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Monday night’s Finance Committee budget hearing.
Will the Covid-19 pandemic tank the city’s pension funds? Will it cause municipal employee healthcare costs to skyrocket?
And how will it change the process of voting during this year’s presidential election? Or the means by which the city conducts its once-a-decade revaluation of all New Haven properties?
The department heads responsible for those areas of city government assured alders that the magnitude of the pandemic’s impact on all aspects of city government will be large, even if the details of that impact are, for now, largely uncertain.
That conversation took place Monday night during the second half of the Board of Alders Finance Committee’s six-hour public hearing and departmental workshop focused on Mayor Justin Elicker’s proposed $569.1 million general fund budget for Fiscal Year 2020 – 2021 (FY21).
The meeting took place entirely online via the Zoom video-conferencing app. So many members of the public and department heads crowded into the virtual budget hearing that the city reached the 100-person attendance cap allowed by its Zoom account.
Click here to watch a video recording of the full meeting.
Just as the novel coronavirus outbreak and the twin public health and economic crises that have come in its wake have affected every aspect of New Haven (and global) society right now, alders asked the managers of the nine city departments on Monday night’s budget hearing agenda how the pandemic might impact their work in the fiscal year ahead.
The answers, from the City Clerk’s office to the Registrar of Voters to Corporation Counsel to the Finance Department, were similar: No one really knows. But New Haveners can rest assured that whatever that impact is, financially and operationally, it will likely be significant.
City Clerk Michael Smart (pictured at right) noted that his office handles distributing and collecting absentee ballots. His staff had already expected higher-than-average absentee ballot voting for the rescheduled presidential primary this June and the general election in December. The next fiscal year starts July 1.
“I think there probably will be all absentee voting” in coming elections because of the social distancing measures required to steam the spread of the virus, Smart said.
Are there any state legislative changes in the works that would change the process of voting to allow for early voting, voting by mail, and expansion of no-excuse absentee voting? asked East Rock Alder Charles Decker.
“I’m hearing that,” Smart said. “We’re just waiting to get complete confirmation. I don’t think it’s going to be normal.”
Democratic Registrar of Voters Shannel Evans (pictured) confirmed that her office too is in conversation with Secretary of the State Denise Merrill about “our next moves, whether we’re doing mail-in ballots or no-excuse absentees.”
She said she still expects in-person voting to take place in some fashion next fisacl year. She said she plans to equip every polling place with hand sanitizers, and is working on sewing handmade face masks for polling place volunteers.
“This is a virus that we have no control over,” she said. “Are we going to have people have their own pens? Are we going to wipe down every single pen?” She said she also plans to have more poll workers standing outside polling places ensuring that people follow social distancing guidelines.
City Acting Assessor Alex Pullen (pictured) said that his office hopes to get a Request for Proposals (RFP) out in the next few months for this year’s state mandated once-a-decade revaluation of all New Haven properties.
“But we also realize that with the Covid-19 pandemic going on, we may not want to put data collectors out in the field this summer,” he said.
He said the city will need to have “difficult discussions with the state” about whether or not legislators are up for amending existing statutes to allow for a statistical revaluation rather than a “full, physical reval.”
“I really can’t see inspectors wanting to go door to door while there’s a pandemic going on,” he said.
When will the city property owners ultimately receive notice of their properties’ new values? Marchand asked.
Pullen said that won’t be until October or November of 2021.
Michelle Duprey (pictured), the head of the city’s disability services department, said that her department was planning on hosting a 30th anniversary celebration of the passage of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by inviting members of the public to patronize handicap-accessible local restaurants.
Those plans will likely have to change, she said, since the celebrations were scheduled for July, and public health social distancing mandates have prohibited all dine-in restaurant service.
Cathleen Simpson, the city’s new labor relations director, said that the city has suspended all contract negotiations right now with the five municipal unions with contracts are set to expire next fiscal year.
“We have had to postpone contract negotiations,” she said. Plus, all grievances and charges before the labor board are currently on hold right now.
And city Acting Budget Director and Acting Controller Michael Gormany and Manager of Human Resources and Benefits Stephen Librandi (pictured) stressed that the pandemic’s impact on city pension payments and employee benefit costs, which make up a combined roughly 30 percent of the general fund budget, is similarly uncertain.
The city is slated to pay over $62 million into the city’s two underfunded public pension funds this year, Gormany said. That’s the amount recommended by city-hired actuaries, who provide the city with an updated Annual Required Contribution (ARC) pension contribution number every two years.
East Rock Alder Anna Festa pointed out that the city’s pension funds currently assume a 7.75 percent annual rate of return. “In light of our downfall financially [because of Covid], our rate of return is also going to decrease,” she said. Does that mean the city and the two boards of directors that control the municipal pension funds need to change the expected rate of return?
Gormany cautioned that decreasing the expected rate of return will mean higher pension contributions by the city. “Lowering ranging from $4 million to an additional $8 million once you get to 6.25 [percent] and that was just for Police and Fire,” he said. “People have to undersand, if you lower the rate of return, your ARC payment increases a lot.”
And what about the potential impact on healthcare benefits that the city provides for city employees and dependents? asked Decker.
Westville Alder and Finance Committee Vice-Chair Adam Marchand pointed out that the proposed budget keeps the medical benefits line item flat year-over-year at just over $84 million.
“Is it completely unknowable?” Decker asked about how Covid-19 might change the actual amount of money spent by the city and employee benefits.
“I think it’s unknowable,” responded Librandi. He said it really depends on the number of city employees who get sick.
He said the cost of testing for coronavirus is relatively negligible, around $500 per test.
“However, it is dependent on how well social distancing works for the 12,000 lives that we cover. And then within that, how many end up in the hospital?
“When we put the budget together in February, we weren’t here. We all know how much has changed very quickly in the past couple months. I don’t know if anyone could possibly project what the impact could be.”
The rules for absentee voting are embedded in the constitution of the State of Connecticut. A few years ago a proposed amendment to the constitution that would have allowed the legislature to implement some form of change in this process was voted down. The absolute earliest that this could change would be in the 2022 state election.