Melissa Bailey Photo
Doreen Larson-Oboyski will keep helping neighbors plant mums next year, after she survived an unemployment scare at City Hall.
Larson-Oboyski is the coordinator of open space and community gardens for the city’s parks department. She helps community groups plant trees and flowers in parks, abandoned lots, and along city streets. (She’s pictured Monday night with one of the community gardeners, Clara Lawhorn of Cedar Hill.)
Larson-Oboyski has worked for the city for 26 years. As she walked into City Hall Monday, she wasn’t sure if she’d make it through another year: Aldermen were poised to vote on a proposal that would cut her salary by $15,000, effectively eliminating her position.
After some last-minute lobbying by gardeners and union reps, she emerged Monday night with her job intact.
The proposed job cut came as part of the 18-page budget for Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), a pool of federal money that aldermen divvy up among local agencies and city departments. Each year, the mayor proposes how the money should be spent, then the aldermanic Joint Committee on Community Development and Human Services shuffles the money around though a series of deliberations. (Click here to view the CDBG budget that came out of that committee.) Click here and here for past stories on this year’s CDBG process.
Aldermen cut her salary as they sought to distribute the money more efficiently. Some later called the cut an “inadvertent” error.
As a city employee who is paid for by grant money, Larson-Oboyski’s job is by definition tenuous. Other CDBG-funded workers have lost their jobs when the federal money dwindled under former President George W. Bush.
This year was different: There was more money to go around, not less. With a Democratic president in office, the city’s total CDBG grant grew to $4.6 million, an 8 percent increase over last year. But through a one-and-a-half-month deliberation process, aldermen on the joint committee made $100,000 in cuts to the mayor’s proposal and reallocated that money to other projects they deemed more deserving.
Larson-Oboyski’s job was among those cuts. Aldermen on the committee voted to slash $15,000 from a line item for Park Improvements, Open Spaces and Community Gardens and spend it on the city’s “complete streets” initiative.
The cut would have effectively eliminated Larson-Oboyski’s job, according to her union. The $105,913 line item was designated almost entirely to her $68,000 salary and benefits, which were negotiated by a union contract five years ago. Zapping a portion of the salary would mean the job could no longer be funded according to the union contract. To keep her in the job, the union would have had to reopen the contract to lower her salary and/or make her a part-time worker. Reopening a contract to change one person’s job is highly unusual.
So a $15,000 pay cut would likely eliminate the position. That would free up a remaining $90,913, which could then be given straight to tree-planting programs like the Urban Resources Initiative. Some aldermen felt that would be a more efficient use of money.
When she heard about the cut, Cherlyn Poindexter, the newly elected president of AFSCME Local 3144, the city’s management union, called her troops into action.
“I can’t afford to lose a member,” said Poindexter, whose union was hit with 18 layoffs last year. She and fellow union members started dialing aldermen, asking them to reverse the cut. They brought two dozen people Monday to City Hall to show support — and to show aldermen who was watching. The tactic proved effective.
Supporters included a group of gardeners from Starr Street, Shiela Masterson from Whalley Avenue, and Jeannette Thomas of Newhallville. Thomas tends to an abandoned city lot at Ivy Street and Dixwell Avenue. She said Larson-Oboyski helped her turn it into a green, flowery refuge for birds. Larson-Oboyski spent weekends planting with the community group, she said.
“She’ll spend the whole day with you,” Thompson said.
Clara Lawhorn agreed. She said Larson-Oboyski helped her group plant flowers along a traffic median near Rice Field. Lawhorn said she’s noticed the work Larson-Oboyski has done in Newhallville. Given the recent violence there, she wondered aloud who would help with plantings that neighborhood if her trusty garden liaison lost her job.
“They’re not going to find another Doreen. Never! Ever!” Lawhorn declared.
Inside Aldermanic Chambers, Edgewood Alderman Marcus Paca, who co-chaired the committee that doled out the funds, issued an apology.
“This position was cut inadvertently” in the budget proposal that emerged from the committee, Paca said. The committee unanimously voted to cut the funds, but did not realize that the cuts would eliminate Larson-Oboyski’s job, he said. “I take full responsibility for that item.”
“This was not a slight to the unions, to the community gardens program, to the person” whose job was cut.
Paca (pictured) called the cut a mistake. “If I had known this was a union position, I would have done things differently,” he said.
He said hindsight can make a difference: “In hindsight, we all know that going into Iraq was not the right decision.”
However, he said he would stick with the committee’s decision because it was reached unanimously after a series of deliberations.
East Rock Alderman Justin Elicker stood by him. He said there were some difficult decisions, and that the committee decided to move the money to other programs that deserved it more.
Elicker and Paca turned out to be in the minority.
Westville Alderman Sergio Rodriguez, the other co-chair of the CDBG-allocating committee, said the mistake should be fixed. He put forward an amendment, authored by Morris Cove Alderwoman Arlene DePino, to save Larson-Oboyski’s job. The amendment gave her position $15,000 from the city’s Livable City Initiative for “residential rehab and anti-blight,” leaving that line item at just over $300,000.
DePino commended Larson-Oboyski for working with neighbors to bring a new dog park to the East Shore. She argued for restoring the position. Alderwomen Dolores Colon of the Hill and Migdalia Castro of Fair haven seconded her remarks, mentioning projects in their neighborhoods where the gardener had lent a hand.
Larson-Oboyski sat patiently in a row of seats with fellow gardeners as aldermen discussed her fate. She watched as they voted, one by one, on the job-saving amendment.
At the final tally, the amendment passed easily, 22 to 4. (Voting no: Alds. Calder, Elicker, Paca and Goldfield. Absent: Morehead, Bauer, Rhodeen. Abstaining: Shah.)
Aldermen then put the CDBG budget into law, allowing for community groups to set their budgets for next year.
Union President Poindexter declared the vote a victory, for the meantime: “Hopefully this won’t happen again next year. She’s saved today, but you don’t know about tomorrow.”
Larson-Oboyski took hugged her supporters and the alderwomen who spoke up for her on the aldermanic floor.
“I feel very relieved,” she said, “and I’m happy to go back to work tomorrow.”
At the doorway, she was already making plans for a gardening session at the Pardee greenhouse on Wednesday. The plants will hit the streets in May, she said.
I read the article and was present at the meeting. I found Alderman Paca (who is my alderman) arrogant and insulting when he spoke. He read his committee the riot act about how they all passed the amendment to remove $15,000 from someone's salary. And how they should stick by that vote even though it was a mistake. Why would anyone expect his collegues to stick by a mistake? It was made clear that the committee was misinformed about what would happen by removing the money. That is what two aldermen said when they spoke publicly. At least the chair said he wanted to correct the mistake and offered Alderman Depino's admendment to put back $15,000.
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I don't think Alderman Paca, Elicker, Goldfield and Calder seem to get it at all by voting no. Who votes to keep secure a mistake? Where you seperate the men from the boys as they say is when a person not only fesses up to a mistake, but corrects it or supports to correct it. Sorry but last nights meeting was a complete disappointment for me. I am just happy other people in New Haven have caring aldermen that seem to have done the right thing, or at least last night they did.