Alders Cut 25 Jobs From Amended $662.7M Budget

A panel of alders left the mayor’s top-line budget and mill rate numbers intact — even as they recommended slashing more than two dozen proposed new positions from the city fiscal plan set to take effect July 1. 

On Thursday evening, the Board of Alders Finance Committee convened to vote on the $662.7 million general fund budget that Mayor Justin Elicker proposed on March 1 for Fiscal Year 2023 – 24 (FY24). The meeting, which took place in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall, culminated two months of the committee’s budget hearings.

The mayor’s original budget proposal would have seen the city’s general fund increase by 4.66 percent from the current fiscal year’s. It would have also seen the current 39.75 mill rate drop by 6.42 percent to a new mill rate of 37.2, in tandem with the second half of a two-year phase in of the latest citywide property revaluation.

On Thursday evening, Finance Committee alders voted to keep both the $662.7 million general fund budget amount and the 37.2 mill rate that the mayor had originally submitted. The mill rate is equal to $1 in taxes owed for every $1,000 in assessed taxable property value.

The committee alders significantly reduced the number of new positions Elicker had proposed for City Hall. The job eliminations didn’t result in a lower overall budget, however; they offset a series of technical amendments that the Elicker administration introduced Thursday night, which added up to around $2 million in additional costs. The committee alders balanced out that $2 million bump with savings from 25 new-position cuts, bringing the total budget back to Elicker’s starting point of $662.7 million — and saving $2 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding as the city contends with over 100 current personnel vacancies.

The Finance Committee’s amended version of the budget now heads to the full Board of Alders for further review and a final vote before taking effect on July 1.

Contracts Resolved, & Salaries Up

Prior to discussing those new, now-slashed job proposals Thursday, the Finance Committee voted to adopt 34 ​“technical amendments” to the budget submitted by the mayor’s office. 

Many of those amendments accounted for job title changes and scriveners’ errors. 

The amendments proposed a handful of new positions, including a new children’s librarian position for the Wilson library branch in the Hill as well as merging part-time inspector positions within the Building Department into two full-time positions.

The most fiscally impactful changes in those committee-adopted technical amendments were salary increases to members of Bargaining Units 3144, 844, and 1303‑C — three of the unions representing city employees whose long-awaited contracts were finalized after the budget process began. The salary increases amounted to $5,387,807 more than the city had originally planned for in March.

The mayor proposed offsetting some of the budget increases in the technical amendments with anticipated vacancy-related salary savings and a reduced Information Technology (IT) budget based on an agreement with the city’s IT workers.

Those adjustments left $2,250,000 to be accounted for in the budget. So the mayor proposed allocating an additional $2.5 million in ARPA funding, from the federal pandemic relief act, toward the city’s budget — bringing the budget’s total ARPA spending to $7.75 million. (Read the technical amendments here.)

25 Of 34 New Proposed Jobs Cut

On Thursday, Finance Committee Chair and Westville Alder Adam Marchand spoke in support of these amendments. The salary raises for city employees in particular, he said, will help the city’s hiring efforts.

But Marchand argued that, rather than using additional ARPA funds to balance the budget, the city should instead limit the number of new positions it’s creating. ​“There are multiple vacancies in many of the departments where the city is asking for new positions,” such as the police department, Marchand said.

Instead, to compensate for the added expense of the technical amendments, Marchand put forward an amendment that would remove 25 of the mayor’s 34 proposed new positions for the city. All of the personnel Marchand suggested eliminating were new additions to the FY24 budget and do not currently exist. (Read the full amendment here.)

“This says no to more than two thirds of those positions,” Marchand said. ​“We’ve said yes to efforts that the city has been making to make the city a more attractive place to work.”

Specifically, Marchand proposed taking out the following proposed positions: 

• An active transportation planner and parking enforcement officer in the Transportation, Traffic and Parking department;

• Three sergeants, three detectives, a lieutenant, and a municipal animal control officer in the police department;

• Three captains and a lieutenant in the fire department;

• A city projects and implementation coordinator in the Chief Administrative Officer’s department;

• A regulatory and compliance coordinator for the Commission on Equal Opportunities;

• A city planner;

• A deputy purchasing agent in the Finance Department;

• Two senior sanitarians and an environmental health operations manager in the Health Department;

• A parks foreperson and two caretakers in the Parks and Public Works department;

• And a park ranger in the Youth and Recreation department.

Marchand’s amendment retained one park ranger, two parks caretakers, a communications supervisor and operator dispatcher in the city’s 911 dispatch center, one crime analyst and one municipal animal control officer in the police department, two deputy purchasing agents in the finance department, and two labor relations attorneys focused on the Board of Education.

Marchand also proposed reducing proposed increases to budgets for temporary and part time employees among crossing guards and library aides and in the Youth and Rec, Engineering, Economic Development, and City Plan departments. He additionally rearranged the raises planned for a few city department heads to ensure that they would not be making less than the people they supervise.

In total, Marchand’s amendment amounted to $2.25 million in savings, accounting for the expenses added by the technical amendments.

If the city’s vacancies diminish, the mayor can return to the Finance Committee next budget season with some of the positions that were cut, Marchand noted.

Marchand’s colleagues praised his work in coming up with these line item changes, and most spoke up in support of the amendment.

“The mayor did not submit a frivolous budget to us. It was a thoughtful budget,” said Westville/Amity Alder ad Board of Alders Majority Leader Richard Furlow. ​“There’s a real need” for the new positions, he said, ​“but we cannot in good conscience add these positions with so many vacancies.” He noted, ​“Not using ARPA funds for salaries also makes a lot of sense.”

“Everyone’s not all happy, but everyone’s not all sad,” said Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison. ​“That’s what I call good negotiation.”

Festa: City Needs Active Transit Role

The sole committee alder to offer a counter-proposal was East Rock Alder Anna Festa. Festa had separately drafted an amendment eliminating many of the same positions that Marchand recommended zapping. She said she could compromise on several of the differences between the amendments, but argued that it was important to leave in the new Active Transportation Planner position — and sought to take out both, rather than just one, proposed park ranger position.

The Active Transportation Planner is important, Festa argued, ​“because of the push for pedestrian safety.” She cited a number of community members who testified in support of the position, which would coordinate initiatives for pedestrian, cyclist, and public transit improvements.

Meanwhile, Festa argued that both park ranger proposals should be eliminated for now because of the 2020 merger of the Youth Department with the ​“Recreation” half of the former Parks, Recreation, and Trees department. She called on the city to take a closer look at how the new Youth and Rec department is structured before adding new positions, since ​“a possible overhaul may need to be done.”

Furlow disagreed. ​“We had a lot of testimony on the condition of our parks,” he said, arguing that an added park ranger could help ameliorate those concerns.

Fair Haven Alder Ernie Santiago said he would support a move to eliminate both park ranger positions while adding back one of the caretaker positions. ​“If we have so many complaints about conditions of the parks, I would support that swap.” He would not, he added, support adding back in the Active Transportation Planner position.

Festa adopted Santiago’s edit, ultimately proposing to eliminate the second new park ranger while adding in both a caretaker and the Active Transportation Planner. Her amendment failed, with only Santiago supporting her.

The mayor’s technical amendments and Marchand’s amendment both passed, with Festa as the sole opponent against ten favorable votes.

"We Need An Open City Hall"

The Finance Committee considered a handful of other amendments on Thursday evening.

Festa suggested a ​“policy amendment” that would require all city departments to open up in person, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Festa noted that, as of Thursday, the state and country shifted policies to treat Covid-19 as an ​“endemic” illness rather than a ​“pandemic”; Thursday’s meeting was the first time that people in the Board of Alders’ chambers could come in without wearing face masks.

“In order to meet [residents’] needs, we need an open City Hall,” Festa said. 

Marchand responded that the topic of in-person operations would make for a worthwhile committee workshop, but not for a budget amendment. ​“I think it’s a good thing to talk about. I think it is totally inappropriate as a policy amendment,” he said.

Dwight Alder Frank Douglass said he believes that all city departments should operate in person. ​“I know we all get calls about people not getting the services they need. It’s hard getting in touch with offices,” he said.

Morrison disagreed. ​“You have to really dig down into each department” and legislate working conditions on a case-by-case basis, she said. ​“Covid showed us that it doesn’t necessarily have to be” the way things used to operate.

When it became clear that the amendment would not pass, Festa retracted it.

Meanwhile, Morris Cove Alder Sal DeCola proposed transferring $50,000 from the city’s ​“Central Services/Other Contractual Services” account to contribute to the Shubert Theater, where he volunteers. DeCola said that the change would bolster the theater’s educational initiatives, including a summer job program for local students.

“We should all support this,” said Douglass. ​“I have seen the change that’s come” from programs at the Shubert like this one, he said. The theater is ​“open to people who look like me, more so.”

Marchand asked where, exactly, the money would be coming from.

DeCola said the $50,000 would come from the city’s energy fund. While he didn’t know exactly how much the city currently budgets for energy, he said he checked with Acting Controller/Budget Director Mike Gormany, who said ​“it will not affect our bottom line.” (The mayor budgeted $850,000 for at least some of its energy costs, under the line items City Fuel Cell and Citywide Services and Government Center Energy, as outlined on page 2 – 83 of the budget.)

The committee unanimously voted to adopt this amendment.

The FY24 budget will next go before the full Board of Alders on May 22.