Proposed Hamden Mill Rate Breaks 50, As Final Vote Nears

Days before the Hamden Legislative Council prepared to cast a final vote on Mayor Curt Leng’s proposed 2019 – 2020 budget, it lowered revenue projections it deemed unrealistic and, without finding enough places to cut, has sent the working mill rate above 50, to 50.30.

That projected threshold-crossing during a budget deliberation session the council held Monday evening as it nipped here and added there on the proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

At one point Minority Leader Marjorie Bonadies asked Deputy Finance Director Rick Galarza where the mill rate stood after the amendments the council had made so far that evening, bringing the proposed operating budget to $237 million.

“50.30,” he replied.

No one in the room appeared happy to hear that they had broken the 50 mark. The council began the evening with the proposed new mill rate just below 50 after about a month and a half of budget deliberations that had brought it up from the 48.73 mills that Leng originally proposed. The current mill rate is 47.96.

The 50.30 number is not official and could still decrease, when the council approves its final budget on Thursday.

“A mill rate of 50 is a significant event,” said Council President Mick McGarry near the beginning of the meeting. He said he wants to avoid breaking the 50 mark.

During budget deliberations like the one Monday evening, the council examines individual department budgets and makes amendments to the dollar amounts that the mayor proposed based on consultation with the department heads.

Over the course of the evening, however, the council could not find enough places to cut, and found enough revenues that it thought were unrealistic to boost the size of the budget.

On Monday, the council examined parts of the budget that are not for town departments, but that pertain to many areas of town government and account for large sums of money — fringe and medical benefits for town employees, miscellaneous revenues, state revenues, and the debt service. Unlike department budgets, those areas include relatively few individual expense lines, meaning fewer places to cut.

Over the course of the month and a half that the council has been vetting the proposed budget, it has mostly lowered revenue projections, cut expenses where possible, and increased some expense lines that it decided had been set too low by the mayor.

In an effort to keep the mill rate down, the council has tried to make cuts. It has not given any raises to non-union employees. It cut seven proposed positions from the police department. It has also made cuts to the arts and public works budgets. Those cuts, however, have not been large enough to offset the places where it has decreased revenues and increased some expense lines in an effort to make them more realistic and avoid producing a deficit.

“It’s not fun, but we’re either going to pay it now, or we’re going to pay it later when the account is in the red,” District 9 Rep. Brad Macdowall said about one of the expense lines that the council raised because it had been set about $100,000 lower than the average of the previous five years.

“We’re going to have to pay for it one way or another,” said District 5 Rep. Justin Farmer.

University Gift Revenues

Among the miscellaneous revenues were two lines that will depend on the generosity of the private universities with properties in Hamden: Quinnipiac and Yale.

In his proposed budget, Leng included $2.1 million from a voluntary donation from Quinnipiac, and $100,000 from Yale.

On Monday, multiple council members called those numbers into question.

“All of these are just made-up numbers. I can’t even imagine where $2.1 million would come from,” said Macdowall.

If the town gets to the end of the fiscal year and neither university has donated as much as the budget anticipates, that could contribute to a budget shortfall, unless expenditures end up lower than budgeted.

In March, Leng said that the $2.1 million estimate had come from a number of factors. A bill before the state legislature this session would allow municipalities to charge fees for safety services. Leng said that if it passes, it would bring the town around $3.5 million. It originally did not leave committee after its March 6 public hearing, but it has been reintroduced as an amendment to another bill that passed committee.

He also said that the town is considering a motor vehicle permitting process for students with cars. The town, he said, has ​“had further discussions” with Quinnipiac about the gift.

In 2018, Quinnipiac gave the town a check for $1.5 million, though according to the New Haven Register, half of it was to cover property taxes on taxable properties, leaving $756,881 as a voluntary donation. Of that, only $346,068 went to the budget’s Quinnipiac gift line, as the town also has the Quinnipiac gift fund, which is a separate fund.

The council eventually voted 9 – 4 to lower the Quinnipiac line to last year’s budgeted amount of $1.35 million.

The Yale gift, too, came under scrutiny. Leng said that Yale owns ​“a decent amount of property in Hamden… Our plan is to work out something beneficial to the community with Yale, who is generous to the City [of New Haven], for the Town.”

As Galarza told the council, Yale has never before made a voluntary donation to Hamden. The 2018 – 2019 fiscal year was the first time it appeared in the budget.

“I don’t think these are realistic, and I think we should face the facts,” said Bonadies about the Yale revenue line.

At-Large Rep. Berita Rowe-Lewis pushed back. ​“We need everything we can get,” she said.

She suggested that council members, along with the administration, could reach out to the Yale administration and make an appeal for the gift.

“Many people that work at Yale call this community their home,” said Council President Mick McGarry. ​“It would be really really nice of Yale to help us out.”

The Yale gift projection ended the evening intact, as the council voted 7 – 4 to hold the line at $100,000.

Deputy Chief Returns

On April 30, the council voted to eliminate one of the police department’s two deputy chief positions. On Monday, the council overturned its previous decision and brought the position back.

The council had tabled the salary of the other deputy chief at its deliberation session on April 30, leaving that vote for Monday evening, when it voted to not give that position a raise.

Once that vote was complete, District 7 Rep. Michael Colaiacovo brought the eliminated position to the floor.

The position the council had voted to eliminate is currently held by Bo Kicak. Were it eliminated, Kicak would become a captain, one of the captains a sergeant, and positions would be bumped down the line until the lowest ranking officer would lose his or her job, though someone in the department might retire, preempting the need to lay someone off.

“This is certainly a political vendetta, and I don’t want to see personal vendettas put to people’s lives,” said Colaiacovo.

He cited a letter that Attorney John Walsh wrote to the Hamden Police Union, which said that getting rid of Kicak’s position would require due process. If the council eliminates the position, the union could file a grievance against the town.

“The justification is that we don’t have the money,” replied Farmer. ​“We have to be realistic with the budget because there will come a time when we have to make cuts.”

Farmer’s position, too, had a letter to back it up. The town’s labor attorney had written an opinion to the council stating that the council has the power to eliminate the position. Though council members could not share the letter with the Independent, they said it offered a very different opinion from the one submitted by the union’s attorney.

“This is us, the council, getting too close to running the department,” said McGarry.

Cappiello told the council that eliminating the position would give more work to the sole deputy chief and would hurt morale in the department.

For some council members, that was not an adequate justification for funding the position.

“Don’t come to me and talk to me about morale when I have taxpayers leaving the town because they can’t afford to be here,” Farmer told the Independent. ​“When people have to choose between feeding themselves and paying a bill, that’s the morale I’m concerned about.”

Some members of the council said that eliminating the position would just cost the town more than it would save because the union would bring a lawsuit against the town.

Minority Whip Betty Wetmore recalled an instance a few years ago when the council tried to lay off a few public works employees. She said the council ended up losing the lawsuit and had to reinstate the positions. ​“It’s going to cost a lot more money to fight it,” she said.

“The safety of the individuals in this town is my number one concern,” said Rowe-Lewis. ​“Safety comes first.”

After a heated back and forth, the council voted 7 – 6 to reinstate the position.

The council is scheduled to vote Thursday evening on the whole budget as amended.