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Alderman Shah.
A year ago, aldermen passed a budget with a soft center by the name of Innovation Based Budgeting (IBB), a nebulous multimillion-dollar revenue and savings plan that never lived up to its promise. On Monday evening, aldermen agreed to sell a downtown parking lot to fill the hole left by IBB.
They did so after an hour of lively debate in the aldermanic chamber, kicked off by forceful objections from West Rock Alderman Darnell Goldson, who opposed the parking lot plan.
The plan adds the parking authority’s Broadway parking lot to a 99-year lease agreement between the city and Yale. The university will pay $3 million this year to lease the parking lot for the next 97 years, after which it will take ownership of the property. The deal is an amendment to a 99-year agreement signed two years ago, which leased two nearby traffic islands to Yale, during a time when the city faced a budget gap, as it does in the current fiscal year.
The $3 million will go towards plugging the hole in the current budget, a hole the city intended to have already filled. After a controversial parking meter monetization plan went down in flames earlier this year, and an offer to sell a parking garage found tepid response, the administration fell back on Plan C: Lease the Broadway lot.
On Monday night, the plan passed with two amendments introduced by Alderman Yusuf Shah, chair of the Finance Committee. The first explicitly states that Yale will need to secure Board of Aldermen permission in order to use the property for anything other than as a parking lot. The second states that the property will belong to Yale at the end of the lease term.
Alderman Goldson.
“What it is is a bad deal,” began Goldson, at the outset of a fervid speech against the proposal.
He said he’s not opposed to selling the lot to Yale, “but I’d like to see us sell it at a fair price.” The city should have put the lot up for bid, in what he later called “the American way to do things.”
Yale will be able to run the lot much more efficiently than the city and make more money off of it, he said. That’s OK “as long as we get some of that action,” he said. He projected that Yale could make $27 million to $29 million from the lot over 99 years. “And we’re going to sell it for $3 million because we made a mistake 11 months ago” by passing a budget with a hole in it, Goldson said. “Are we going to sell City Hall next?”
“We passed a budget that we knew had a hole in it,” he said. The board did nothing for 11 months and is now having a “fire sale,” he said.
In response to a question from East Rock Alderman Justin Elicker, Goldson acknowledged that his figures don’t take into consideration the taxes Yale will pay on the lot over the next century. But they also don’t factor in Yale raising parking fees, or running the lot more than 50 percent more efficiently than the city does, Goldson said.
Alderman Perez.
“The city did do its due diligence in coming up with the price” of $3 million, said Hill Alderman Jorge Perez. Three appraisals were done, he said. Two put the lot between $2.1 and $2.5 million and a third, with faulty math, put the lot at $4 million, Perez said.
Undaunted, Goldson called the plan a “bad, bad, bad, bad, bad deal.”
“Bad,” he added.
Goldson rejected his colleagues’ comparison of the deal to the sale of “sliver lots,” which are often sold to adjoining property owners.
Quinnipiac Meadows Alderman Gerald Antunes was one of only a handful of aldermen to join Goldson’s side of the argument. The city runs a number of parking lots that don’t make money, he said. Why not sell off one of those?
Alderman Shah finally moved the item, successfully cutting off debate. The motion passed in a roll call vote, 20 to 5. Voting against were Aldermen Goldson, Antunes, Michael Smart, Gina Calder, and Greg Morehead. Four aldermen were absent. Alderwoman Dolores Colon abstained.
I see Mr Goldson's point, and I think he is right--the city PROBABLY could have gotten a better deal. However, I don't think it is worth it to Joe Taxpayer to halt this deal because our city staff probably could have done the negotiation better.
I appreciate him raising that issue, and look forward to seeing the mismanagement of our city raised as an issue again in the future by our aldermen.
With that said, I am really glad that the alders approved selling this lot. They have to work with the tools they have. If their tool is a city that puts off decision-making until it is emergency times, if their tool is a disorganized and poorly run city government, well, they still have an obligation to make the #s work at the end of the day.
While few of the choices they can make are ideal, I think that this is the best choice of many very bad choices they have had presented.