New Haven Independent

posted by: jeffrey Kerekes on March 30, 2010  11:18am

Sign the online petition to cut the budget by 10%:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/NewHaven/petition.html

Come to Celentano School Tonight 3/30/10 @ 6:30 to share your thoughts with the mayor.

Come April 28 at 6:30 to City Hall for the final public hearing.

posted by: cedarhhillresident on March 30, 2010  11:30am

WE CAN NOT AFFORD ANOTHER TAX INCREASE!!!!!!

posted by: downtowner on March 30, 2010  11:33am

this is serious - rents are escalating and in part due to the drastic rise on property taxes. we need to do more, as a community and as a government.

posted by: Moira on March 30, 2010  11:56am

Excellent ideas. I’d rather get pinched at the meter—and even pay higher fees in parking tickets—than see my taxes go up, which will jack up my mortgage beyond what is affordable. What’s more, I can’t sell, since the value of my property is less than the purchase price I paid. And more taxes and higher mortgages means I’ll have less money to put into necessary home repairs. I’m not unique, and the mayor can be sure that blight will be pervasive through many more neighborhoods if he raises taxes. If taxes go up, New Haven is going down. It’s that simple. There are many other ways to generate revenue. I’d happily pay sixty bucks to license my three dogs. Just don’t take residents to the cleaners, Johnny. We can’t afford it. It will undo families and absolutely kill the city.

posted by: David Cameron on March 30, 2010  12:06pm

There are two big question marks that hang over the mayor’s proposed 2010-11 budget:

First, it assumes the city will receive $10 million in new revenue in 2010-11 as a result of an arrangement, currently being negotiated with Gates Capital Partners, in which Gates will receive the revenue from parking meters over the next 25 years -yes, 25 years - and, in return, will pay the city $10 million this year and comparable amounts in the four years after 2010-11.  Parking meter receipts in 2010-11 are estimated in the budget to be $5.2 million.  Is this a good deal for the city?  Has the city estimated, with discounted cash flow analysis, the present value of the amounts the city would receive vs. the amounts it would lose?

This is essentially an off-the-books loan - a means by which the deficit can be reduced without appearing to have increased the debt.  But it mortgages a future stream of revenue.  On the other hand, if the arrangement falls through for some reason, the budget will be in deficit by $10 million.

The second big question concerns, on the expenditure side, the budget’s assumption that it will reduce spending or increase revenue by $8 million through “Innovation Based Budgeting.  The budget states the $8 million will be obtained by document management (using less paper), electronic printing, a storm waste authority that can allocate costs to all users, a reduction in liability, targeted privatization, strategic partnerships, more hiring of emergency medical personnel and medical billing, Board of Education savings, reuse of the Goffe St. Armory, and government reorganization.

There is no discussion of how each of those will be achieved and how much additional revenue or reduced spending will result from each.  And there is no explanation why, in order to achieve the $8 million in deficit reduction, the city is hiring four new full-time employees, at a cost of $254,000, rather than relying on currently-employed personnel. 

As it is described in the budget, Innovation Based Budgeting strikes me as little more than wishful thinking.  It is very hard to imagine that it will result in $8 million in increased revenues or decreased spending in 2010-11.  And as with the parking meter arrangement, to the extent that the deficit reduction resulting from IBB falls short of $8 million, the result will be a deficit.

posted by: steve on March 30, 2010  12:20pm

In Support of the message from David Cameron and to our City Leaders, when you try to sell your budget to the taxpayers please understand that.    “HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY”

Basing a budget on what if’s is not a way to budget the City of New Haven’s Financial Operations!

Cut your expenses and let your hope fund your savings account, unless you plan on a budget line to cover the expense for bad checks!

posted by: James on March 30, 2010  12:43pm

I have no problem with paying an additional $24 for my dog licenses (I have two). My problem is with the idea of paying more to cover the cost of those who do not contribute. I would like to see what the current enforcement rate is before increasing my contribution which may simply serve to enable scofflaws or lax enforcement of existing policy.

Does anybody know how many dog licenses are currently issued in New Haven? If so, is it realistic to believe that this amount is sufficient to cover the canine population?

posted by: streever on March 30, 2010  1:07pm

Jeffery when will you learn?
the mayor wants to sell 25 years of parking revenue for an immediate 10 million versus the 5 and a half we could collect this year. He’s not going to sit idly by while you point out, with your facts and your figures, what a bad plan this is.

He’s going to crush you by ignoring you and providing half-answers on a website versus actually acknowledging the reality.

When will Jeffrey Kerekes finally learn that being reasonable isn’t possible… this is New Haven! Only the craziest, stupidest, and loudest voice wins.

Sorry for the satire folks. Reality is that City Hall would be wise to look at Jeffrey’s number crunching and pay some serious attention, instead of providing lame excuses for answers on a web site.

I’d really like to see the Mayor speak to the NHI about Jeffrey’s suggestions. I’d like to hear why we need 12 more firefighters this year. I’d like to hear why Wilbur Cross needs so many principals at the 100k a year salary.

I’d like to hear why New Haven citizens should pay more taxes despite not getting raises at their jobs.

posted by: taxpayer on March 30, 2010  1:19pm

1)When they sell off future revenue streams at the capital the word used for the scheme is “Securitization” 2)The city is calling it “monetization” with respect to the parking meter money being sold off.3) Selling off future property tax revenue is called borrowing or bonding. The city has already greatly indebted the future taxpayers of New Haven by maxing out on money borrowed something near to 800 million.

posted by: Edgehood on March 30, 2010  1:26pm

Going over the budget item by item is a great idea and I appreciate the effort in making this document. It is interesting to see that our debt service has nearly doubled over the last eight years. The money going to service debt is enough to balance the budget by itself…!! If the city can get ahead and pay some of that debt off, there would be a bonus of saving all that ‘interest’ money.
I’d like to see the utility bills. The first place that I would be looking to cut and save money is power consumption. We must pay hundreds of thousands for street lights alone.
New Haven used to be in the water business years ago. Maybe now is the time for New Haven to get into the power business…!! There are a ton of new technologies available to generate power and   it would be easier that ever because everything is switching over to the new ‘smart grid’. We could probably get English station for a song from whatever shell company ended up holding it. Crossing all of the electric bills off of the budget in every department would be enough to balance the budget and pay down our debt…!!
How about a carbon dioxide pipeline and an algae farm…??
In fact we could totally think outside of the box for solutions. How about sucking all of the combustion fumes out of every single building in New Haven with a big network of pipes (like the water company has built over the years)cleaning it up a little and feeding a giant algae farm with it, then distilling the all of the fuels needed for every city building and vehicle from the algae…?? Then we could cross all of the fuel bills off of the budget and the city would be very healthy financially.

posted by: East Rock Local on March 30, 2010  1:56pm

I’d like to know why the windows are always being left open at Wilbur Cross HS, particularly on cold weekends and nights…this must be costing a fortune. If the heating system is defective, fix it and go after the contractors who renovated the buildings a few years ago. Maybe one of the 100k/year school officials can be tasked with closing windows each day…

posted by: cedarhhillresident on March 30, 2010  2:07pm

Streever :When will Jeffrey Kerekes finally learn that being reasonable isn’t possible… this is New Haven! Only the craziest, stupidest, and loudest voice wins.

thats what he has me for :)

Edgehood I wish we could get our own power too. The savings to the residents and to the city expenses would be worth it…problem is we are so far in the hole…MUCH MORE than the present numbers indicate, that we do not have the wiggle room for that kind of investment. Sad!!

WE NEED PEOPLE OUT AT THESE MEETINGS!!! OR IT WILL BE THE SAME OLD SH*T DIFFERENT YEAR!!!!! and you all know that!!!!!! GET MAD and DO SOMETHING!

posted by: anon on March 30, 2010  2:26pm

I agree with Streever.

Keep families and city staff in the city (and even encourage some to move here, like Darnell Goldson’s proposal), with these two, simple steps:

1) Cut salaries across the board by 20%. Use a graded scale if necessary to protect some of the lower wage positions (e.g., if someone is only making $40K in a city position, you might only cut by 5%. Of course, most pay much more than that).

2) Replace some of the “cuts” with generous incentives for those city employees who decide to stay in New Haven and contribute to it, versus the 60%+ who just come here to take a paycheck.  These could include: huge homebuyer incentives (like Yale has but even better), rent reimbursements, free tuition for college, subsidized tuition for private K-12 schools and daycare, city-sponsored coupons for staple food purchases made in New Haven, movie passes, free transportation, free parking permits, and the like.

As an alternative to 20% salary cuts, consider 15% salary cuts combined with massive increases in parking fees for city employees (with vouchers for those who live in New Haven proper, of course). This creates an enforcement issue but might work.

These things could make Darnell happy and also prevent a massive tax increase that homeowners in New Haven can not afford.

posted by: Threefifths on March 30, 2010  2:29pm

posted by: downtowner on March 30, 2010 12:33pm

this is serious - rents are escalating and in part due to the drastic rise on property taxes. we need to do more, as a community and as a government.

Forget king john.It is a done deal.Your taxes are going up. Now if you want to fight for someting Let s fight to bring this here. it would stop rents from going up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_control

http://www.housingnyc.com/html/resources/faq/rentstab.html

http://www.housingnyc.com/html/resources/mitchell/mitchell.html

Now this is what we should fight for.

posted by: DR on March 30, 2010  3:07pm

I don’t see very many ideas in the spreadsheet that don’t involve “gutting the government.”

posted by: We Demand Answers! on March 30, 2010  3:18pm

The Mayor will continue to ignore independent, intelligent suggestions, but only as long as we let him.
If we raise our voices loud enough there’s no way he’ll try an get away with it.

FLOOD CITY HALL WITH PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS DEMANDING THAT THE MAYOR ANSWER TAKE THESE SUGGESTIONS SERIOUSLY. DON’T LET HIM IGNORE US!

posted by: Jeffrey Kerekes on March 30, 2010  4:02pm

D.R.,

This is a brainstorm so your suggestions are welcome.  I included all the ideas I find, whether or not I agree with them.

I think the pattern you see about cutting expenses is accurate, there are more ideas on that side then those for revenue.  Please make some suggestions. 

Also, you might like to come to the Mayor’s presentation tonight at 6:30pm at Celentano School (3/30/10).  He will present the information about cost outpacing our own growth, $3 Billion dollar deficits at the state level (we get 2/3 of our spending from mostly the state and the feds).  Perhaps this is what is motivating the expense ideas. 

Please contribute as many ideas as you can generate.  I look forward to hearing your suggestions.