Amended Budget Moves $1M From Police OT To Health Care

Police and fire had their overtime budgets slashed, the city’s health care fund got a $1 million boost, and a permanent affordable housing commission was born in an amended city budget Thursday night approved by the Finance Committee.

The amended Fiscal Year 2019 – 2020 (FY20) budget, which now goes to the full Board of Alders for a final vote on May 28, landed at the same aggregate numbers the mayor included in her initial financial proposal two-and-a-half months ago: a $556.6 million operating budget and a $70.7 million, two-year capital budget.

The committee’s amended budget, just like the mayor’s original one, includes no new tax increase for the fiscal year starting July 1.

“This year it’s fair to say that the administration has presented us with a budget that is more realistic than what we saw last year,” Westville Alder and Finance Committee Co-Chair Adam Marchand said, referencing the $5 million shift from schools to health care that alders made in a budget that retained an 11 percent tax increase. ​“I’m grateful to the administration for being a bit more cautious in some of its assumptions” this time around.

That said, the committee made several significant shifts in two line items that have consistently come in over budget in recent years: public safety overtime and public employee health care.

Police And Fire OT Cut

The amended document approved by the committee cuts the police department’s proposed overtime budget for next year from $6.65 million to $5.5 million. The police overtime budget this year is $4.4 million, but the department anticipates actually spending closer to $8.1 million.

The alders also cut the mayor’s proposed $430,000 increase to the fire department’s overtime budget, keeping that line item flat at $2.169 million. The department expects to spend closer to $3.35 million on overtime this year.

At a Finance Committee budget workshop earlier this spring, Interim Police Chief Otoniel Reyes called the $6.65 million number included in Harp’s initial proposalthe first ​“honest and realistic” overtime budget the department has seen in years.

“We of course support our police department,” Marchand said Wednesday night as he explained why the aldermanic committee decided to reduce that number. ​“We cherish the work they do. But we really need them to double down on overtime, which is one of the major cost drivers we’re facing in our operating budget.”

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

“We support the police and fire departments,” she said. ​“But at the same time, as the fiscal agents of the city, we have to be really strong with them and we need them to stick to their overtime budgets.”

In addition to scrapping five of the mayor’s 13 proposed new hires, includes a tree trimmer, a police mechanic, and a traffic maintenance worker position, the committee members also voted to pull $483,172 from various department line items for the second year in a row to offset raises the mayor gave to non-unionized city department heads and other ​“executive and confidential employees” who hadn’t seen their salaries increase in years.

“We wanted to send a strong message that we didn’t agree with the raises,” Walker-Myers said about the decision to make cuts yet again to the tune of the exact same dollar amount as the raises. ​“And this is how we handled it.”

Affordable Housing Commission Funded

With over $2 million freed up from public safety overtime, new position, and executive raises cuts, the alders then directed another $1 million into the city’s chronically underfunded healthcare budget. While Harp’s initial proposal increased the city’s healthcare budget from $82.39 million to $83.39 million, the alders pushed that number even higher to $84.39 million.

Even as the city expects to pay several million dollars less on public employee and beneficiary medical costs this fiscal year, Marchand noted, the balance of the city’s healthcare fund is still nearly $8 million in the red. Healthcare economists project medical expenditures to increase on average 5 to 8 percent every year.

The alders also increased the proposed city funding of the Board of Education by another $250,000 on top of the mayor’s initial $750,000 increase, and they added $900,000 to the city’s currently empty rainy day fund.

The alders allocated over $92,000 to support a new permanent Affordable Housing Commission, which will be charged with monitoring, researching, and making recommendations around how to improve and increase affordable housing opportunities in the city. The idea for the commission arose out of the Affordable Housing Task Force’s recommendations. Marchand said the alders will soon be reviewing formal legislation that, if passed, will result in the legal creation of the new commission.

East Rock Alder Charles Decker encouraged his colleagues to support the funding of the commission. He said any serious attempt to address the city’s affordable housing crisis will require complicated, technical work, and that work can best be done by a dedicated body with dollars to spend on research.

“Just the will by itself is not going to be enough,” he said.

“I think this budget shows priorities,” Walker-Myers added. It gives more money to the school system, puts pressure on public safety to rein in overtime, recognizes the inevitable increase of healthcare costs, and funds both a new affordable housing commission and a new field representative for the Fair Rent Ccommission department.

“That’s a realy important step to supporting affordable housing.”

A Budget Watchdog’s Lonely Night

Throughout Wednesday’s three hour committee meeting, East Rock Alder Anna Festa consistently challenged her colleagues not to grow complacent, and not to grow city expenditures, simply because of the flat tax rate and the short-term debt relief provided by last year’s largest bond refunding in city history. 

She introduced well over a dozen line-item and policy amendments, almost all of which were designed to cut city expenses, and almost all of which failed with everyone on the committee but Festa voting against them.

“We just can’t afford to have all of these items,” Festa said. ​“We have to make some tough decisions. It’s not something that I take pride in, but it’s something that my wallet takes pride in, and the wallets of all city taxpayers.”

Below are a few of Festa’s proposed amendments that failed to make it out of committee.

• Cut the amended budget’s proposed $75,000 contribution to the new HOPE Family Justice Center that will treat victims of domestic violence from throughout the region, and use that money instead to cover debt service.

Festa noted that a representative from the center’s operator BHCare told the alders that they will open the center regardless of whether or not the city gives it money. So, Festa asked, why not wait to see how the center fairs on its own before giving it public funds?

Several alders vociferously disagreed, noting that the city needs a dedicated domestic violence treatment center, and that the city should be proud to make a financial contribution towards that cause.

• Cut the amended budget’s proposed $250,000 increase to the Board of Education. As a mother of three public school students, she said, she’s invested in the success of the district. But as an alder, she has little faith in the financial acumen of its administration, which is staring down a $30 million projected deficit next year without the help of a permanent chief financial officer. ​“I don’t know where this $250,000 is going to go,” she said. ​“Is it going to go into the classroom? Is it going to go into supporting our kids?”

“Children will suffer” if the alders do not make its best efforts to help the BOE close its deficits, Dixwell Alder Jeannette Morrison responded. ​“Children do suffer.”

• Remove all eight new full-time city positions from the amended budget, and dedicate that $400K-plus instead towards tree trimming services.

Her colleagues spoke up instead for positions like a police body camera specialist, a library financial assistant, and a fair rent field representative as capable of providing services that city residents testified in support of throughout the budget-making process.

• Cut the city’s $300,000 contribution to Market New Haven, and use that money for debt service.

Her colleagues said that the marketing company succeeds in getting New Haven’s name and reputation to national and global audiences. ​“To get people to know what they got to know,” Morrison said, ​“it costs.”

• Remove $71,000 from the Registrar of Voters other contractual services line, to account for money that the department already spent this fiscal year on outside consultants.

Her colleagues again rebuffed the proposal. ​“A lot of people were very upset” about the numerous problems with last year’s general election, Morris Cove Alder Sal DeCola said, ​“and we’re trying to make it better, but it’s going to cost money.”