Thomas Breen photo
Esul Burton at Tuesday’s protest/presser.
A newly formed coalition of students, immigrant rights activists, environmentalists, and labor organizers called on Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital to be “on the right side of history” by increasing financial contributions to a struggling city.
Yale’s Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall.
That was the message at the heart of an in-person social-distance protest and press conference held Tuesday afternoon outside of Yale’s Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall at 1 Prospect St.
Wearing face masks and standing well over six feet apart, nine participants took their turns at the microphone to issue their collective pleas to the university and the hospital to up their annual voluntary payments to the city.
Each participant argued that the two large, wealthy nonprofits should make up for the property taxes they do not have to pay on many of their properties by giving more to the city each year.
Echoing the dozens of New Haveners who voiced similar concerns during the recent city budget hearings, they said that New Haven has long suffered from great income inequality, racial and economic segregation, and structurally underfunded municipal finances.
The Covid-19 pandemic has made all of those problems worse, they said, thereby amplifying the urgency for Yale and YNHH to contribute more.
“I am not here because I would rather call out tyranny than be home prioritizing school and my family, but because it is necessary,” said Kiana Flores, an 11th grade student at Co-Op and a lead organizer with the New Haven Climate Movement.
“We are in a pivotal time in New Haven’s history where we cannot bear this burden any longer. These funds are more than money. It is a need for justice. For many, it can be the difference between life and death. So Yale, we need you to be on the right side of history. The people’s side. Pay your fair share.”
According to a new online petition put out by the event’s organizers Tuesday afternoon, the coalition of New Haveners calling on Yale and YNHH to “pay their fair share” consists of 18 local organizations, including New Haven Rising, Local 34 — UNITE HERE, New Haven Public Schools Paraprofessionals Union Local 3429, New Haven Public School Advocates, New Haven Climate Movement, Semilla Collective, and Yale College Democrats. Click here for a full list of participating organizations.
The 40-minute presser came hours before the Board of Alders is slated to take a final vote on next fiscal year’s budget. The amended version referred out of the aldermanic Finance Committee earlier this month included $7 million in cuts to Mayor Justin Elicker’s $569.1 million general fund proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2020 – 2021 (FY21). It also included a $2.5 million “Revenue Initiative” line item. Committee alders explicitly stated that they inserted that line in the budget as a way to pressure Yale University and other large institutional partners like the hospital to contribute more to city finances.
The mayor’s proposed budget indicates that Yale University will contribute $13 million and YNHH will contribute $2.8 million in voluntary payments to the city next fiscal year, which starts July 1. In past statements, university and hospital top administrators and spokespeople have pointed to the millions of dollars each year that the institutions do pay in property taxes on their taxable holdings, as well as to philanthropic endeavors directly targeted at supporting low-income New Haveners, like the creation and funding of New Haven Promise.
“Aside from the significant financial challenges of taking on COVID-19 directly, today Yale New Haven Health remains the largest taxpayer in Connecticut, paying more than $300 million a year,” YNHH Senior Vice President Vin Petrini told the Independent in an email statement Tuesday afternoon. “At the same time, we have provided $30 million in voluntary payments to New Haven over the last decade. In addition, we pay nearly $6 million in property taxes to the city annually, contribute to critical community programs like New Haven Promise and we are working collaboratively to drive down employee health care costs.”
In a statement issued in early March in response to Elicker’s call for Yale to contribute more to city coffers, Yale President Peter Salovey said the university’s “$12 million voluntary payment in the most recent fiscal year was the highest from a university to a host city anywhere in the United States, and represented a 44 percent increase from the payment we made just three years earlier. And that is only one part of what Yale gives directly to the city. In that same year, we paid $5 million in property taxes on our non-academic properties (making us the city’s third-highest taxpayer).” A Yale spokesperson has also pointed in past comments to this list of the university’s local responses to the Covid-19 pandemic so far.
The speakers at Tuesday afternoon’s presser vociferously disagreed with the notion that the university and YNHH are doing enough to balance out for property taxes they legally do not have to pay.
NHPS Advocates organizers and lifelong New Havener Sarah Miller (pictured) said that the Covid-19 crisis has disproportionately hurt black and brown residents in predominantly working class neighborhoods. She said she frequently hears about families in Fair Haven, where she has lived for 20 years, unable to put food on the table and on the edge of homelessness.
“This fundamental structural imbalance is not an accident of history,” she said. “Rather, it is a result of history. And a big part of this history which stares us in the face all over town is Yale’s enormous property footprint, for which they pay very limited taxes.”
She said that lost property tax revenue could go towards funding city schools, public health, housing, parks, public safety, libraries, the arts, and training for green jobs.
“Instead, it was rolled into Yale’s already multi-billion dollar endowment.”
She called on the university and the hospital to “collaborate with us in a new spirit of partnership to advance education and improve health” outside of the walls of Yale University.
Elizabeth Gonzalez (pictured) agreed. She said she is a mother of four and wife who works part-time cleaning office buildings and is an organizer with the Semilla Collective. She joined the immigrant rights mutual aid organization in March after her family received a box of food and an envelope of cash to help them survive their newfound job and food insecurity during the Covid-19 crisis.
“If the hospital and Yale pay their fair share of taxes, our city will have a better opportunity to help residents of New Haven really face this food crisis,” she said.
Jaidy Gonzalez (pictured), a senior at Wilbur Cross High School and a member of Connecticut Students for a Dream, said that her family too has benefited from food, cash, and mutual aid provided by the Semilla Collective. She has started volunteering with Semilla to help predominantly Spanish-speaking families survive Covid-19.
What would she say to Yale about how that institution can best help New Haveners during this time of crisis?
“Just to not sit on their butts and just actually help us out,” she said. “They’re just sitting on their little throne, sipping wine and doing whatever they want. We’re here struggling to maintain our families and helping each other out as a community. We want to taste that little wine from them.”
Newly graduated Yale College student and former Yale College Democrats member Esul Burton (pictured at the top of this article) expressed a similar sentiment. “Imagine what would be possible if these resources were available to all,” she said, referencing the housing refund and mental health care coverage she received from the university to help her and fellow students after the university shut down in-person classes in mid-March.
“Now is the time for Yale and YNHH to take bold action to make sure everyone in our city has opportunity, freedom, and dignity,” said longtime public school paraprofessional Albert Austin (pictured).
Ward 6 Democratic Ward Committee Co-Chair and longtime Hill resident Helen Martin-Dawson (pictured) said that’s only possible if New Haveners keep up the pressure on the two large local institutions. “I don’t want Yale to own all of New Haven,” she said. “But that’s what it’s beginning to look like.”
New Haven Rising lead organizer Scott Marks (pictured) rounded out the press conference with a call for all city residents to sign onto the coalition’s petition and for any interested local organization to reach out and band together to amplify the group’s message and demands.
“We’ve got to change the maps of segregated development,” he said, referencing the overlap between redlining maps from the 1930s, foreclosure maps from 2008, and Covid-19 hotspot maps from 2020.
“We need to make sure that Yale University and Yale Hospital step up and lead the way in order to change this never-ending racism that exists in these neighborhoods that causes us not to have the kind of lives that we need.”