After six hours of painstaking budget deliberations, an argument over adding new staff to the mayor’s office reached its rhetorical peak:
“You should be embarrassed!”
“No, you should be embarrassed!”
Those nuanced arguments — along with threats of legal action or payback at the polls — erupted Monday at midnight in City Hall, between Alder Mike Stratton, on one side, and Alders Jorge Perez and Andrea Jackson-Brooks on the other.
It only got more personal from there, until Stratton stormed out of the Aldermanic Chamber. Click the play arrow to see a sample. It was the second time he and Jackson-Brooks have gotten into a public shouting match.
The outburst of yelling ended what had been a cordial and exhaustive discussion of a number of budget matters facing the city, conducted by the Board of Alders Finance Committee.
Among other items on the agenda Monday night, the committee considered the question of whether Mayor Toni Harp should be able to add seven new positions to the current fiscal year’s budget, including a new, $256,000 four-person grant-writing department. It was that question that led to the shouting match.
Amid the raised voices, the Finance Committee voted to recommend an amended proposal, one that would add only three positions to the current year’s budget — a director of minority and small business development, a bilingual receptionist in the mayor’s office, and a lone director of development to oversee outsourced grant-writing.
The amended proposal is now headed to the full Board of Alders for a final vote.
Grants
Mayor Harp seeks to create seven new positions:
• A bilingual receptionist in the mayor’s office.
• A new “legislative director” in the mayor’s office.
• A director of small and minority business development, in the economic development office.
• And a four-person “Office of Development and Policy” within the mayor’s office.
The development office would be in charge of grant writing, with an aim of bringing in more money to the city than it would cost to run. Proponents of the new office say that it would be a way to bring much-needed revenue into the city, revenue that the city currently doesn’t have enough resources to go after. Opponents say that it’s irresponsible to add new positions at a time when city taxpayers are facing a possible tax hike; and that in any case the office doesn’t need four positions .
Monday evening’s meeting was the third at which the Finance Committee had considered a mayoral proposal for new positions.
In February, the Finance Committee tabled the mayor’s request, seeking more information on why seven new people are needed, and how the city would pay for them.
At a March 20 meeting, the committee grilled administration officials about a related request: the mayor’s creation of the new positions as part of her proposed budget for the fiscal year starting July 1. Her $511 million budget would raise property taxes by 3.8 percent.
At Monday’s meeting, the Finance Committee returned to the proposal for the current fiscal year, the one discussed at the February meeting.
Tomas Reyes, the mayor’s chief of staff, and Michael Harris (at left in photo), her legislative liaison, returned armed with answers to questions asked by skeptical alders at the two previous meetings.
Harris said the mayor’s office looked at other cities with grant-writing offices and found each is similar to the mayor’s proposal. The directors of other cities’ departments have salaries close to the proposed $116,000 annual salary the mayor proposes.
Harris said he had, at East Rock Alder Anna Festa’s request, looked into the cost of contracting out grant writing, and found it to be as or more expensive than having an in-house office.
Alder Stratton (pictured) said his own research showed that a “grants manager” typically earns about $61,000, not six figures.
“The grants manager is the person who manages a grant once it comes in,” said Harris. That’s the person working underneath a “development director.”
Harris and Reyes faced questions from Stratton and Festa about the possibility of starting off with a smaller office, or contractors, or starting with a smaller salary for the director. Harris responded that New Haven will be competing with cities like Bridgeport, Hartford, and Stamford for grant money, and those cities have full departments, with well-paid staff. “We don’t want to be outgunned.”
Outsourcing the work could end up being more expensive, and the city needs to have a dedicated staff that will build institutional knowledge, Harris said.
Spanish
On the other positions, Reyes (pictured) and Harris also faced some push back.
Reyes said the mayor needs a bilingual receptionist to communicate with the city’s growing Spanish-speaking population, and to help handle the large number of phone calls and communications the mayor’s office receives every day.
Stratton asked about the possibility of simply moving a bilingual staffer in from another department, to swap places with a monolingual receptionist.
Even if that were possible, the mayor’s office needs more receptionists to handle communication, Reyes said.
Reyes said the legislative director is needed to “make sure we’re getting as much as we can from the [state] General Assembly.”
Hill Alder Jorge Perez, president of the board, said the city already has staffers working on lobbying state and federal lawmakers.
“You’re asking us to create a position that personally I don’t think the justification has been made to do,” Perez said.
On the small and minority business development director, Reyes said that position “would be providing a service that the mayor talked about in her campaign and is a major plank in her platform now, to make sure we do as much as we can as a city to help small and minority businesses,” Reyes said.
The small and minority business development director would be paid from funds that were set aside for loans to small businesses. That “revolving loan fund” never worked out, said Harris. The city realized it could develop small business more effectively not simply through money but through the advice and guidance of a dedicated staffer.
The money in the revolving loan fund would pay for the new director through to the end of the fiscal year 2014 – 2015.
The other six positions would be paid until the end of the current fiscal year by “unrestricted residual” grant money. After that, if approved as part of the mayor’s proposed 14 – 15 budget, they would be general fund positions.
3, Not 7
At the end of the evening, Alder Perez (pictured) proposed an amendment to the mayor’s proposal. Perez’s plan would create the minority and small business position using money from the revolving load fund. It would also use $156,094 residual grant money to hire a bilingual receptionist and a director of development and policy for the rest of the current fiscal year. The residual grant money could also be used by the new development director to contract grant writers.
Perez’s plan would not create a new legislative director position, and would make the grant-writing office a one-person affair, a sort of hybrid of in-house and outsourced labor, at least for the remainder of the fiscal year.
Stratton spoke up against hiring any new staff. He said Detroit, before the city declared bankruptcy, had a 50:1 ratio of residents to municipal employees. “That’s why they went under.” On a recent list of the highest ratios, he said, Washington, D.C., was near the top, at 25:1. New Haven’s ratio is 26:1, Stratton said.
“We are way overstaffed,” Stratton said. “These positions are not necessary.”
The city already has staff who work on small business development, he said. And the proposed salary for the grant-writing director is “outrageous.”
To propose a tax hike and new positions is “unconscionable,” said Alder Festa (pictured). She said she wouldn’t mind hiring a single grant writer, “but not for that salary.”
“The new mayor wants to put her fingerprint on city policy,” Perez said. And the new positions will not affect the mill rate. (They would be paid for in the current fiscal year by existing special funds, and, if approved, in the coming fiscal year, through the elimination of other positions in the budget.)
At the end of the day, the new positions amount to one-half of 1 percent of the city’s budget, Perez said.
We’re taking money meant for small businesses and “giving it to pay the salary of someone who is probably politically connected,” Stratton said, referring to the small and minority business development director, who is expected to be former Democratic Town Chair Jackie James.
Stratton began to speak about the mayor’s denial of a library request to have a Spanish-speaking citywide Latino-outreach staffer, while adding a bilingual receptionist to her own office. Perez interrupted to tell Stratton he was “speaking out of both sides of your mouth.”
Just last week, Perez said, Stratton called for half a million dollars to be cut from the library.
Perez and Stratton started shouting at each other.
“You should be embarrassed!” Stratton said. “It’s disgusting.”
“You should be embarrassed!” Perez shot back.
Someone called for a vote while the shouting continued. Alders Jackson-Brooks, Perez, Jeanette Morrison, Al Paolillo, Jessica Holmes, Evette Hamilton and Dolores Colon voted to approve Perez’s motion. Alders Festa and Stratton voted against.
Jackson-Brooks, the chair, gaveled the meeting closed, but the acrimony continued. She and Stratton both said the other should be embarrassed. Then Stratton accused Jackson-Brooks of “living off of core government” her whole life.
“Buddy, you better be careful,” Jackson-Brooks said. She threatened to set a lawyer on Stratton.
“She’s the chair,” Morrison told Stratton. “You should just walk away. … Just cut it off.”
As he left the chamber, Stratton said, “We’ll see who has the better argument in 2015.”
People wake up.This is what happens when you have one party rule.Again we Need Term Limts and IRV voting and Proportional Representation.