nothin 18 New Positions Axed; Tax Hike Averted | New Haven Independent

18 New Positions Axed; Tax Hike Averted

Paul Bass Photo

Budget Chief Clerkin and Controller Daryl Jones detail the budget changes.

Mayor Toni Harp Tuesday proposed cutting planned new library and crossing-guard jobs and upping building permit fees rather than raising taxes in order to close a last-minute budget gap.

Harp and her budget officials unveiled the updated plan at a City Hall press conference.

They presented a revised $525 million proposed city budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, a proposal that goes before a Board of Alders Finance Committee Wednesday night for approval.

They had to revise their proposed budget at the last moment because the state just revised its upcoming year’s budget in order to close a $930 million gap — and it sliced $4.6 million of promised urban aid that New Haven had counted on.

Harp said the city was originally told to expect an $8.1 million, then a $9 million, urban aid cut. So she thanked New Haven’s state legislators in getting that number down to $4.6 million.

When they heard that [$.8.1 million] number, they went to bat for us,” Harp said.

Press gathered for Tuesday’s announcement, under the late Mayor Dick Lee’s watchful eye.

The administration still proposes to keep the mill rate steady at 41.55 for the second year in a row. To avoid a tax hike, it combined around $2.7 million in new cuts with $1.9 million in adjusted revenue projections, according to city budget chief Joe Clerkin.

The adjusted revenue projections include:

• Raising the cost of building permit fees from $2.70 to $3 per $1,000 worth of approved work. That ups the projected permit revenue in the budget by about $1.2 million, from $15 million to $16.2 million. The new projections do not assume more building projects coming online than assumed in March. The administration had already forecast a $5 million increase in fees based on ongoing projects at Yale, two planned Wooster Square developments (which had been held up by lawsuits that a judge threw out on Monday), among other planned building in the city’s torrid market.

* About $600,000 in extra parking meter fees. Clerkin said that the amount of monthly fees collected has risen faster than expected back in March, when the administration submitted its original budget proposal.

• Another $100,000 in reimbursement from businesses for the use of police vehicles on extra-duty jobs. Again, Clerkin said, the actual reciepts in recent months have exceeded projections.

The newly proposed cuts in the budget include:

• $770,000 in lost state cost-sharing grants for the schools. The Board of Ed will have to find that money to cut on its own, Clerkin and Harp said.

• Another $565,000 in education costs from the city’s general fund — again, for the Board of Ed to identify. (The Board of Alders approves a single overall line item for education spending in the annual budget process.)

• Cancellation of 18 planned new jobs: five school crossing guards, two librarians, a library technical assistant, a senior personnel analyst in human resources, three parks maintenance positions, a grant writer and two body camera specialists in the police department (which would complicate the rollout of body cameras), an urban design coordinator in the City Plan department, and a job employment coordinator and a housing code inspector in the Livable City Initiative.

Harp’s revised budget continues to call for hiring seven new public health nurses, a clerk typist in the human resources department, a legal secretary in the City Plan department, and a program coordinator for the building department.


An earlier version of this story follows:

City’s State Budget Hit Shrinks To $4.6M

The final new state budget passed late last week by legislators sliced almost in half the amount of a cut in aid to New Haven — and thus made it easier to avoid a local tax increase.

So reported New Haven Mayor Toni Harp on WNHH Radio’s Mayor Monday” program.

We’re much better off than we were last week,” Harp said, thanking the city’s state legislators. It could have been worse.”

She was referring to the news the city received a week earlier — that to close a $930 billion gap, state legislators had revised their budget for the upcoming fiscal year in part by canceling $8.1 million of promised municipal aid to New Haven. That threw a last-minute wrench into the Harp administration’s proposed city budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, which was in the latter stages of alder review, and which had counted on a full $15 million increase in urban aid.

It turned out that that version of the state budget included even more cuts to New Haven, totaling $9 million, Harp said Monday. Then, once the state House and Senate approved the final version of their budget by week’s end, that figure had shrunk to $4.6 million (thanks in part to a lessening of a promised statewide car-tax cut). The governor is expected to sign the budget.

That $4.6 million last-minute gap still will require some hard work, Harp said, but her staff is trying very hard” to avoid a mill rate increase and feels more confident about that prospect.

She said most or all city departments will probably have to take a haircut” on non-personnel expenses. Also, some new positions added in her proposed city budget, such as at the library, may have to go unfilled. She plans to reveal specifics of the modified plan at a Tuesday press conference; Wednesday night the Board of Alders Finance Committee meets to vote on a final version of the city budget. Board of Alders leaders have been waiting on Harp’s administration to take the lead on where to find cost savings to cover the new gap.

The biggest remaining unsolved challenge is how to deal with $2.5 million the state is taking away in reimbursements for transporting kids to school. Much of that money goes to bus out-of-district kids to magnet, charter, private, or parochial schools in New Haven. The state mandates that cities provide that transportation; until now the state had covered the cost.

The state also plans to cancel $1 billion in approved bonding to address its long-term fiscal problems. Harp said Monday that her understanding is that funding remains safe for New Haven projects like the new Dixwell Q House and a two-way protected cycletrack on the west side of the town. But the city probably won’t proceed with plans to apply for additional state bond money for improvements to the Green, she said.

Click on or download the above sound file to hear the full WNHH Mayor Monday” interview with Toni Harp, which also touched on citywide clean-up initiaitives, her visit to the White House with UConn’s women’s basketball team, and New Haven’s signing on to become a bird sanctuary city.”.

Monday’s Mayor Monday” episode of Dateline New Haven” was made possible in partnership with Gateway Community College.

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