By The #‘s: 13 New Jobs Pitched For City Hall

(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.

Elicker has framed his $703,765,049 budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2025 – 26 as a ​“primarily status-quo budget,” with nearly half of the proposed new jobs expected to bring in new forms of revenue for the city to offset their salaries. The mayor’s proposed budget includes a 3.63 percent spending increase, as well as a 2.3 percent increase to the local tax rate.

The proposed new positions include a tree trimmer, three parking enforcement officers, two assistant building and plans officials, a deputy controller, a chief data officer, and an Engineering Department resource analyst and scheduler, among other roles. The mayor has also proposed moving the director of community resilience into the general fund budget now that that position’s one-time federal funding is running out.

Requests for new positions in City Hall tend to be a focal point of alders’ budget amendments. Over the last three years, alders have denied a total of 47 new city jobs included in mayoral budget proposals, nixing at least 10 new positions per year.

The 13 proposed positions for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1, are likely to undergo close review by alders this week.

Each position is listed in the budget proposal alongside a corresponding salary, but additional funding is typically required to actually hire a given employee, due to pension and medical benefits that depend on each person’s unique circumstances. According to city spokesperson Lenny Speiller, the city generally budgets for pension costs at about 12 percent of an employee’s salary and medical costs at about 42 percent of an employee’s salary, with the understanding that these numbers are likely to vary.

In total, the proposed new positions would cost $1,057,563 in salaries, as well as — roughly — $126,908 in pension costs and $444,176 in healthcare costs. That adds up to a total of about $1,628,647.

The city currently has 1,427 full-time employees, not including the school system, according to Speiller.

The budget review process is unfolding at a time of widespread cuts in federal programs, leaving the fate of assistance ranging from food aid to healthcare and public benefits uncertain. Some federal grants allocated to the city are also in limbo — such as an already-promised EPA award that the city is currently suing the federal government in order to obtain.

The city’s public school system is simultaneously gearing up to lay off 129 employees (including 56 teachers) due to an anticipated $16.5 million budget shortfall. Elicker has proposed increasing the city’s contribution to public schools by $5 million this year (bringing the general fund’s contribution up to $213.2 million in total), and has called on the State of Connecticut to make up the difference. 

Over the course of several hearings held by the Board of Alders Finance Committee in recent weeks, city department leaders had a chance to advocate for the various proposed new positions. Here’s what they said.

A Permanent Department of Community Resilience

One of the new positions proposed by the Elicker administration isn’t, in fact, a new position at all — though, if approved, it would set up a structural change in how the city funds certain social services.

Specifically, Elicker has proposed a general fund allocation of $125,000 for the director of the city’s Department of Community Resilience, the department overseeing homelessness, mental health, violence intervention, and re-entry programs. 

The department was created in 2021 using federal pandemic relief funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). It enveloped some services that were part of city government prior to the pandemic, including services related to homelessness and prison re-entry. It also built up new programs through ARPA funding, including community mental health and violence prevention initiatives.

The end-of-2024 deadline to commit ARPA funding has already passed, and the pandemic aid must be spent by the end of 2026, per federal requirements. With those deadlines coming up, the city must decide whether — and how — to continue funding the Community Resilience department.

For now, the only ARPA-funded position for which funds are slated to run out in the next fiscal year is the department’s director, a role now occupied by Tirzah Kemp. Kemp said that she is working to find new funding sources for any programs slated to lose funding by the ARPA spending deadline in 2026.

If alders approve Elicker’s proposed change this year, the city would commit to a more permanent funding structure for the department’s director, and Kemp would be able to continue on in her role.

Finance Committee Chair and Westville Alder Adam Marchand asked Kemp and her supervisor, Community Services Administrator Eliza Halsey, at a recent City Hall meeting to explain why the city should retain the department. ​“The decision to bring this position into the general fund, in a sense, is to say, ​‘Creating this department was a good idea,’” he said.

Halsey stressed that a supervisor to specifically coordinate the services covered by the Community Resilience department is needed. ​“I would not have enough time in the day to do what she is doing” on top of her current role, Halsey said about Kemp’s role.

“There’s just too much work,” echoed Kemp. ​“In this day and age, we’re gonna need resilient communities.”

"Revenue-Generating" Building & Parking Jobs

Six of the proposed new jobs are parking and building enforcement positions, which bring in revenue for the city by way of permit fees and parking tickets. Elicker’s proposal estimates that the revenue brought in by these employees would entirely offset the costs of their salaries.

In the Department of Transportation, Traffic & Parking, the mayor’s proposed budget would add four new positions to its parking enforcement wing: three parking enforcement officers (making $50,482 each) and one parking enforcement field supervisor (making $64,872).

Department director Sandeep Aysola explained that the new positions, if approved, would help the department shift to a more proactive approach to traffic enforcement in neighborhoods outside of downtown.

The city currently has 12 full-time and seven part-time parking enforcement officer positions, according to the department’s deputy director, Eric Hoffman. 

According to Aysola, most of those employees currently focus on monitoring metered parking spots downtown as well as specific enforcement related to street sweeping and snow ploughing. Two members of the team focus on covering the rest of the city, with one person assigned to east side neighborhoods and the other assigned to west side neighborhoods. Those two staffers focused outside of downtown spend most of their time responding to constituent concerns reported via SeeClickFix, according to Aysola. 

Aysola said that the added parking enforcement officers would expand the department’s capacity to proactively catch parking violations unrelated to meter payments.

Meanwhile, in the building department, Elicker’s proposal would add two assistant building and plans officials, who would join six existing city employees with that title and each make $92,941.

Those building officials review the plans and permits for all proposed new construction in the city while also conducting inspections out in the field, according to the head of the building department, Bob Dillon.

Dillon told the Finance Committee that he needs more staff in order to keep up with ​“increased demand with Yale University’s upcoming multi-billion dollar capital plan,” alongside other expected major development projects.

He said that the city has been in conversation with Yale facilities leadership to assess the need for more capacity to oversee building conditions for Yale’s forthcoming new drama school hub and ongoing overhaul of Science Hill in the upcoming fiscal year. 

The building department is also regulating massive projects unaffiliated with Yale, Dillon said, naming ConnCORP’s redevelopment of Dixwell Plaza as one example. Meanwhile, there is all the smaller-scale construction that requires building department oversight, such as ​“people who want to put decks on, and any other dream they have for their house.”

From July 2024 to mid-April 2024, Dillon said that the building department brought in nearly $18.5 million in revenue from fees, while conducting nearly 6,000 inspections and issuing over 2,500 permits.

Public Space Builders & Maintainers

Two new positions have been proposed for the city’s Engineering Department, which undertakes a wide variety of projects, including constructing and rehabilitating city buildings, redesigning parks and streets, repairing bridges, spearheading climate-resilient infrastructure, and more. Each position would make a salary of $85,000.

One proposed new engineering position is a resource analyst and scheduler, which City Engineer Giovanni Zinn defined as ​“someone that helps us track time, similar to how accountants track money.” In other words, this employee would help the city monitor and coordinate schedules for the many different staff members and engineering projects at hand, with the goal of ensuring that as many resources as possible are being used at a given moment.

The position is ​“something very often used in the construction world,” explained Zinn.

The other proposed engineering position is a civil works specialist, who would be tasked with monitoring and inspecting ongoing construction projects — ​“making sure the city’s getting what we’re paying for,” said Zinn.

Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers asked Zinn whether these positions will help the city better stay on track to complete infrastructure projects, especially sidewalk repairs, when promised.

“We talk a lot about why infrastructure takes along as it does, it’s really hard to point to one thing that cuts across all projects, but rather it’s death by a thousand cuts,” replied Zinn. Setbacks can range from an entire construction crew contracting Covid-19 to many unanticipated days of rain. ​“Both of these positions are attempts to make sure we manage and get on top of those ​‘cuts’ right as they happen — make sure it doesn’t become ​‘death by a thousand cuts,’ but it becomes ​‘three cuts that we got past faster,’” Zinn said.

“Thank you. I have full confidence that these two positions will take care of the issue that I’m specifically talking about,” replied Walker-Myers.

The mayor is also requesting the ability to hire a new tree trimmer, who would join a team of five existing tree trimmers in tending to the city’s nearly 30,000 public trees.

“In recent years, we’ve seen an escalation of issues threatening the well-being of our tree canopy,” such as Dutch elm disease and ​“more powerful and intense storms,” said Max Webster, the director of the Parks Department, in a March presentation to alders. 

When trees are not adequately cared for and trimmed when needed, Webster said, the ​“potential for hazardous situations arise” that can harm both people and property.

According to Webster, at least three tree trimmers are needed at a time to take care of a given tree for safety reasons. A sixth team member would enable the city to send out two tree trimming crews at once, Webster said.

The new tree trimmer would make a salary of $61,404.

East Rock Alder Anna Festa asked whether that sixth crew member would need to be formally designated as a tree trimmer, rather than perhaps a more flexible position.

Yes, replied Webster — the department needs ​“people who understand the safety standards for tree work,” as it is a ​“highly dangerous line of work.”

Webster noted that currently, the tree trimming team spends about two months in the winter exclusively devoted to setting up the city’s annual ​“holiday tree” in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

“Basically, from the end of October to the end of December or January when that tree comes down, our team is fully occupied,” Webster said. ​“We find that tree, supervise the removal and cutting down of that tree and the transportation to the Green, the setting of it up, the decoration of that tree, and taking it down.” 

That reflects ​“an opportunity cost of nearly $70,000 of work that’s diverted from normal operations,” said Webster. The capacity to send out two crews at once would enable the city to continue tree-trimming work during this time, he said.

A Bolstered Finance Department

The mayor’s budget proposal includes two new positions in the finance department: a deputy controller and a chief data officer.

The deputy controller would be the second-in-command within the city’s finance department, which oversees city budgeting as well as accounting, compliance, auditing, tax collection, and more. This position would come with a salary of $132,000.

City Controller Kristy Sampieri told alders that such a position would support ​“implementing strategic initiatives” within the finance department, such as integrating artificial intelligence into budgetary forecasting, identifying alternative revenue streams, and ​“modernizing” the department overall.

The chief data officer, meanwhile, would coordinate data collection across a variety of city departments, ​“ensuring that city governments use reliable, high-quality data to make informed policy and financial decisions,” Sampieri said.

The data officer would additionally help with fraud detection and cybersecurity initiatives across the city, she added. The position would come with a $90,000 salary.

The Finance Committee is slated to advance a potentially amended version of the budget on Thursday, May 15, at 6 p.m. in City Hall. The version the committee passes will then go before the full Board of Alders for a final vote.

The mayor’s full budget proposal is available here. To learn more about its contents and how the public has responded, read about:

• The mayor’s announcement and an overview of the key numbers, including a 0.9 increase to the mill rate that would raise that local property tax rate to 39.40.

• An anticipated deficit in public school funding that could lead to 129 layoffs.

• Educators’ and students’ advocacy for more educational funding from both the city and the state.

• Food advocates’ plea for hunger aid.

• A ​“People’s Budget” proposed by unhoused activists to fund public restrooms and storage units, among other resources.

• Public support for funding a math and reading tutoring initiative.

Correction (May 15): A previous version of this article did not incorporate a proposed new accountant position (with a salary of $76,959) in the Economic Development Administration. The Elicker administration had sought to transfer an existing city employee from the Finance Department to this position. The numbers in this story have been updated to account for this proposed position.