Allan Appel Photo
“You’ve got our word: We’ll give back but he [the mayor] can’t keep throwing it out at the other end.”
So saying, custodians union head Rob Montuori (pictured at top) and other municipal labor leaders declared that they and city aldermen should not allow the mayor to play them off against each other in this contentious budget season.
The pitch came as a dozen unionists and an equal number of aldermen met Saturday morning at labor headquarters on Chapel Street in Fair Haven to discuss the city’s controversial proposed $476 million budget. They offered ideas for shaving the budget, including cutting back on out-of-town travel, city cars, and digital cameras.
The mayor had asked union leaders to lobby the aldermen to resist calls to ditch a proposed 8.8 percent tax hike and (from some citizen watchdogs) to cut the proposed budget 10 percent. He said he’d have to lay off city workers if such a cut went through. (Click here for an article on that.)
Instead of lobbying, Local 3144 Presidents Cherlyn Poindexter (to Monuori’s right in background of photo) and her union colleagues invited the aldermen for coffee and cake — and to explore where they might agree to cut the mayor’s budget together as the tense negotiations approach an endgame in early June.
In his nine years with Council 4 of the American Federation of State, County 7 Municipal Workers (AFSCME), union spokesman Larry Dorman said, he could not recall such a gathering of so many New Haven legislators with so many union leaders outside of the formal aldermanic chambers. It showed to him the “strong community of interest” at work.
Aldermen Andrea Jackson-Brooks and Justin Elicker (picured) among others heard Montuori, Cherlyn Poindexter, and another ten union officers and staffers essentially say: Yes, we’re prepared to make concessions yet again, but it can’t be just us alone.
If jobs too end up cut, they added, don’t think of the least-paid union jobs either. Think police and fire as well — jobs that the DeStefano Administration has pledged to protect.
Westville Alderman Sergio Rodriguez candidly asked if the point of the meeting was to say “Do we need to look other than the unions for the million” dollars worth of concessions being sought by the mayor?
“We’re open-minded,” replied Local 3144’s Tom Fascio (to far left in photo with Montuori and Poindexter). He invoked the call for an across-the-board 10 percent cut: “To get to that number it’ll result in massive layoffs. Here are savings to avert layoffs.”
“The issue of 10 percent is not coming from the mayor or the Board of Aldermen, but citizens who have one of the loudest voices,” Rodriguez replied.
The first order of business was to pass out to the aldermen a list of areas to cut that unionists had given to the mayor through a letter to city labor relations chief Craig Manemeit on April 29.
The ideas included, among others: reducing the number of employees who have 24-hour use of city cars; cutting down the number of digital cameras for LCI [Livable City Initiative] staff; not hiring two new Corporation Counsel staff and bringing in house $250,000 in outsourced legal services; ending “double-dipping” contracts with retired and pensioned city employees.
According to Poindexter, the president of Local 3144, the mayor had characterized such and similar suggestions as “small.” And there has been absolutely zero follow-up from the executive side, she said.
“No suggestion is too small,” Jackson-Brooks said.
Union leaders then provided alders with a list of some additional suggestions. These included limiting city employee travel, which is currently budgeted at over $821,512.
Justin Elicker pointed out that of $821,512 currently budgeted, much of that is for the Board of Ed, which the Board of Aldermen cannot address, line by line.
The labor leaders provided a list of new hires proposed for the budget. These ranged from a deputy controller to five new staffers in the assessor’s office to the entire four-person office projected to implement a proposed new “Innovation Based Budgeting” effort; the budget suggests the latter will lead citywide efforts that will reap $8 million in savings.
Should all these proposed positions be eliminated? Poindexter said not all necessarily, but only what’s absolutely necessary should be filled.
Aldermen said they were struck by the union leaders’ willingness to consider contract givebacks. The union leaders were vague about what specif concessions, and they frequently expressed the feeling they had been burned by their past concessions, which were followed hard on by mayoral new hires or salary increases for his staff.
“Will your non-New Haven members give back 5 percent?” West Rock Alderman Darnell Goldson asked.
“Can’t do that,” respond Council 3144’s Tom Fascio.
Would members consider, if necessary, a four-day-work week, as Sergio Rodriguez had suggested, among other ideas, in a letter to the aldermanic Finance Committee?” Fascio replied that nothing is off the table; he refused to be more specific.
Local 3144 is in the midst of contract negotiations, and Montuori’s Local 287 is engaged in a fraught struggle with the Board of Ed over a threat to start contracting out for custodial services.
At least one union leader would not hear of a 5 percent salary decrease. Tonya Gonsalves (pictured), who heads Local 3429 of the paraprofessionals, said that was simply unaffordable for her members. She’s been a Head Start worker for 20 years and is earning $35,000.
She was instead in favor of a commuter tax, as was also suggested by several of the union staff researchers, even though she conceded such an option is not within the immediate power of the city to effect.
Gonsalves said other areas can be cut, including several double dippers (retirees who receive both pensions and contracts to keep working) she identified within the early childhood administration. She called attention also to what she called expensive “science kits” and science consultants brought in to work with the little kids.
“We’ve lost a hundred paras in the past two years, and you waste money on science kits!”
In the end, the meeting may have been as much about tone as substance. “We’d like some of our ideas to be acted on,” Fascio said. “Will it save [the city budget] all by itself? No,” he added.
Fair Haven Alderwoman Migdalia Castro pronounced the meeting “transparent and great work.”
Elicker termed it symbolically important. Fellow East Rock Alderman Roland Lemar said that before he walked in the room he did not truly know that the union leaders were in favor of working with the board and the mayor. Now he concluded that “they will take meaningful concessions.”
Local 884 President Ron Hobson said that as a result of the meeting, “the door has been officially opened” between the unions and the Board of Aldermen
Other aldermen present included Wooster Square’s Michael Smart, the Hill’s Jorge Perez, Morris Cove’s Arlene DePino, Newhallville’s Charles Blango, East Shore’s Al Paollilo, Beaver Hills’ Carl Goldfield, and Fair Haven Heights’ Maureen O’Sullivan-Best.