OT Realism Praised; Library Games Panned

Increase police and fire overtime? Realistic budgeting.

Close a library branch? Disastrous, disingenuous politics.

Those two takes about the city’s budget-making process emerged during the latest virtual workshop on Mayor Justin Elicker’s two proposed Fiscal Year 2021 – 2022 (FY22) general fund budgets — a $589.1 million ​“crisis” version and a $606.2 million ​“forward together” budget.

The Board of Alders Finance Committee held the five hour-plus public meeting online Monday night via Zoom and YouTube Live.

The online meeting gave committee alders yet another chance to go line by line through the two proposed budgets, and to question city financial staff and department heads about proposed revenues and expenditures for the fiscal year that starts July 1.

Monday night’s discussions of the police, fire, and library budgets in particular offered contrasting views on the fiscal and political calculations that go into drafting a city budget.

They also further exposed the risks of treating a universally beloved and nationally acclaimed city service like a bargaining chip.

In both versions of the budget, the mayor has proposed increasing the police and fire overtime lines by roughly $2 million each in a bid to catch up with the actual cost of public safety overtime.

And in the ​“crisis” version of the budget, the Elicker Administration has proposed a tax increase and a slew of service cuts — including the closure of Westville’s Mitchell Library — if Yale University and the state do not contribute $53 million more to the city’s bottom line. No one expects this version to become the actual budget.

The proposed public safety overtime bump won words of encouragement from at least one alder and from the police and fire chiefs Monday night for the mayor’s attempts to bring that area of the budget, long plagued by overruns, into a realistic fiscal realm.

The proposed library shutdown, meanwhile — even when framed as an unlikely, worst-case scenario — earned a cascade of disbelief and outrage, just as it did during the first public budget hearing in early March.

“Every year since I’ve been on the board, there has been a fight for sufficient funding for our libraries,” Westville Alder and Board of Alders Majority Leader Richard Furlow said Monday night in one such budgetary swing in response to the potential library cut.

“Every budget season we have tons of people come out in support of the library. I find it incomprehensible that in New Haven, with average math and reading sufficiencies below the state average, that there would be by this administration a decision, or even a choice, to close down a learning center like a library. It is incomprehensible and unfathomable.”

Police, Fire OT Each Slated For $2M Bump

The Elicker Administration won budgetary plaudits at the hearing for adopting a more realistic take on overtime, rather than low-balling the line items only to return months later seeking unbudgeted millions.

City Budget Director Michael Gormany told the committee alders that the administration has proposed increasing both the police and fire overtime lines by roughly $2 million each.

That would bring the police department’s overtime budget from $7.054 million this fiscal year to $9.054 million next fiscal year, and the fire department’s overtime budget from $2.169 million to $4.199 million.

Gormany explained that both proposed public safety overtime bumps come in response to the current fiscal reality that police and fire are spending more on overtime than the current city budget allows.

“We are currently underfunding overtime,” Gormany said.

The city’s latest monthly financial report from February shows that the police department is on track to spend $3.2 million more on overtime this fiscal year than is budgeted, and that the fire department is slated to exceed its overtime budget by $3.5 million.

While these overages are more severe during the ongoing pandemic, they’re not new to Covid.

For each of the past several years, the police and fire chiefs have come before the Finance Committee mid-fiscal year to ask for multi-million-dollar transfers to cover over-budget overtime.

“Historically, we have exceeded our overtime budget,” Acting Police Chief Renee Dominguez said. ​“We think that the $9 million proposed budget for [next fiscal year] is more realistic.”

Fire Chief John Alston agreed. ​“For the last two years, I’ve always [come] to this committee to ask for budget transfers, which reflected realistic operations.” This new proposed $4.1 million fire overtime budget is more in line with what the fire department actually, realistically needs.

If the alders approve these proposed public safety overtime budgets, Gormany predicted, ​“we won’t be back in next year saying we need $1.5 million or $2 million for overtime.”

“We just got you on record, Mr. Gormany,” East Rock Alder Anna Festa said with a smile.

Gormany paused. ​“Anything can happen in a given year,” he averred.

“True,” Festa agreed. ​“Like a pandemic.”

Gormany also told the alders that the city shouldn’t have to pay out of its own municipal general fund pocket for the proposed overtime bump.

The city projects that it will be able to get $2 million in federal reimbursements for police overtime and another $2 million in federal reimbursements for fire overtime thanks to the roughly $94 million heading the city’s way from the American Rescue Plan.

“We still don’t have a lot of guidance on that funding,” Gormany said. One of the allowable uses for the funding, however, should be to cover public safety-related costs — including police and fire overtime.

Given how much money the city is slated to get from this Covid relief package, Festa asked, should the city look for a police and fire overtime reimbursement greater than $4 million combined?

Gormany said that the city will have to use its $94 million in American Rescue Plan aid by Dec. 31, 2024.

“The reason we didn’t want to put a larger amount in there is at some point over the next few fiscal year, you’ve got to wind yourself off of that reimbursement.”

Projecting $2 million in reimbursements for police overtime and $2 million in reimbursements for fire seems like a reasonable place to start without getting the city too dependent on time-limited federal financial aid.

“You don’t want to add legacy costs to these grants,” Gormany said.

Library Closure? ​“Not In My Book”

Hours earlier at Monday night’s hearing, alders were much more critical of the Elicker Administration’s budgetary stance when reviewing the city library’s proposed budget.

Unlike the proposed police and fire overtime increases, which are included in both the ​“crisis” and ​“forward together” versions of the mayor’s budget, library operations would see a significant cut if the former were to take effect.

The most conspicuous — and unpopular — proposed ​“crisis” version cut would see Westville’s Mitchell library branch permanently closed.

The administration’s budget book projects that shuttering Mitchell would save between $184,241 and $350,000. During a public hearing hosted by the Finance Committee on March 8, members of the public lambasted the proposal as undervaluing the library system as a whole, and as threatening an essential neighborhood service for a financial benefit that would make hardly a dent in a potential $66 million citywide structural deficit.

During each of his presentations to the Finance Committee since the mayor introduced his proposed budgets on March 1, Gormany has stressed that the administration is treating the ​“forward together” version as the likely proposed budget, and the ​“crisis” version as an unlikely backup.

“We are really focusing on the ​‘forward together’ budget,” he said again on Monday night, ​“so that we do not have to close a library.”

That fiscal optimism seems warranted: Tens of millions of dollars in additional aid will likely head the city’s way next fiscal year thanks to a revised state formula for calculating municipal aid and the federal American Rescue Plan, let alone what ongoing negotiations with Yale may yield.

Alders did not take kindly to even the mention of closing Mitchell. (In the past threats of closings to libraries or other popular services were seen as bargaining chips or attempts to stoke public outrage, rather than serious proposals.)

City Librarian John Jessen presented on all that the library has done during the Covid-19 pandemic, from scrapping late fees to building out a new mobile-friendly website to providing essential wi-fi lifelines for residents without reliable Internet connections at home to planning for a new, much larger Dixwell branch at the soon-to-open Q House. Westville Alder Adam Marchand said he is ​“continually amazed by the creativity of your organization, adjusting to multiple paradigm shifts.”

“I would think it’s hard to find dollars better spent than on the library,” he continued.

And then he directed his virtual gaze to Gormany.

“When the mayor was coming up with this ​‘crisis’ budget,” he asked, ​“why did he come looking at the library, given the crucial role it plays in the community and given that dollars are so well spent” on that service?

Gormany reached for an explanation. ​“I think in looking at the budget as a whole, and looking at different cuts in different areas, when you come to certain departments, there are no obvious things .. that we would look at to be cut.”

After assessing the costs of each of the four branch libraries, he said, closing Mitchell ​“was one of the options that we came to in crafting the ​‘crisis’ budget.”

“When you’re looking at cutting across the board in each department,” he added, ​“every department brings a different type of service.”

Board of Alders President and West River Alder Tyisha Walker-Myers picked up on Marchand’s line of questioning.

“Out of all the libraries that we have,” she asked, why did the administration pick Mitchell? And which city library is ​“the most underutilized?”

Jessen said that there are different ways to measure a library branch’s use. You can count circulation, or door counts, or programs, or how many people use various technologies.

“Really, they all have their strengths across the board,” he said. ​“If you’re looking at it from a non-fiscal reality, not just dollars and cents, it does get much more complicated.”

Dixwell’s Stetson Library, for example, has never had the highest book circulation numbers, he said, but it does have ​“amazing programs, door counts are high, and there’s a lot of usage programmatically, with people coming into that building.”

Hill Alder Ron Hurt sad that, when he first moved to New Haven, and and his children used to walk to the Mitchell Library, as it was the closest branch to where they lived. ​“I’m trying to wrap my head around why this library, which has a great history in our city, would be closing,” he said.

All of the alders who spoke up Monday night said they would have much more to say about the proposed shuttering of Mitchell in the ​“crisis” budget during committee deliberations in May.

Finance Committee Chair and Edgewood Alder Evette Hamilton gave a preview of that deliberation to come during her brief remarks on the matter Monday night.

“I was never entertaining any thought of closing any of our libraries,” she said. ​“That is not going to happen. Not in my book.”

That theme of how to measure the value of community library branches, beyond simply circulation counts, also arose Tuesday in an interview with Stetson Branch Librarian Diane Brown. (A mayoral administration once also floated the idea of shutting down that branch library as an apparent attempt to manipulate public opinion about the budget at large.) She appeared on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program in honor of National Librarians Day, which takes place April 16. Click on the video to watch the full episode, in which Brown also discusses combatting racism in promoting the branch’s survival and growth; as well as plans for its new home in the rebuilt Dixwell ​“Q” House.