Markeshia Ricks Photo
Harp faces Westville-West Hills managment team.
You might see Mayor Toni Harp at your next management team meeting. She and the city’s budget officials are making the rounds to talk about the city’s finances … and to claw back a narrative that lays the blame for dire straits at her feet.
The presentation comes in the wake of an 11 percent property tax increase, a scandal with the city’s purchasing card program that resulted in the termination and arrest of a mayoral staffer, and the more recent revelation that the city’s Youth Services director authorized grants to a staffer he oversees.
Harp’s rounds have so far brought her before the community management teams in Dwight, East Shore, and, this past week, her home base at Westville/West Hills, which gathered at Mauro Sheridan School.
“There’s been so much misrepresentation about the budget,” Harp said during her most recent appearance on WNHH FM’s “Mayor Monday” program. She said she’s pointing out to people that over her four years in office, city spending has risen a total of 3 percent. State cutbacks have forced taxes to rise to meet the costs, she said — and even then, she argued, New Haven’s mill rate is lower than those in some neighboring communities.
She spoke of how the same three-family house over the Hamden border on Shelton Avenue would be charged more in taxes than one on the New Haven side. Same with a house on the West Haven stretch of Forest Road.
Jones.
Harp told the roughly 40 Westville/West Hills neighbors gathered for the meeting at Mauro Sheridan this past Wednesday night that she wants people to get an explanation about the budget process — how it works, where the city stands currently and how it got where it is. The presentation sets the stage for a five-year plan Harp plans to roll out in the new year along with Board of Alders leaders to tackle the city’s long-term structural deficit (pegged at at least $30 million) as well as next year’s round of budget deliberations.
City Controller Daryl Jones and Budget Director Michael Gormany delivered a roughly 41-minute Budgeting 101-style presentation in which they talked about where the city gets its money: 51 percent from property taxes, the rest from the state in the form of education cost sharing grants and Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) reimbursements as well as voluntary payments from Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital.
Much like the state, the city is grappling with how to beef up underfunded pensions and deliver city services when it has limited sources of revenue, they said.
“New Haven remains strong financially but we do face obstacles,” Jones said.
The state is supposed to pay up to 77 percent of lost tax revenue to municipalities through PILOT. In fact, it has been paying between 30 and 40 percent, Gormany noted.
He pointed out that during the 2016 – 2017 fiscal year, state aid covered 43 percent of the city’s budget. It has since gone down to 39 percent. Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital make voluntary payments for city services that now add up to about $14 million; Gormany noted that their combined exempt property would bring in $194 million if it were taxed. Gormany did note that the university and the hospital system are the city’s largest employers and also the largest taxpayers.
Dennis Serfilippi.
The city spends a lot of its money on fixed costs like pensions for active and retired city employees, healthcare and education. It can’t tax Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital because of their state tax-exempt status.
And about that 11 percent tax increase that caught people by surprise this year? It was a function of closing a financial shortfall that happened when the state cut expected PILOT and education funding two quarters into the city’s fiscal year, Jones argued. Even with the tax increase, Jones pointed out that New Haven residents still pay some of the lowest taxes in the state when compared to other larger Connecticut cities and even when compared against the mill rates under the previous administration.
Westville neighbor Dennis Serfilippi, who started a website to recall the mayor and the Board of Alders, blasted the administration for hanging its budget projections last year on anticipated state funding when it knew that the state was unlikely to be able or willing to provide that funding.
“That state is broke,” he said. He asked why city departments weren’t asked to make up the differences and why the city didn’t go to unions and ask for concessions. He also blasted the administration for not being more transparent with department purchases through the city’s credit card program. He criticized the administration for giving developers a 17-year tax break to build 56 units of affordable housing on Route 34, when a market rate development or single family homes might generate more revenue for the city.
Gormany.
Jones pushed back about the state funding, noting that the city’s fiscal year started July 1; the cut to the city was announced almost six months into the year. Gormany also pushed back about the assertions on spending, noting that expenditures went up only 1.5 percent.
Jones defended the use of the credit card to make certain purchases through sites like Amazon, where he said the city sees significant savings. It also generates thousands of dollars in rebates to the city under a state “p‑card” program. He said it ensure that bills are paid on time.
Neighbor Tom LoRicco pointed out the recent uptick in crime in Westville (which has since abated) and asked to know the status of the police contract. The police department is going on two years without a contract; the union and the city are now in arbitration. Meanwhile, the city is looking for a way to recoup the full costs of training officers — about $60,000 per officer — from towns that poach them.
Jonathan Gordon.
Neighbor Jonathan Gordon asked about the possibility of the state Municipal Accountability Review Board (MARB) taking over the city.
“The state doesn’t have the money,” Mayor Harp said. “It spent it all on the Hartford bailout. MARB could come take over the city, but no money would come with it.”
She said after the meeting that there was so much focus on the 11 percent tax increase that she wanted to try to widen the aperture on the conversation.
“It wasn’t the whole story,” she said. “People really need to know what it took to construct the budget and what we were up against.”
Click the Facebook live video to see the presentation.
Click on the above video for the full episode of WNHH FM’s “Mayor Monday.”
This episode of “Mayor Monday” was made possible with the support of Gateway Community College and Berchem Moses P.C.
Paul Bass contributed reporting.