Thomas MacMillan Photo
Alderman Goldson reads from a list of the state’s many taxes.
A plan to create a stormwater authority lived to see another day, despite a charge to defeat it.
West Rock Alderman Darnell Goldson led a group of aldermen who voted to approve a measure that would have scuttled a proposal to create a new stormwater removal fee for city property owners.
The West Rock alderman put forward a motion to that effect as part of the agenda at Tuesday evening’s Board of Aldermen meeting at City Hall. After some debate, Goldson’s motion fell short four votes short of the 16 votes it needed to pass.
Also at Tuesday’s meeting, aldermen passed a resolution to look into pension spending forecasts and an order calling on the police chief to brief lawmakers on his plan for public safety in the wake of the layoff of 16 cops.
And aldermen passed a resolution calling on state legislators to pass a law that would enable in-state tuition for Connecticut students regardless of their immigration status.
Stormwater Storms On
Goldson’s target was an administration plan to create a new stormwater authority. The new body would collect annual fees from all property owners to pay for the cost of stormwater removal in the city. The fee would amount to about $50 for the average residential household. See details here.
Currently, the city’s drains, catchbasins, and other stormwater infrastructure and maintenance are paid for with property taxes. Proponents of the authority plan say that the creation of a fee structure would be more equitable, since even non-profit property owners — who are currently exempt from property taxes — would have to pay the fee.
The fee would be based on the amount of impermeable property one owns, with credits available for efforts to mitigate run-off.
“The Stormwater Authority is just another fancy way of taxing people,” Goldson said on Friday. “We’re saying very, very loudly that we’re not going to allow this administration to allow more taxes … whether they call it a tax or a fee or whatever they want to call it.”
Goldson and Alderwomen Jacqueline James-Evans, Andrea Jackson Brooks, Dolores Colon, and Claudette Robinson-Thorpe put forward a motion to grant the stormwater authority plan leave to withdraw.
“We are moving to take it out of committee so we can vote to kill it,” Goldson said.
If the mayor wants to create a stormwater authority, he should propose it as part of the budget, with a decrease in taxes that offsets the new fee, Goldson said.
Rob Smuts, the city’s chief administrative officer, said that’s not legally possible. The city needs to create the authority before it can include it in the budget, he said.
The stormwater authority proposal has been in front of the committee of the whole for some time. The committee held one meeting, on Jan. 21, to discuss the plan. Board President Carl Goldfield has not scheduled a second meeting.
Goldson said Goldfield has not scheduled another meeting because he knows he doesn’t have the votes to get it out of committee. Goldfield denied that charge. He said he just wants to give aldermen time to digest the complicated proposal.
Alderman Sergio Rodriguez admired Goldson’s poster after the meeting.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Goldson urged his fellow aldermen to vote to kill the plan. He pulled out a prop to help him make his case: A large posterboard list of existing and proposed state taxes. Fending off interruptions, Goldson read off many of them: pet grooming tax, packing and crating tax, septic permit tax, marriage license, haircut tax, yoga studios tax. People are paying enough without adding a stormwater fee, he argued.
Aldermen Migdalia Castro and Justin Elicker spoke against Goldson’s motion, and in favor of seeing the process through. Elicker, a self-described “process junkie,” said the committee of the whole should be allowed to finish its deliberations.
The stormwater plan has been in the works for months and months, and the city has already spent $600,000 researching it, Goldson said. It’s had plenty of process, he said.
But Goldson failed to convince enough of his colleagues. His motion failed by a vote of 14 to 12.
“I make no apology for the time between hearings,” Goldfield said after the meeting. “I have no interest in delaying this.”
Goldfield said he had postponed a second committee of the whole meeting on the stormwater plan because it was just too close to the first one. “People need time to chew on things for a while. It seemed to me things were going too quickly.” He said he expects to hold a meeting in the beginning of March.
Goldfield said he thinks the stormwater authority plan might get voted down anyway. “I don’t think its prospects are good.”
Pensions And Public Safety
Aldermen voted unanimously Tuesday evening to pass a motion from Annex Alderman Al Paolillo that will request that city departments turn over all documents regarding current and future projections on pension payments.
The order comes in the midst of a duel between the administration and city unions. The mayor last week announced dozens of layoffs, which he said were necessary due in part to the ballooning cost of pension plans.
Paolillo said he has been working for about three weeks to get information from the city about pension payment predictions. He mentioned a presentation by Mayor John DeStefano in November, which cited a report from actuarial consultants Hooker and Holcombe, on the future of pension expenses in New Haven. Paolillo said he’d like to see the report for himself.
Aldermen need to see the numbers the city is using to make its predictions, not just take them from the mayor’s public statements, Paolillo said. “I don’t think the Board of Aldermen should rely on press conferences.”
Paolillo also won unanimous consent Tuesday evening on an item he put forward with Alderman Gerald Antunes. The order calls for an update from the chief of police on public safety plans after the layoffs of 16 cops last week.
“We want to hear exactly what his vision is for the department,” Antunes said. He said he’d like to know what specific changes the chief plans to make to address the fact that he now has fewer officers to deploy.
Live Blog
6:53 p.m.: Moments ago, in the hallway outside the aldermanic chamber, Goldson said the stormwater vote is up in the air. He said he may have lost some of his supporters. He’s working the room, talking to Alderman Joey Rodriguez right now.
6:59: President Carl Goldfield calls the meeting to order. The clerk is calling the roll. Was Goldson successful? We’ll find out.
7:01: Alderwoman James-Evans offer the evening’s “Divine Guidance.” She reads “Let America Be America Again,” by Langston Hughes.
7:06: Alderwoman Katrina Jones, the majority leader, rises to begin running the meeting. She moves Item #1, Paolillo’s pension request. The item passes unanimously with no discussion.
7:07: The second unanimous consent item, regarding a $9,000 grant for historic document preservation, also passes unanimously.
7:08: Jones notes Items 3 through 9, which are not voted on. Item 10, regarding an LCI sliver lot, passes. Item 11 and 12 are noted. Item 13 (appointments to commissions) is passed.
Goldson, meanwhile, is in and out if his seat, conferring with other aldermen and answering his buzzing phone. He has some kind of posterboard under his desk.
7:12: Jones moves Item 14, reading and filing financial documents, which passes. Item 15 is next. It encourages the state legislature to pass a law granting in-state tuition for immigrant students.
Alderman Sergio Rodriguez: “We present this resolution with pride and with great hope for the future.” … Eligible students would have to have complete four years of college in Connecticut and meet academic performance standards. Several other states have enacted similar legislation. The state legislature passed a similar bill last year, but the governor vetoed it.
Alderman Joey Rodriguez rises to voice his support for the proposal. He says: We had a very emotional public hearing.
Alderman Marcus Paca stands “in strong support.” “We need to maintain and retain” the state’s strongest talent.
The item passes unanimously, with the exception of a nay vote from Alderwoman Arlene DePino, and an abstention from Alderwoman Maureen O’Sullivan-Best.
7:19: Now comes the stormwater motion to discharge. Jones reads the language as it appears on the agenda.
An eruption from the gallery!: “80 percent of Long Island Sound pollution comes from run-off!” [I couldn’t see who said it. Sounded like a young man. [Brian Tang, a cycling and environmental activist, later claimed responsibility for the outburst. See the comments section, below.]]
Goldson stands to speak: Where do I start? Let’s first talk about some of the numbers. Today we spend $2.9 million in stormwater activities. This proposal when said and done — these are the adminstration’s numbers — will cost us $3.9 million. We just laid off 84 workers and now we’re talking about increasing costs by $1 million. … Secondly, they have not been able to tell us what this is going to cost us. Two years from now, it’s not going to be $50. … The taxpayers are going to say Two plus two equals four. It’s $1 million more. They have an answer for that. They say they will exempt some people. …They say our costs will go from 59 percent to 23 percent, but then they’ll start exempting people and our costs will go back up. I was told by a high-ranking city official that the deal’s already been cut with Yale University. … So again, why are we doing this? One of the reasons is our deficit. … The goals is to do the same thing they did with the WPCA … create it, then raise the bonding, which we have to pay. …
[Goldson pulls out the posterboard and starts reading off taxes listed in the governor’s new budget: Dog licenses, service charge taxes, septic taxes, tollbooth taxes, school tax, telephone federal excise tax, telephone usage charge tax, trailer registration tax… and more.]
Goldfield interrupts: I don’t want to have to interrupt you—
Goldson: Well then you shouldn’t.
Goldfield: Please stick to the point.
Goldson: Boat and service taxes, clothing and footwear taxes… [He goes on.]
Goldfield: I think we get the idea…
Goldson: With all these taxes already, “How in the heck can we do this?” “Somewhere it has to stop.” … The mayor said he told the unions this is not a revenue problem, this is a spending problem. I agree. We don’t need to raise more revenues, we need to stop spending. … How do we justify asking our taxpayers to pay more money? … In the current budget, we already have a Stormwater Environmental Project Manager, at a salary of $83,000. Why are we doing this? … This bill will not reduce the burden on taxpayers. … “Once they get this, we’re going to be paying for air. We’re going to be paying for sunlight. We’re going to be paying for rocks.” … There’s no reason to keep this in committee. We can look at it as part of the budget, so we can see it in context, rather than in a vacuum.
7:33: Alderwoman Migdalia Castro: We have a process in place. I will be against this right now. We are having the discussions right now. We still have a finance committee looking at the budget, with public hearings. “I believe that we shouldn’t jump the gun.” “We have to give respect to the process.”
7:35: Alderman Elicker: There is an air tax as well, for polluters. “I am a process junky,” and Alderman Goldson is also, so I’m surprised to see his proposal. We had a public hearing and heard testimony, but never had a discussion about the proposal’s merits. I support the stormwater authority and it deserves more discussion. “Let’s have it out in committee.”
7:36: Alderwoman Dolores Colon: I’m rising in support. Rob Smuts told us in the hearing that the authority would run at a deficit for the first two years. This is no time to add another deficit. I’d prefer to pay a tax, because I can take it out of my income tax. A fee is not tax deductible.
7:37: Goldson: Process — OK, this has been in the works for two years. Ten months ago, we knew about this. We had a public hearing that went very long. We learned that we’ve spent $600,000 so far working on this. $300,000 of that was a grant, but the rest was capital projects money, which means we’re paying interest on it. They made all these contracts less than $100,000. … So let’s talk about process. They had this a year and a half and then all of a sudden they want us to speed it through. We had a meeting. Then the next one was canceled, 31 days ago. Our board rules say that we can do a leave to discharge if an item is in committee for more than 31 days. Otherwise, what? We wait until they get the votes to pass it? … That meeting led to more questions than answers. That’s why 30 days later they haven’t scheduled another one. … Also, yes, there have been meetings with the mayor: Closed door, private meetings. I refused to go because the meeting wasn’t public.
7:42: No further discussion. Aldermen take a roll call vote:
By ward:
Yes: 1,2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 17, 18, 19, 26, 28, 30
No: 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 15
Absent: 13, 14, 22,
Pass: 20
The item fails 14 to 12.
7:45: Alderwoman Andrea Jackson-Brooks rises to add an item to the agenda. It’s a resolution calling on the chief of police and board of police commissioners to take disciplinary action against Sgt. Louis Cavaliere, the head of teh police union, for his “inappropriate public remarks” regarding people arming themselves in response to cop layoffs.
Alderman Yusuf Shah: “I rise in support of this item as an alderman who has had several shootings and murders in my ward.” To encourage people to take law into their own hands it unjustified, unreasonable, and “downright wrong.” I remember when Ely Greer promised to get on his bicycle and to patrol Edgewood Park. This is unacceptable.
The item passes. Aldermen Smart and Paolillo vote against it. Alderman Antunes abstains. One alderman passes.
7:53: Aldermen now turn to Paolillo and Antunes’ move to have the chief of police brief aldermen on public safety after cop layoffs. Passes unanimously.
7:54: Jones notes the rest of the items on the agenda, which are not being voted on tonight.
7:55: Blango takes a moment of personal privilege to speak about the importance of Black History Month. “We have contributed to America and I just want to say happy Black History Month.”
7:57: Paca rises to remind people about the CDBG process, which has just begun. There will be a city activities hearing on March 3. More hearings will follow before final voting at the end of the month.
7:58: Goldfield: Happy 50th birthday to Alderman Shah! [Applause.]
7:59: Meeting adjourned.
Darnell we all they wimp out when push comes to shove. They talk the talk and then something makes them afraid. Hmmm