New Haven Independent

Might their approach have something to teach New Haven? Probably not.

At Tuesday afternoon’s regular monthly HANH Board of Commissioners meeting, Chariman Robert Solomon and his fellow commissioners such as David Alvarado (right in photo) heard a staff request to increase the HANH 2007-2008 budget from the original projection of $22 million to $25 million.

What had happened? In March, five months after the initial projection, HANH analysts found that several categories of expense, particularly electricity and payroll, were trending far in excess of the budget.

The lion’s share of the deficit, Executive Director Jimmy Miller explained to Solomon, came from increased costs for electricity. Expected revenue from rents had also declined more than anticipated due to vacancies — the staff was hard put to turn around vacated apartments for new tenants, so rent was lost — and then there were payroll increases.

These latter were not entirely unexpected, it appears. “The growth in payroll comes from summer employees,” Miller explained, “who are also residents. We put them on the payroll, but they were so good, we have hired many of them full time.”

So what was the proposal to close the budget gap? In the case of HANH it turns out to be surprisingly simple. Since HANH is an MTW agency — in the authority’s alphabet soup, that means Moving To Work — it is permitted to commingle its revenue streams.

“MTW,” Miller said, “enables us to commingle Section 8 revenue with operating income and capital.” So the budget resolution the staff offered simply called for the deficit to be closed, and even a cushion created for now, by the transfer of $4.8 million of MTW funds.

The resolution passed. Without the flexibility MTW status provides, Miller said, HANH might be in severe financial distress.

Nevertheless, a budget reduction plan was part of the resolution. Chairman Solomon also charged Miller to explore ways to increase electricity reimbursement if possible.

Miller said that at the federal level, the Department of Housing and Urban Development had told him HANH’s electricity reimbursement was maxed out. Miller said, however, he was meeting with city officials later this week to see if some relief for the cost of power might be municipally provided.