Melissa Bailey Photo
As he looks ahead to the new fiscal year, Mayor John DeStefano said he has a choice: keep unionized custodial services and have 30 students per classroom, or privatize and shrink class size to 24.
DeStefano (pictured, with Fire Chief Mike Grant and Superintendent Reggie Mayo, right to left) offered that choice at a press conference in City Hall Thursday, the first day of the new fiscal year. As he spoke, taxpayers lined up to pay their tax bills: 84,781 city tax bills were due Thursday, with a grace period extending to the end of the month.
At the beginning of this new fiscal year, the city already faces a budget gap of over $17 million, the mayor said. Given this gap, and a frightening budget outlook for the state in years to come, the city is entering a new era of fiscal restraint, DeStefano said.
“There’s going to be a new normal — we can’t do all the things that we want to do,” he said. “We have to say ‘no’ to some things.”
The mayor’s top example involved how the city cleans its schools. The Board of Education spends $15 million to clean its buildings, using a mostly unionized workforce, he said. If the city privatized those jobs, it could get the job done for $8 million, he claimed — a savings of $7 million.
The mayor’s savings estimate is based on bids that came back, his spokeswoman said.
It’s a choice between “30 kids per classroom, and the existing way of cleaning things, or 24 kids per classroom and a new way,” DeStefano calculated. He said for the first time, he’s seriously considering privatizing those union jobs.
“I’ve never considered aggressively pursuing” privatization before, he said.
The city already put out a Request for Proposals for a private company to clean all the schools and settled on a preferred bidder. Any deal remains up in the air as the city engages in a contract negotiation battle with the custodians union, AFSCME Council 4 Local 287.
Because of state-mandated timelines for negotiating the contract, it’s likely that no agreement will be made until the spring of 2011, DeStefano said.
His budget counts on $1.5 million in savings from school cleaning this fiscal year. DeStefano said the $1.5 million represents a quarter-year in savings, from March 1 to July 1 of 2011. He expects the total annual savings to be about $6 million, once an agreement with the custodians is reached.
After the press conference, Superintendent Reggie Mayo said the $1.5 million doesn’t necessarily assume privatizing the cleaning of all the schools.
The $1.5 million “could come with them staying and givebacks,” Mayo said. “We’re not at that point, but all I know is I’ve got to fill that gap.”
“If I don’t get it, I’ve got to cut somewhere else, that’s it!” he said.
The $1.5 million is less than a tenth of the budget gap DeStefano found himself facing on day one of the fiscal year.
City of New Haven
The city is starting the year with a $17.6 budget hole.
How does he intend to balance the budget? The mayor’s office provided the chart at left to answer that question.
DeStefano proposes to fill the gap from the following sources: $5.1 million in savings from “Innovation Based Budgeting”; $5 million in sale of assets; $1 million in labor concessions; and $1.5 million from custodial services.
That leaves a $5 million hole. The mayor had originally counted on closing that gap through a parking monetization plan. Aldermen tabled that plan, but left the $5 million revenue in the budget. Aldermen directed the city to come up with the money as part of $10 million in cost-savings through IBB, but did not give specific guidance on how it could be done.
Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said the city is not ruling out using the monetization plan this fiscal year.
After his update, the mayor wished the crowd of reporters and city officials a “Happy New Year.”
With those words, Elyse Lyons, the mayor’s new media associate, hauled away the backdrop to the event: “Improving New Haven. Again.”
Quote:
"With those words, Elyse Lyons, the mayor's new media associate,"
Years of mismanagement, cronyism and patronage. Look, he is so blinded by his self importance, he does not even look to his own office for savings. His office alone costs over a million dollars.
He cannot see the problem. Its like a doctor trying to diagnose and treat himself. He has got to go.....