Budget Passed After Values Debate

Alders overwhelmingly passed an amended version of the mayor’s $556.6 million operating budget for the next fiscal year, but not before engaging in an hours-long debate over the proper function of city government in times of fiscal distress.

That vote and volley of values took place Tuesday night in the Aldermanic Chambers of City Hall during a special three-hour Board of Alders meeting about the Fiscal Year 2019 – 2020 (FY20) budget.

The culmination of nearly three months of legislative hearings and workshops on the proposed budget first introduced by Mayor Toni Harp on Feb. 28, Wednesday night’s 19 – 3 vote marked the alders’ final approval of an amended version that is nearly identical to the one moved out of the aldermanic Finance Committee on May 15. 

The sole differences between the committee-recommended general fund budget and the one ultimately approved by the full board is that the alders nixed three police officer positions and moved the resulting $204,891 in salary savings back into the police overtime line item; and they shifted $78,756 from the Finance Central Utilities and Maintenance budget back into the Human Services Department’s Other Contractual Services line item.

The alders also passed an essentially unchanged version of the mayor’s proposed $70.7 million, two-year capital budget as well as the flat 42.98 mill rate, thereby ensuring no new tax increase for the coming fiscal year.

The general and capital fund budgets now advance to the mayor’s office for a final signature before going into effect on July 1.

While the final votes and approved documents yielded few surprises Wednesday night, the process of getting to that budget-building closure wound a long, tortuous, and democratically energizing path through questions that lie at the core of what municipal governments do and why they do it.

East Rock Alder Anna Festa, Downtown Alder Abby Roth, and Prospect Hill/Newhallville Alder Steve Winter introduced roughly 20 proposed amendments, just as they did during last year’s budget vote. The amendments called on their colleagues to scrutinize all line-item increases and to divert any potential savings towards the city’s structural deficits in public safety overtime and unfunded pension liabilities.

“With our pension being underfunded,” Festa said, ​“with our medical being underfunded, rainy day fund being underfunded, OPEB, I could go on. We’re underfunded. And we as alders have a responsibility to our residents to maintain a budget that will not burden them further, and something that we can sustain in the future.”

“Now is not the time to expand our government,” Roth added in her opposition to the budget’s funding of 10 new city government positions. ​“We just can’t afford it, unfortunately.”

Unlike last year, none of Festa, Roth, or Winter’s proposed amendments passed, or came anywhere close to passing.

Instead, members of the board’s voting majority, led by Dixwell Alder Jeannette Morrison, Westville Alder and Finance Committee Vice-Chair Adam Marchand, and Upper Westville Alder Darryl Brackeen, Jr., argued throughout the night that a budget should first and foremost reflect the values of city residents and the priorities that those residents have entrusted city government to act upon.

Legislators should allow the executive branch and its various departments a certain amount of leeway in how they spend their allocated budgets, the alders said, and then should exercise oversight over those departments when expenditures verge out of line or counter to what’s been promised.

“Our role is not to have an unfunded mandate,” Brackeen said about one such item, the budget’s $92,000-plus funding of a new permanent Affordable Housing Commission. ​“That is probably one of the highest responsibilities of a governing body. … We cannot say this is a priority as a government, and, as the body that legislates and has the budgetary [power] to make these changes, not fund it.”

“Part of the way that we signal our intent is being willing to put money behind it,” Marchand said about the same line item. ​“And I believe that’s what we’re doing here.”

Morrison, time and again Wednesday night, put the majority’s argument most succinctly. ​“This budget is a priorities budget,” she said.

Below are highlights from a few of the debates sparked by Festa, Roth, and Winter’s proposed, and failed, amendments.

10 New Positions

Festa’s first proposed amendment moved to strike 10 new or newly funded positions from the budget, and allocate those $368,087 in salary savings to the fire overtime budget.

The positions in question, which made it into the final approved budget, include a part-time accounts payable auditor, a part-time financial administrative assistant, a librarian, a library technical assistant, a police mechanic, a police body camera specialist, a tree trimmer, a tree foreman, a field representative for the Fair Rent Commission, and a bilingual clerk typist for the City Clerk’s department.

“They are here permanently, and they need to be sustained,” Festa said about the positions, all but two of which are full-time and come with benefits. ​“If we’re not careful, we will see a tax increase next year.”

Morrison disagreed. Even in times of fiscal crisis, she said, ​“We still have to provide services to our constituents. And if we don’t have the personnel in place to provide services, then people are going to complain. I like being able to point my constituents in the direction of having different things fixed, having different services provided.

“Our government at this time is a lot smaller than years ago. We have a responsibility to try to build up our staffing, build up the services that we’re able to provide to our community.”

Amity/Beaver Hills Alder Richard Furlow said that city residents are currently wrapped up in serious conversations about police accountability. Body cameras serve that very function, he said, and a body camera specialist is needed to ensure that the technology is working and accessible.

Marchand said the community has also long cried for city government to combat slumlords and protect the quality and availability of affordable housing. A field representative for the Fair Rent Commission would double the impact of a department that has long functioned with just one person, he said. ​“This is a long overdue addition.”

$300,000 In Advertising

Winter proposed cutting the city’s $300,000 contribution to Market New Haven and moving that money instead towards the pension funds and towards reducing the overall general fund budget.

“We should refrain from spending heavily on advertising” and use that money instead towards shoring up the city’s commitments to retirees, he argued.

Brackeen, as he did with a several of Roth, Winter, and Festa’s proposed amendments, also voted in support of pulling city funding from Market New Haven.

Morrison advocated for leaving Market New Haven in the budget.

“Market New Haven’s job is to promote New Haven and to get other people to come here to spend their money,” she said. Good advertising will always cost something, she said, so why defund a service that makes New Haven attractive to visitors and investors in exchange for a marginal increase to the pension funds?

Hill Alder Dolores Colon agreed, and threw in a jab at the press as she exhorted the value of good marketing.

“Unfortunately, New Haven does market itself,” she said, ​“but the media chooses to market New Haven in a negative vein. Whenever there’s something violent or tragic, they always go to those events in our city to make a big splash to sell papers or get hits on their websites. I think we need Market New Haven to emphasize the positive things that we have to offer the public and the world.”

Family Justice Center And Affordable Housing Commission

The most heated and lengthy debates of the evening came over Roth’s proposed shift of $75,000 from the city’s budgeted contribution to a regional nonprofit anti-domestic violence center and Festa’s proposed shift of nearly $70,000 from the funding of a new permanent Affordable Housing Commission towards bulking up the city’s pension funds.

Roth, Festa, and Winter, who each supported both of the proposals, clearly stated that they care deeply about preventing domestic violence and about protecting affordable housing.

Their concerns, they said, lay with how and where city money was allocated towards these needs in the budget: $75,000 goes towards a private regional nonprofit, the Umbrella Center for Domestic Violence Services, which promised the Finance Committee that it would open a New Haven-based center regardless of whether or not it got funding from the city. And over $92,000 goes towards a commission charged with researching and reporting on the state of affordable housing in the city. They said the still nascent, Board of Alders-created Pension and Healthcare Task Forces received similar mandates for their respective areas of inquiry, but they received only $25,000 apiece in this year’s budget.

“If we give money to the justice center,” Festa asked about the anti-domestic violence funding, ​“are we supposed to give money to other private organizations as well?”

“Affordable housing is a huge priority,” Roth added about the new commission’s funding. ​“I guess I’m not clear on what all the studies are” that the commission will need to pay for.

Their colleagues were having none of it.

“New Haven needs to do their part,” Edgewood Alder and Finance Committee Chair Evette Hamilton said. ​“We as a city, we must support this family justice center. We didn’t even give them the whole amount. We decreased that money by $25,000 [from the $100,000 requested in the mayor’s proposed budget]. We should be doing more. We’re not in a position to do more. But we need to support the justice center now.”

Beaver Hills Alder Brian Wingate agreed. ​“This is something that we’re trying to be proactive about,” he said. ​“You’ve got to think about the cycles that we’re trying to break.”

“This is an investment in our people,” Brackeen said. ​“We are a regional hub, therefore we will have to take care of these folks one way or another. … I say, invest in this project.”

And a half dozen alders spoke up against the proposed cut to the Affordable Housing Commission’s funding, with Marchand’s argument earning an affirming ​“Speak on it!” from his colleague Wingate and approving snaps from mayoral candidate Urn Pendragon, sitting a few rows behind him in the public section of the chambers.

After commending Festa, Roth, and Winter for expressing such concern about the fiscal health of the city’s pensions, Marchand questioned the relative value of defunding other city services to chip away at such a large fixed cost. He said that approach failed to ​“put our money where our mouth is” in response to city resident demands around affordable housing and domestic violence victim support.

“I would observe that the total budgeted amount in this year;s budget for pension payments is $66 million,” he said. The total aggregate amount of increased pension contributions from his colleague’s failed amendments, he said, would have only added just under $300,000 to the pensions.

“Which is less than one half of one percent of the total amount before us. So the question is: Where is the best bang for that $293,800. I think it’s in affordable housing. I think it’s in the family justice center. I think it’s in those endeavors that are critical to our mission and who we are. The incremental improvements in the city pension funding by these amendments is negligible.”