chair and Edgewood Alder Evette Hamilton said in support of assuming an increased contribution from Yale. ​“I also feel like they should step up and do their part and be a better partner in this community.”

Crisis? What Crisis?

Thursday night’s committee vote marked the culmination of more than two months of public hearings and departmental workshops in one of the most unusual budget-making seasons ever.

It was unusual not just because of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the fact that all of the Finance Committee budget-related meetings took place online, as they did last year too after the start of the pandemic.

This budget-making season also felt like none other because the alders — and the public — had not one, but two mayoral proposed budgets to consider.

On March 1, Mayor Justin Elicker formally introduced two proposed FY22 general fund budgets—a $589.1 million ​“crisis” version and a $606.2 million ​“forward together” budget. 

The former included a 7.75 percent tax increase and a host of city service cuts, including the closures of Westville’s Mitchell branch library, the East Shore senior center, and the Whitney Avenue fire station. The latter kept taxes flat at the current rate of 43.88 mills, left those three neighborhood outposts intact, and assumed a $53 bump from Yale and the state.

The departmental workshops focused almost exclusively on the ​“forward together” budget, with different city department heads answering questions about assumed expenditures and revenues in the mayor’s larger proposed fiscal document. The city budget director repeatedly said over the course of those workshops that the mayor’s office assumed that the ​“forward together” budget would be taken up, debated, amended, and adopted, thanks in large part to a successful push by New Haven state lawmakers—led by State Sen. President Pro Tem Martin Looney—to change the way that municipal aid is calculated to benefit cash-strapped cities like New Haven.

In the public hearings, meanwhile, dozens of confused, upset, and outraged New Haveners took the ​“crisis” budget all too seriously, and pled with the alders not to close the Mitchell library to save only between $200,000 and $300,000 in a roughly $600 million budget.

The alders, meanwhile, dismissed the proposed library closure as an irresponsible political stunt that devalued a beloved city institution in the service of negotiating with Yale and the state.

On Thursday, the alders showed just how seriously they took the mayor’s proposed ​“crisis” budget.

They hardly mentioned it at all.

“The version of the budget that we’re moving tonight continues funding for the Mitchell library, and for the East Shore Senior Center and the Whitney Avenue fire station,” Westville Alder and Finance Committee Vice-Chair Adam Marchand said.

“This budget that we’re moving tonight does not make those cuts. Notably, this version of the budget assumes additional revenue from the state and/or Yale in the amount of $53 million beyond the status quo.”

And, like that, the ​“crisis” budget was gone.