nothin Harp Looks To Create New Grants Office | New Haven Independent

Harp Looks To Create New Grants Office

Paul Bass Photo

Mendi Blue.

New Haven Mayor Toni Harp is planning a new four-person grant-writing office that she expects to pay for itself.

The mayor’s office has submitted a request to the budget director to include four new positions for the office — to be called the Office of Development & Policy — in the next fiscal year’s budget. The office would include a $116,000-a-year director, a $60,000 senior development officer, a $40,000 administrative assistant, and a $40,000 development office analyst.

Harp said Monday that she plans to submit a request to the Board of Alders to create the positions sooner so she can open the office in late February or March.

We don’t have anybody who does grants,” Harp said. We’ve lost hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars because we don’t have anybody doing that.” She cited homeland security” as one area where the city could have obtained grant money if it had a staff dedicated to that task.

I used to work for the city [in the 1980s]. We used to have a central grants operation. It should pay for itself,” Harp said.

She plans to name Mendi Blue, who currently serves as acting labor relations chief, to head the office if approved. Blue (pictured above at a Jan. 2 Emergency Operations Center meeting on Winter Storm Hercules) is a New Haven native who earned a law degree as well as a Harvard MBA.

Harp said the office will seek possible grant money across the board,” from public safety to job-creation to public education. The education department, as huge as it is, doesn’t have a grant writer,” she said.

The goal is to find ways to pay for important government functions without raising taxes, Harp said. She said she’d like to see Yale possibly contribute interns or graduate students to help research and write grants.

Board of Alders President Jorge Perez said he wants to wait until he sees details of the plan before commenting on it.

25 New Jobs?

The four grant-office jobs are among 25 new jobs that city government department heads hope to see in the next fiscal year’s budget. So far.

Usually department heads have submitted their requests for new slots to the budget department by this time of year, since the administration submits a proposed budget in March. But with a change in mayor — Harp just took office on Jan. 1 — some last-minute requests might trickle in from new department heads, said Budget Director Joe Clerkin.

He released a list of the 25 positions at the Independent’s request. Besides the four jobs slated for the proposed Office of Development & Policy, the mayor’s office requested a new $80,000-a-year legislative director to oversee the alder and state legislative liaisons; and a $40,000-a-year receptionist.

In addition, new City/Town Clerk Michael Smart has requested two new assistant clerk positions, one at $60,0276 and one at $44,623. Smart said one would be a bilingual position, a person to help run the office, do paperwork, work on elections, and train staff.” The office currently has no Spanish-speaking employees, he said. The person filling the second position would focus on computer/tech skills, helping to modernize the office, he said. These are vital positions.”

The other requests came from department heads before the Harp administration took office on Jan. 1. They include:

• Four youth librarians at $44,623-a-year each; a $49,186-a-year Spanish librarian; and two technical assistants at $43,552-a-year apiece. Clerkin noted that the library’s staff has dropped from 50 to 38 positions since 2009.

• A $65,995 attorney assigned to dealing with assessments. Clerkin noted that the corporation counsel’s office has dropped from 22 to 17 positions in recent years.

• Four new public-health nurses at $48,286 apiece; a $53,954-a-year financial manager; and a $55,403 senior sanitarian. All but the last position are listed as revenue-generating,” meaning they’re expected to bring in money to cover their costs, including, according to Clerkin, reimbursements the city could be capturing under the Medicaid program.

• A $44,623-a-year utilization monitor” for the Commission on Equal of Opportunities.

• A $55,538-a-year assistant electrical assistant for the Office of Building and Inspection.

• A $48,286-a-year accounts payable auditor for the Finance Department. Clerkin said the position already exists, paid for through special funds; the request would place the position under the city’s general operating budget.

None of these requests has yet been approved. In fact, the Harp administration hasn’t even signed off on them. Department heads file the requests as the starting point for discussing the budget; the Harp administration presents its proposed budget to the Board of Alders, which then holds hearings and makes its own changes.

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