Thomas MacMillan/Melissa Bailey File photos
Alderman Goldson (left) and spokesman Joseph.
With budget cuts forcing libraries to shut their doors on the weekends, one alderman offered a solution: Eliminate the city spokesperson.
“Why can’t the chief of staff in the mayor’s office be his spokesperson?” Goldson said. The money for the spokesman’s salary could go to city libraries, allowing them to stay open, Goldson said.
City spokesman Adam Joseph declined to comment on the suggestion. Chief of Staff Sean Matteson said more layoffs are not the solution to service shortages caused by layoffs.
The back and forth came a day after other budget wrangling, between labor leaders and mayor’s office. Council 4 AFSCME, which represents nearly 1,500 municipal workers in New Haven, announced Wednesday that it had filed a formal complaint in response to a letter sent by Mayor John DeStefano. The mayor’s office responded that it had done nothing wrong.
It’s all part of an increasingly contentious city budget season. The mayor, citing ballooning pension and benefits costs, last month laid off 82 city workers and is on a collision course with 11 unions now negotiating new contracts.
The mayor’s proposed new $475 million city budget, unveiled this week, would avoid a property tax increase by laying off some employees and cutting back on services. The city library was asked to reduce its budget by 5 percent because of layoffs intiiated last month.
In response to a request from West Rock’s Alderman Goldson, City Librarian Christopher Korenowsky explained just how much money that amounted to.
“The 5 percent cut equaled approximately $193,948,” he wrote in a letter to Goldson. “The library administrative team went through the operating budget line-by-line to ascertain were the cuts would come from.
“To reach such an amount, major cuts had to come from the collection budgets and the staffing
budget. As you know, 12 employees were terminated from the NHFPL effective February 17, 2011.”
The public library’s collections budget took a hit of about $50,000 and staffing cuts saw a reduction of just over $140,000, according to an email from Korenowsky to Goldson.
The workforce reductions led to reductions in operating hours, and neighborhood branch libraries are no longer open on weekends as of Feb. 28.
Even before the 5 percent cut, library hours had been scaled back, Korenowsky wrote. Three of four neighborhood branches were open only four Saturday hours per month.
“As mentioned, this was wholly unacceptable to me and when I moved to New Haven last October one of my first priorities was to increase open hours to the public,” Korenowsky wrote to Goldson in an email.
Goldson said he also finds the hours unacceptable.
“I would like to protect the library as much as possible,” Goldson said. “We need a place for kids to go to and learn and adults to go to and job hunt.”
Goldson said he did job searching from a library when he was unemployed.
“I’m going to fight to try to restore some of those cuts,” he said.
Goldson suggested the library’s budget could be restored by cutting the city spokesperson position. The mayor’s chief of staff could take over the duties of the spokesperson, he said.
“This is not about Adam” Joseph, Goldson said. He could go back to his old job as legislative liaison to Hartford and even keep his current salary, Goldson said. The city would still save money by eliminating a job.
Goldson estimated the city would save $150,000 in the combined salary and benefits earned by the spokesman. Joseph makes $72,000 per year.
“I’m not going to respond to the alderman’s proposal,” Joseph said. “I don’t think it would be right for me to respond to a proposal that would eliminate my job.”
The chief of staff, however, later responded.
“More layoffs is one way to deal with a specific service reduction caused by lay-offs or short staffing, but the Alderman should know that new layoffs to offset former ones only lends to service reductions in new ways,” wrote Sean Matteson in an email. “New Haven’s goal to maintain or increase services to residents ought not to manifest itself through the act of eliminating jobs, but rather through reforms of existing budget busters such as the ballooning cost drivers of pensions, health care and worker’s compensation.”
AFSCME Complaint
Council 4 AFSCME this week announced that the union had submitted a formal complaint with the Connecticut State Board of Labor Relations.
The complaint, dated Feb. 22, alleges that Mayor DeStefano’s Feb. 18 letter to city workers was an attempt to “undermine the elected leaders of the respective locals.” Further, it was an “attempt at intimidation,” the complaint states.
The complaint calls for a written apology to all union members. Click here to read the complaint, the mayor’s letter, and a response letter from the union.
Joseph responded that the mayor was well within his rights to send the letter.
“Is there a CEO of a company anywhere that is prohibited from communicating with their employees?,” Joseph said. “The Mayor was reaching out to the workforce to reassure them, acknowledge their hard work and urge them to remain focused on serving the taxpayers.
“Rather than urging citizens to arm themselves or calling on the Mayor to raise taxes, I think labor would best be served by focusing it’s energy on coming to the bargaining table and working with the Mayor on controlling the ever expanding costs of pension and health care because at the end of the day, change is going to happen. They should be a part of it.”
“There’s no doubt a CEO has the right to communicate with his employees,” said Kevin Murphy, director of collective bargaining and organizing at Council 4 AFSCME. “But in the middle of negotiations you don’t have the right to go directly to the membership.”
The letter contained a “veiled threat” that the mayor would lay off more people if his demands are not met, Murphy said.
Murphy said he expects the state to hold a hearing on the letter in about three weeks.