Thomas Breen photo
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.
On Friday morning, Elicker and a half-dozen fellow municipal and business leaders from across the region and the state held a press conference on the ground floor of City Hall.
The spark for the presser: ongoing, increasingly fraught negotiations between state legislators and Gov. Ned Lamont regarding Connecticut’s next biennium budget.
The state legislature’s regular session ends next Wednesday. Based on recent dueling press conferences and call-outs in the media, state House and Senate Democrats seem to be drifting further from Lamont, a fiscally conservative Democrat from Greenwich, over how much funding to include for municipal aid, also known as PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes).
The press conference also took place a little more than a week after the Board of Alders passed a final $606.3 million city operating budget for Fiscal Year 2021 – 2022 (FY). That document assumes a $53 million bump in aid from the state and from Yale.
Mayors fill City Hall before Friday’s presser.
Elicker called on the governor to fully fund a revised PILOT formula successfully pushed through the legislature by New Haven State Sen. and President Pro Tem Martin Looney earlier this year. That new formula prioritizes more funding for cash-strapped towns and cities like New Haven that have low net grand lists per capita.
At stake is a roughly $49 million boost to New Haven’s annual PILOT grants from the state, an increase included in the proposed budget that passed earlier this session out of the state legislature’s Appropriations Committee, which is co-chaired by New Haven State Rep. Toni Walker.
“We need to get this across the finish line. Fully fund the tiered PILOT program,” Elicker said.
“We’re in the bottom of the ninth right now, and we have a lead,” Hamden Mayor Curt Leng (pictured) said. “We need to close it.”
“We thought we were there,” added Guilford First Selectman Matthew Hoey (pictured). “We had the legislature, which has been the hurdle [in the past]. The methodology and the funding is at stake now.”
What About The City Budget?
Elicker said that the consequences will be severe if the state does not significantly increasing funding for PILOT, which reimburses towns and cities for property taxes they can’t collect on tax-exempt colleges, hospitals, and state-owned property.
“If we do not get this funding, we will have to make massive cuts across our city,” Elicker said. “We will face a significant tax increase. These are the governor’s constituents.”
He referenced the $606.3 million city operating budget given final approval by the Board of Alders last Wednesday. That final city budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1 is a slightly amended version of the “forward together” budget pitched by Elicker in early March.
It includes a foundational assumption that the city will receive a $53 million combined increase in aid next fiscal year from the state and from Yale University.
“Our Board of Alders last week approved a budget because the legislature and the governor approved this funding” with the new PILOT formula, he said. “They approved a budget that expects this funding.”
Elicker said he hasn’t signed the alder-approved city budget quite yet. The City Charter gives him 10 days after the Board of Alders adopts a final budget to either approve the document in full or veto specific line items. If he doesn’t act on the budget within that 10-day period, the budget as passed by the alders will go into effect.
Will he sign the alder-approved budget even if the state legislature and the governor approve less money than expected in municipal aid?
“I think we need to see what happens over the next two or three days and exactly what comes out of the state,” Elicker said.
And can the city use federal American Rescue Act aid to close the budget gap if PILOT comes in at less than expected.
The answer to that is likely “no,” Elicker said. That money can’t be used to cover pension and debt payments, which are the some of the largest drivers of the city budget, he said.
Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch Friday’s press conference in full.