Capital Budget Showdown Looms

A budget-watching alder has put the finance department and every other department proposing capital spending increases for the next fiscal year on notice: Be ready to defend those requests as well any projects that still have open balances.

Mayor Toni Harp’s proposed capital budget for fiscal 2017 – 2018 is $68.7 million. It includes $44.9 million in city bonding, $19 million in state bonding and $4.8 million in federal bonding money for construction projects. (The capital budget is separate from the administration’s proposed $554.5 million general fund budget for the coming fiscal year.)

During the first round of departmental budget hearings at City Hall, the Harp administration’s five-year capital and debt service budget plans, particularly the proposed spending on schools, caught the eye of Annex Alder Alphonse Paolillo Jr, the reigning budget hawk of the Board of Alders Finance Committee.

The mayor’s proposed capital budget calls for expending about $44.9 million in the coming fiscal year. That number could shoot to $74.5 million the following year, $61.5 million the year after that and $62.9 million in the fourth year of that five-year plan. It would fall back to about $48.3 million in the fifth year, but that would only be after the debt service had skyrocketed from about $66.4 million to $81.6 million.

Driving those costs would be whether the city pushes forward with building a new K‑4 Quinnipiac School ($38 million), a new K‑4 West Rock Authors Academy ($51 million) and an unknown new high school ($64 million). Budget Director Joe Clerkin said the city’s bonding on those projects would be approximately $13 million, $11.6 million and $14 million, respectively.

Those numbers caused Paolillo to flash back to the alders’ most recent showdown with the Harp administration over building a new $45 million K‑8 lab school on the campus of Southern Connecticut State University. Alders overwhelmingly rejected building the school as part of he fiscal 2015 – 2016 budget, but in a less than unanimous vote, alders agreed to fund the school under the current budget.

The state is picking up $34.3 million of the school’s cost, while the city is on the hook for about $10.7 million in bonding. Paolillo was a leading dissenter among the minority of alders who opposed building the school during the last budget cycle. He called the project unaffordable.

On the general fund side of a $554.5 million proposed budget, the Harp administration is asking for a $1.5 million increase in the current debt services fund. Paolillo pointed out that the need for that increase was driven by the decision to build a new Strong 21st Century Communications Magnet and Lab School.

“I’m not here to talk about Strong School,” he said at a recent Finance Committee budget hearing at which administration officials appeared. ​“I want to talk about the way it was funded. If we have money in open lines for capital projects, which we do … why are we not looking at it?”

City Controller Daryl Jones said in fact department heads were asked to hold to their prior year’s capital budget, forget their wish lists and concentrate on what was needed most. Paolillo, who pointed out that there are unspent balances on capital projects that date back as far as 2008, asked where the resulting decreases were in individual departments’ capital budgets. That’s what he plans to ask each of the department heads who come before the committee in the coming weeks, he said.

Paolillo said he wants an accounting of leftover funds from capital projects that appear to sit in the line items for long finished projects with no explanation.

Jones offered one example of why certain departments might have multiple years of unspent capital funds. Pointing to the $600,000 that the police department has sitting in its capital budget for body cameras.

He said there are several reasons the money is still sitting including ongoing negotiations with the police union, the opportunities and problems associated with state reimbursement and the ongoing costs of maintenance.

“I agree totally if the state is going to reimburse us, I want to give that money back. But if happens to go in a different direction, and we don’t use that reimbursement, we will have to use that to purchase the body cameras,” Jones said. ​“But you’re right, we have to do our due diligence and take a step back and look at everything going on with those balances and explain to you why they’re there.”

Paolillo pointed out that the city had missed the first opportunity to get reimbursement for the cost of purchasing body cameras from the state under the previous police chief because it had no deal with the police union. He also pointed out that alders helped get the conversation on body cameras moving by funding the reserve for the body cameras two years ago.

“That was our amendment that set money aside to get conversation going,” he said. ​“It wasn’t happening from the city side.”

Paolillo told the city’s budget wranglers that year after year department heads come back to alders with requests to borrow more money, while unspent money languishes from previous projects. He asked why those unspent dollars had not been plowed back into other parts of the budget, or at least back into debt service. And he said he plans to ask that question over an over this year.

“I’m not going to beat this down tonight because I’ve been talking about it for two years,” he said. ​“But I’m going to start tonight, and I can promise you for the next three months, I’m not going to get off this.”