Mike Stratton didn’t get to say as much as he wanted during a hearing Thursday night on the proposed new city budget, but he held forth at length afterward, sharing the details of a plan he claims would save taxpayers $105 million.
Stratton, a freshman Prospect Hill/Newhallville alder, shared the details of that proposal Thursday evening in an auditorium in the Hooker School on Whitney Avenue. He was piggy-backing on the the first public hearing on Mayor Toni Harp’s proposed $510 million city budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
The Board of Alders Finance Committee met at 7 p.m. at the Hooker School on Whitney Avenue to take public testimony on the mayor’s plan, which would raise property taxes by 3.8 percent. (You can explore the proposed budget in an interactive website here.)
The hearing took place in East Rock, where homeowners in general pay the city’s highest taxes.
Neighbor after neighbor slammed the proposed tax hike Thursday night. A number of people said they would have to move out of town, driven out by skyrocketing property taxes.
Before the meeting, Alder Stratton and other members of the breakaway group of city lawmakers known as the People’s Caucus released a plan they claim would avoid a tax hike — and even lead to a tax decrease.
Hill Alder Andrea Jackson-Brooks (pictured), the committee’s chair, declined to allow Stratton to speak about his proposals at the outset of the meeting, which led to a testy exchange later in the evening. Click the video at the top of the story to watch it.
“This is disrespectful,” Jackson-Brooks told him. “Please do not do this again.”
“Don’t say ‘sir’ to me and I can’t respond!” Stratton responded.
The People’s Caucus, a dissenting group formed as an alternative to the Board of Alders majority, released its own 10-point budget plan Thursday afternoon.
Among the proposals in the plan: Cut several city departments by 10 percent, consolidate departments, offer lump-sum incentives to convince city workers to switch to pension and health plans that are less costly to the city, charge out-of-town-property owners higher taxes, and stop supporting the New Haven Open tennis tournament.
The People’s Caucus members — Alders Stratton, Claudette Robinson-Thorpe, Richard Spears, Carlton Staggers, Anna Festa, and Brenda Foskey-Cyrus — claimed that their 10-point plan could save the city between $38 million and $105 million.
The list drew immediate scorn from Mayor Harp. She called it “irresponsible” and said it should be rejected immediately.
“The proposals suggested by the Peoples Caucus of the Board of Alders should be dismissed outright because they move our city in the wrong direction in terms of resource allocation and basic economic strategy,” Harp said in an emailed statement. “My proposed budget is a responsible, initial approach to long-term sustainability – it creates a Rainy Day Fund, makes progress to reduce the city’s pension liability, and provides for new classes of police officers and firefighters – all with a proposed budget increase of just 2.68 percent.”
In interviews, Board of Alders President Jorge Perez and budget chief Joe Clerkin both raised questions about the practicality of many of the People’s Caucus proposals. City Controller Daryl Jones Thursday night called the plan nonsensical.
In the 10-point plan’s preamble, the People’s Caucus alders acknowledge that not all their proposed ideas are necessarily practical.
“The alternatives we propose are not ready for a vote. They are ideas that come from laypeople. No team of experts has signed off on the viability or legality of any of these proposals,” it reads. “So forgive us if we have proposed something which is determined to be legally impossible or factually wrong or not beneficial for our city.”
Stratton (pictured) predicted that at least one item on the 10-point plan could make the difference in the upcoming governor’s race. Gov. Dannel Malloy will have “hell to pay” trying to rack up a huge majority again in New Haven in this year’s reelection campaign if the state doesn’t send the city all the payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) to which it’s legally entitled, Stratton said. New Haven was the key to Malloy’s success in his 2010 election; he won the city by 18,613 votes, and has been courting the city’s vote-influencers assiduously in the run-up to the 2014 election. That was more than three times his statewide 5,637-vote margin of victory.
“Please”
One after another, neighbors stepped up to decry the proposed tax hike Thursday evening. Many said they or people they know planto leave town because the property taxes have become intolerable. Few offered specific plans for avoiding the tax hike, but several slammed the mayor’s proposal to increase the number of staff in her office and the city clerk’s request for more workers.
Budget watchdog Christine Bishop (pictured) said that the mayor’s budget does not even outline what a proposed new office of development and policy in the mayor’s office would do. For $246,000 in salary costs, the “budget should mention what your lofty goals are,” she said. (The office would pursue grants.)
One of the most emotional pleas for not raising taxes came from Gerald Kahn of St. Ronan Street. He said he has lived there for 35 years and sent his kids to New Haven public schools. “I love this city,” he said. “But I can’t live here anymore.”
“Please don’t go along,” Kahn (pictured) urged alders. “Don’t just say, ‘Gee, it’s a problem but the mayor is working on it.’”
“New Haven is a depressed and dying city,” said Adrienne Lewis. “It breaks my heart. I feel as though it’s a sin. We’re living in sin.”
“New Haven is poised, as the mayor said. It is poised to fall further into destruction,” said June Sachs. “Please have the courage to send this budget back for revision.”
Real estate agent Anne Marseille (pictured) said she is a lifelong resident of New Haven and East Rock. In the last year, she sold two houses for people who couldn’t afford their taxes, she said. Her own taxes might go up to $18,000, the sum her parents paid for her house in 1952, she said. “Nobody’s going to be left in East Rock. Italians are a dying breed there. East Rock is just going to be all of Yale.”
After nearly two hours, the budget hearing wrapped up, and a second, informal meeting commenced. Alder Stratton pulled a chair to the edge of the stage and spoke at length about the financial history of New Haven and his plans to set the city on better fiscal footing. Over 40 people stayed to hear what he had to say.
10 Points
Stratton outlined the People’s Caucus budget plan, The document includes some specific proposals and some statements of principle, and concludes with an outline of ways to spend the surplus the plan is intended to create.
Stratton said the plan would lead to layoffs in some areas, but create jobs in others, like public works and police.
The points are as follows:
1. No Tax Hike: A tax hike would kill jobs, devalue homes, and cut core services. “We should not consider a property tax hike this year even as a last resort.”
2. “Pay Up The PILOT, Governor”: The state should pay the city all the payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) to which the city is legally entitled. “This one issue would add 50 million to our budget.”
3. Department Cuts: The budget should include 10 percent cuts to the mayor’s office, the Board of Alders, the city clerk, and the chief administrative office. The police, fire, and public works departments should not be cut.
4. More Cuts: The finance department should be cut severely. Payroll, information technology and workers compensation duties should be outsourced. The economic development department should be eliminated, and replaced by two or three people working out of the mayor’s office. “Raising taxes to pay for economic development makes no sense. Economic development will happen when our taxes and services are stable and attractive.”
5. Consolidation: All code enforcement should be done by the Livable City Initiative. The engineering department should be absorbed by public works. The registrar’s office should use the clerk’s office staff. All social services should be combined. “Now elderly, youth, community services, equal opportunity, fair rent, disability, health all have directors and most [have] staffs and they are mainly grant pass throughs. They aren’t providing the services. This can all be done more efficiently for big savings with better more coordinated services.”
6. “Smart Pension”: The city should pay workers incentives to move from defined benefit pension plans to defined contribution plans. “The present value of every employee pension plan can be actuarially determined. The city should implement a lump sum offer program of 35 – 50 cents on the dollar to buy out these pensions.”
The city should take a similar approach to workers’ health benefits plans. Employees would receive one-time bonuses for switching to lower coverage plans.
7. Education Cuts: “We estimate that the city has been paying dramatically more to the BOE [Board of Ed] (85 million more) than has been reported on the BOE budget, to labor negotiators, to alders, and to ECS [Education Cost Sharing] funders. … We propose at the very least taking back the 28m in this year’s budget, and going forward continue to trim.”
8. No To Tennis; Yes To Music: The city should not support the New Haven Open tennis tournament or the Shubert Theater. “In their place, we should plan music festivals around the city.” (The city gives $100,000 to the New Haven Open each year.)
“There should be no further debt acquisition until we get to a smaller payment schedule. The exceptions are projects already approved like [LiveWorkLearnPlay — the coliseum development] and the [Route] 34 corridor. Another exception would be a severe emergency causing damage or an extraordinary opportunity which is self sustaining with little risk.”
9. A Tax On Outsiders: People who own property but don’t live in New Haven should pay higher taxes than people who live and own property in the city. Taxes for out-of-town landowners could go up four mills. Taxes for New Haven residents could go down two mills.
10. What To Buy With The Surplus: Implementing Items 1 through 9 would result in savings of “at least” $38 million and maybe as much as $105 million. That money should be spent as follows:
• $12 million in “fixed costs,” to avoid a tax increase.
• $6 million to reduce property taxes.
• $6 million for a year-round jobs program for youth. “We could afford to pay 1,000 kids $5,000 a year, $100 a week. A WPA [Works Progress Administration] for our kids.”
• $3 million in incentives for city workers to live in New Haven. “This would include a $5,000 tax rebate annually for up to 500 city workers who move here and buy a home. In addition it would include $500,000 in tax rebates for retired city fire and police who agree to be youth officers and assist with community policing 10 hours a week.”
• $3 million to “give 6 wards annually ($500k each) the right to decide and build their own project in their own ward overseen by a new participatory democracy commission made up of volunteers.”
• $3 million for three new beat cops in five new neighborhoods.
• $5 million to “build a comprehensive youth sports and arts program so every kid has access to easily accessible healthy after-school and summer programming.”
Not So Fast
Jones, the city controller, said Thursday evening that the People’s Caucus plan doesn’t hold water.
“It’s not good budgeting,” he said. “I’ve glanced at what [Stratton] has done. I really don’t understand it. … It’s very difficult to understand because it’s really not fleshed out.”
Jones contrasted the People’s Caucus plan — a few pages long, put together in a few days — to the mayor’s proposed budget: hundreds of pages long and developed over a period of months. “It’s backed up by facts. It’s not something we just put together.”
“Just because someone’s saying it would save millions of dollars doesn’t make it true,” Alder Perez, president of the board said, said earlier Thursday. He said he hadn’t had time to look at the People’s Caucus plan in depth. “If people think there’s a savings in there, it should be looked at.”
Asked specifically about a couple of the proposals, Perez said that while he’s not a lawyer, they seem problematic.
The pension buy-out idea, for instance, doesn’t seem feasible, he argued. “I would think that’s something that could not be done unilaterally. I would think that because it’s a contractual obligation, both sides would have to agree to it.”
Perez said he doesn’t see anyone leaping to accept an offer of 35 cents on the dollar for a pension.
The plan to charge out-of-town property owners more in taxes would also likely be impossible, without permission from the state, said Perez.
Budget Director Joe Clerkin also raised concerns when asked about some of the People’s Caucus proposals.
Consolidating departments wouldn’t save money by itself, unless it meant personnel reductions, Clerkin said. He said he’d have to see some kind of analysis of the “walkover” of expenses from one department to another.
Also, Clerkin warned, it may be impossible to eliminate some departments if they are enshrined in the city charter or state statutes.
“Wow,” Clerkin said on the pension buy-back proposal. “It gets into our basic structure of the collective bargaining process that we have. … It would be a legal question to see if the city could even offer that outside of a collective bargaining process.”
The next hurdle would be all the actuarial computations needed to understand the ramifications of city workers all making individual deals with the city, Clerkin said.
On the proposed tax hike for out-of-towners, Clerkin said, “These are some challenging ideas.”
“I’m not sure, in terms of the law, how you would do that. And how you would check that,” Clerkin said. The proposal poses a host of questions about enforcement and fairness, he said.
Asked after the meeting about people’s testimony against the proposed tax hike, Alder Perez said, “I didn’t expect them to say, ‘Tax me.’”
“It’s a tough situation,” he said. “We’re going to have to look real hard to see what we can do.”
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Good for the People's Caucus to raise some issues and some possibilities for the future. But I don't think anyone will be fooled into thinking this is a serious proposal...