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Thomas Breen |
Aug 15, 2025 8:14 am
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101 College: Higher tax $$ en route.
A brand new 10-story, 500,000 square-foot life science research and office building is slated to yield only $92,715 in local real estate tax revenue this fiscal year — though that number could jump to more than $2 million next year.
That’s because that property — located at 101 College St. — is still in the early years of its participation in the city’s standard seven-year assessment-deferral program. Half of the property’s post-construction tax assessment increase should phase in next year, and the full value should be on the tax rolls by 2030.
City Budget Director Shannon McCue (center): Capital investments now save repair costs later.
Alder Smith (right), with Chair Marchand and Alder Punzo: "The Board of Ed always seems to be running a deficit."
An unexpected $11 million in state funding is slated to help the city pay for fire truck upgrades, school building fixes, and a budgetary lifeline for the Board of Education.
At their latest monthly meeting Monday night, Finance Committee alders advanced two proposals from Mayor Justin Elicker to accept that additional state money.
Budget Director McCue (right), with Mayor Elicker: $3M designed to help address "learning gaps, student well-being, and staff retention."
The Elicker administration has formally proposed setting aside $3 million in surprise state aid as “contingency funding” to help the school district close a budget deficit and avoid teacher layoffs.
CRB admin Aly Heimer: “If the board ends up with an overage and the city tries to reclaim uncommitted funds, putting it into a CD helps protect it."
The Civilian Review Board voted Monday night to invest $400,000 of its budget into a 12-month certificate of deposit (CD), in an effort to generate additional income to support its police oversight work — and to protect the funds from being reclaimed by the city.
Alder Anna Festa, right, makes a motion to cut three proposed finance jobs.
Finance Committee alders voted to leave the mayor’s “primarily status-quo budget” primarily as is — while tweaking it to prioritize food aid, street-level maintenance, and reserves for an era of turbulent Trump funding.
Community Resilience Director Tirzah Kemp (center) in a room full of advocates for funding schools, food, and more.
(Updated) Mayor Justin Elicker hopes to add 13 new city jobs to New Haven’s general fund budget in the coming fiscal year.
Alders are now weighing whether to approve those new positions amid a host of separate funding requests from local food pantries, teachers, homeless rights advocates, and others.
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Laura Glesby |
May 2, 2025 10:28 am
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Lorrice Grant, director of the food pantry Loaves and Fishes: "My heart breaks for the families that are coming in the door looking for hope, and they’re seeing just a few cans left..."
Grant's fellow food advocates held up signs saying "Food is a Human Right," "Hungry for Change," and "Good Food For All."
Lines outside the food pantry six hours early.
Food bank delivery trucks 7,000 pounds lighter than usual.
Bare shelves. Empty stockrooms. Cans in the kitchen cupboard, but no produce or protein in the fridge.
Those scenes are unfolding in New Haven’s food pantries and family kitchens as the Trump administration’s food funding cuts collide with growing local hunger.
Volunteers Tony Evans and Zelinda Clerk prep food for new Community Soup Kitchen outpost in the Hill.
As the Trump administration slashes federal food bank funding, local food access advocates are calling for New Haven to step in with nearly $1 million in city support.
Pullen: First comes the letter, then comes the tax bill.
The Elicker administration is stepping up efforts to collect car taxes, by hiring a firm to help identify motor vehicles that aren’t — but should be — on the city’s tax rolls.
Kelly Marshall, at Ives on Friday: If the libraries were open on Sundays, "I would be here."
City Librarian Maria Bernhey: Access to library services has grown, even if all five remain closed on Sundays.
Thomas Breen file photo
Mayor Elicker: "We’re doing the best we can with the resources we have.”
Three years after Mayor Justin Elicker announced that the city’s public libraries would be open on Sundays, all five branches remain closed on that weekend day — with no plan in place to make that previously promised change a reality.
Jorell Alford, Mell Savage, and other U-ACT organizers listen to Elicker's budget presentation.
Unhoused activists took their proposed “People’s Budget” directly to Mayor Justin Elicker Wednesday evening — bringing signs, printed copies of their proposal, tents, and calls for more money for homelessness services to the latest city budget town hall meeting.
Elicker: "I have a bald spot because I’m losing my hair over trying to get these projects done."
“I’m paying more in taxes, but the services that I’m receiving as a resident are not going up,” Yoland Highsmith told Mayor Justin Elicker at a city budget-focused town hall.
Gloria Bellacicco agreed, criticizing the Tweed Airport expansion for taking too long and disrupting quality of life. “To be honest, I haven’t seen New Haven finish one project that it starts,” said Bellacicco. “So if you’re going to raise our taxes, finish the projects, please.”
More than $56 million in assessed real estate value has disappeared from New Haven’s tax rolls more than a year after Yale purchased the med-tech complex at 300 George St.
It will take 13 years for the city to feel that revenue hit — even if the university stands to reap the full benefits of the property’s partial tax exemption in the long run.
Teachers union prez Blatteau (right): "The proposed 2.4% increase is not enough to maintain current staffing levels, in an already understaffed system."
Mayor Justin Elicker has proposed a $5 million increase in municipal education funding for the coming fiscal year — covering less than a quarter of the $23.2 million boost requested by schools Supt. Madeline Negrón.
With “tremendous uncertainty,” funding-freeze threats, and anticipated “draconian” cuts coming out of Washington, D.C., Mayor Justin Elicker proposed on Friday a “primarily status quo” city budget — which would see the general fund grow by 3.63 percent and the local tax rate rise by 2.3 percent.
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Laura Glesby, Dereen Shirnekhi, Thomas Breen and Paul Bass |
Jan 28, 2025 5:55 pm
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DeLauro: "This is nothing less than highway robbery."
Thomas Breen file photo
Mayor Elicker (right), with Acting CAO McCarthy Wednesday, after the Trump administration rescinded the funding-freeze memo: "What a waste of time and energy."
(Updated) Elected officials and grassroots nonprofit leaders scrambled to figure out how to keep government and social services running at home amid a frenzied nationwide battle over a Trump administration plan to freeze federal spending.
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Thomas Breen |
Aug 20, 2024 3:10 pm
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Mike Gormany: Working on the weekends to help new city budget director transition into the role.
The Elicker administration has contracted with the city’s former budget director to help the city’s new budget director transition into her role, with an indefinite agreement that pays $55 an hour for up to 19 hours a week.
by
Laura Glesby |
May 29, 2024 5:49 pm
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Morris Cove Alder Sal DeCola introduces the ammo-storage amendment.
In a last-minute federal funding reallocation on Tuesday evening, alders unanimously voted to spend $250,000 in Covid-recovery aid on a new police ammunition storage unit.
Finance Chair Marchand, second from right, led committee in approving some — but not all — new city positions.
A key committee of alders endorsed a city budget with standalone housing code enforcement and parks departments, though with fewer positions than the mayor had wanted.
They also advanced a 3.49 percent rise in the mill rate, rather than the 3.98 percent increase the mayor had proposed.
LCI's Javier Ortiz investigates conditions in a Vernon St. apartment.
Liam Brennan, hired by city to review LCI.
A former mayoral candidate has been tapped to guide future reforms to enhance housing code and blight enforcement at the Livable City Initiative (LCI), as the Board of Alders reviews a mayoral proposal to remove affordable housing development from that city agency’s work.
NHFD Paramedic Keith Kerr treats man who overdosed on heroin.
The number of paramedics employed by the city’s fire department has plummeted from around 40 a few years ago to just 15 today — hiking mandatory overtime and prompting the city to recruit workers from out of town and state.
Only one kind of grass allowed for public mower job hopefuls.
City of New Haven job posting
Pre-employment drug test required for seasonal parks caretaker job.
If you want to make $18 an hour cutting grass in the city’s parks this summer, then you better not smoke grass before applying for the job.
Because New Haven requires prospective seasonal parks workers to pass a drug test, including for marijuana, even though recreational cannabis is now legal statewide.
Chief Jacobson: "We see what happens if our officers aren't well."
Sometimes police respond over and over again to the same address for mental health calls that would best be served by an agency like Clifford Beers or COMPASS or the Veterans Affairs medical center.
So the city’s police department wants to add a new lieutenant position focused on making sure those connections take place — for the betterment of community and officer “health and wellness” alike.
