Hamden Budget Q: Create New Jobs While Raising Taxes?

Hamden lawmakers provisionally OK’d filling two new government positions early — but pressed for a broader discussion about whether the town should be funding new jobs while raising taxes by up to 3.68 mills.

The request by the Garrett administration to fund an arts, culture, recreation and wellness director as well as a second new position scraped through a Legislative Council finance committee meeting Monday night after three Republicans voted against allotting $100,000 to pay the potential hire even before the new fiscal year budget takes effect.

The finance committee’s four Democrats did vote in favor of moving the administrative ask forward to the rest of the council — but also put in a plea for more explanation as to why Mayor Lauren Garrett suggested paying for a total of six new municipal positions in her first draft of the fiscal year ​‘23 budget.

That preliminary proposed operating budget, which Garrett presented to the council on March 16, totals $278 million, a jump of $15.8 million from the previous year’s adopted budget. It also calls for upping Hamden’s mill rate to 56.12 mills, a hike of 3.68 from the current fiscal year.

On Monday night, council members offered some initial feedback regarding that budget draft when asked by administration to approve the two government jobs prior to upcoming workshops on the next fiscal year budget, which takes effect July 1.

The first request was to expedite the creation of an arts, culture, recreation and wellness director — a position designed to offer connective departmental oversight between arts and culture, parks and recreation, youth services, elderly services and community services.

Chief of Staff Sean Grace said the administration is looking to hire for the position before the end of budget season in order to begin planning extensive summer programming now, rather than waiting to boost town event planning until the following year. 

Garrett told the Independent that she wanted to fund the position in order to ensure diverse departments had supervision — and that the town was producing ​“accessible and equitable” programming by engaging people throughout town rather than just ​“gearing it towards Town Center Park.”

Council Republicans Marjorie Bonadies, Betty Wetmore, and Leslie DeNardis all voted against funding the job. They called it irresponsible to pay for such a position when the Mayor’s budget includes such a high tax spike for residents. They called Garrett’s proposal to hire six new government employees as too extravagant when the town has so many other expenses to pay off.

The whole committee, however, did agree to create a digital media and marketing coordinator, who is meant to ​“more efficiently promote the town’s public image through effective marketing, information and media relations programs” as part of the town’s efforts to boost economic development through self-branding, according to a letter from the administration to council.

That’s because the new marketing job was designed to replace the past arts and marketing manager, who made $80,000. The administration said that by pushing some of the responsibilities held by the old arts’ manager away from the upcoming digital media coordinator and onto a potential arts, culture, recreation and wellness director, the town will save $15,000.

Furthermore, while the arts, culture, recreation and wellness director would cost the town $100,000, back in November Garrett fired Julie Smith, the town’s community development manager, whose salary was $110,000.

Though Bonadies and DeNardis voted against the creation of an arts, culture, recreation and wellness director, they supported the digital media director.

“I’m gonna vote for savings,” Bonadies said. ​“I wanna see this reorganization work.”

“I’m voting for it, but I’m unclear about the overarching purpose of the position and the goal,” DeNardis added. 

“How does it relate to the overall mission of the town?” she asked. 

“It’s not clear to me… I’d like to have this conversation during budget deliberations,” she continued, asking for elaboration by administration regarding what sorts of performance measures they would be attaching to the positions to ensure new jobs will effectively streamline and bolster government operations.

Democrat Justin Farmer agreed. ​“Every year I’ve been on the council we’ve changed this position,” he said of the arts and community director. ​“It’s not really clear where we’re trying to head to.”

The council conversation sparked a broader conversation about how Hamden can and should restructure its governmental departments to boost revenue and cut costs, rather than amping up expenses.

In her budget draft, Garrett said that the town’s departments requested a total of 16 new jobs. Garrett suggested funding six of those: deputy tax assessor, an arts, culture, recreation and wellness director, a junior accountant in finance, a teen library specialist, an assistant in the arts, a town beautification coordinator. Those latter two positions would be part-time.

Those annual salaries are slated at, respectively, $77,145.80; $100,000; $20,000; $32,0000; $70,388.23; and $64,116. That comes to a total of $364,150.03, not including fringe benefits.

Garrett told the Independent that fringe benefits for full-time jobs would most likely land around 60 percent of their total salary, though the final number depends on variables such as what insurance plan the employee picks. Adding in the projected fringe takes the total cost up to roughly $551,140.

Other than the community development manager and arts and marketing manager, the only position cut by Garrett was a part-time energy efficiency coordinator, Kathleen Shomaker, who made $32,500 a year from the job.

Following the legislative meeting, the Hamden Republican Town Committee offered a statement concerning their stance on Garrett’s broader pitch to bring six new hires into town hall.

“Mayor Garrett’s proposal to add six new municipal positions in Hamden, paired with a 3.68-mill increase to the mill rate, is more evidence of her out-of-touch governance,” RTC member Andrew Tammarro wrote to the Independent.

“Residents are wondering why she prioritized lofty liberal social initiatives over providing financial relief to struggling families,” he stated. ​“The Republicans on the Legislative Council were right to veto the mayor’s request. The LC and the people of Hamden should know which 16 positions were considered and ultimately not chosen. This would be more on-brand of her campaign platform of transparency in government.” 

Fiscal-Crisis Analyst Weighs In

Christian McNamara, who leads a project at Yale School of Management developing responses to financial crises, offered a public analysis of Garrett’s proposed budget.

“Because this document is significantly more honest than recent proposed budgets, it comes the closest we’ve been to reflecting the true cost of running the town as currently operated,” McNamara wrote.

“I’m not sure I agree with the Mayor’s assertion that this budget is structurally balanced – we’re still budgeting approximately $4M less than our true debt service payment because of a restructuring and we’re also relying on $3M in building permit revenue stemming largely from a Quinnipiac buildup that seems unlikely to be a yearly occurrence. But we’re closer than we’ve been in recent memory.”

“In the immediate moment,” he wrote, ​“It would appear that we have two options – (a) accept the tax increase necessary to fund the true cost of running the town as currently operated or (b) identify things the town is spending money on, services it is providing to its residents, etc. that we are willing to go without in order to avoid further tax increases.”

McNamara noted that it would take approximately $3.7M in cuts to reduce the mill rate by 1 point. The primary challenges reflected in Garrett’s relatively blown up budget, he observes, are ​“unavoidable legacy costs resulting from long-term financial mismanagement (catchup pension payments, debt service)” and ​“contractual or other legal obligations that can’t be altered in the short-run (labor contracts, state restrictions or reducing education funding). …

“Any cuts must also not be ​‘penny wise, pound foolish.’ The Finance Department, for example, was significantly understaffed for a number of years. If this understaffing imposed inefficiency costs that were greater than the resulting savings (as many believe), such understaffing obviously wouldn’t make sense from a budgetary perspective.”

“In a well-intentioned effort to try to find all of the savings possible, past Councils have gone item-by-item through the budget, spending an inordinate amount of time debating individual expenditures as small as a few thousand dollars. The Council’s time would be far better spent on items of greater significance to the overall budget and on considering the hard choices that are at the core of an honest budget given Hamden’s financial situation – can/should residents bear the tax increase necessary to fund the true cost of running the town as currently operated or are there things we can do without to reduce that burden?”