Thomas Breen photo
Mayor Toni Harp at City Hall on Thursday: “Unenforceable.”
Alder Anna Festa: “Unconscionable.”
Mayor Toni Harp vetoed a Board of Alders order that requires any “additional revenue” received by the city for the next fiscal year to go towards reducing the city’s new 11 percent tax increase.
That veto comes just a few days after the city’s Parking Authority agreed to send over an additional $2 million to the city to help shore up its struggling finances.
On Wednesday the mayor issued a veto of the June 4 aldermanic order. The order requires that “any additional revenue received for the 2018 – 19 fiscal year shall only be used for mill rate reduction.”
At the end of May, the alders approved an amended version of the mayor’s proposed $547.1 million operating budget, thereby maintaining the original budget’s 11 percent tax increase for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
One mill corresponds to $1 in taxes for every $1,000 of assessed taxable real estate. The final approved budget raises the city’s real estate and personal property mill rate from 38.68 to 42.98. Taxpayers have received their new bills over the past week; many have expressed outrage.
City spokesperson Laurence Grotheer described the June 4 order as “unenforceable.” Around half of the city’s annual revenue comes from local property taxes. The other half comes primarily from state aid, voluntary contributions, and other permits and fees.
Much of it often comes with strings attached, directing its use. Grotheer said if, for example, the state were to decide to bump up the value of its Education Cost Sharing (ECS) grant to the city, the city could not simply take that money and use it to lower taxes. That money would be specifically for the education budget.
The aldermanic order was part of the suspension agenda for the full board’s regular June meeting, and was passed by unanimous consent. It was introduced by Board of Alders leaders including Tyisha Walker, Jeanette Morrison, Richard Furlow, Dave Reyes, Aaron Greenberg, and Dolores Colon.
The alders plan to hold a special meeting Monday at 8 p.m. to consider overriding the veto.
A June 4 letter sent to the full board by aldermanic leadership indicated that “new information has come to light that we may receive more revenue” than was anticipated in the general fund budget that was approved by the alders at the end of May.
“Given the hours of public testimony that we heard during the budget process,” the letter reads, “and the feedback we have received in the last week it is clear that our residents want us to use any additional funds we receive for mill rate reduction.”
Although neither the letter nor the order specifies the anticipated source of additional revenue, city transit chief Doug Hausladen, who serves as the acting executive director of the city’s Parking Authority, and Norman Forrester, the chairman of the Parking Authority, confirmed that the Parking Authority voted on Monday to increase the authority’s annual Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) to the city by $2 million.
Forrester said the Parking Authority usually gives the city around $1.5 million every year. This one-time increase will add $2 million on top of the authority’s usual annual PILOT.
Hausladen said the city’s budget office requested the $2 million increase from the Parking Authority last week to help meet an “emergency need” to help shore up city finances.
That request from the city came a few weeks after the State Bond Commission agreed during their June 1 meeting to bond $5 million for the New Haven Parking Authority for, according to the bond commission’s agenda, “renovations, improvements and repairs to city-owned parking garages.”
Hausladen said that state money is specifically for lighting improvements, waterproofing, and concrete repairs for the Temple Street Garage at Temple and Crown Street downtown.
Although that $5 million from the state will remain allocated for the Temple Street Garage improvements, Hausladen said, the Parking Authority agreed to send over $2 million to the city from elsewhere in its construction budget. He said that transfer will mean a temporary deauthorization of the construction portions of several other Parking Authority projects, though those projects will continue to be designed. He said he would share which specific Parking Authority projects will be affected by this transfer by the end of this week.
“We’re just doing our part to help the city,” Forrester said about the Parking Authority’s vote in favor of the $2 million transfer to the city.
In a press release issued Thursday afternoon, Grotheer wrote that the city will apply this $2 million infusion from the Parking Authority towards reducing this year’s projected budget deficit.
“The City’s partnership with the New Haven Parking Authority involves collaborative planning, development, construction, and maintenance of parking facilities in the city,” he wrote, “including Park New Haven’s six existing parking structures and 18 parking lots. This week’s transfer of capital is an additional Payment in Lieu of Taxes from Park New Haven — consistent with the ongoing arrangement it has with the City. For its short-term purposes, with the end of June in sight, the City will apply these funds to mitigate a prospective FY18 budget deficit.”
East Rock Alder Anna Festa, one of three alders who introduced a range of failed amendments during the final budget hearing with the goal of reducing city expenditures, criticized the mayor’s veto as detrimental to citizens bracing for a 11 percent tax increase.
“It’s so unconscionable of the mayor to veto something that will help our residents manage their finances better,” she said. “How can someone do that to the working middle class?”
Festa said she had initially advocated for the alders to direct the $5 million that has been put aside for the city’s healthcare account in the recently approved budget towards reducing the mill rate instead. She said mill rate reduction should have been prioritized, and any additional revenue should have been put towards the healthcare fund, as opposed to the other way around.
Reached by phone on Wednesday night, Beaver Hills Alder and Board of Alders Majority Leader Richard Furlow promised that the board leadership will issue a full statement on Thursday in response to the mayor’s veto.
“It’s the mayor’s right and within her authority” to veto the order, he said. He said the alders will now convene a special veto meeting, which will need to be held within the next seven days. Alders can overturn the mayor’s veto with a two-thirds majority.
Furlow declined to comment on any further details related to the order, in particular on whether or not the order would preclude the city directing “additional revenue” from the state or from voluntary contributions towards reducing the city’s debt.
The city currently anticipates having a $14 million deficit at the end of the fiscal year, which ends this month. City Controller Daryl Jones said during a recent aldermanic Finance Committee meeting that the city plans on plugging that deficit with money originally budgeted for the underfunded pension funds.
The Financial Review and Audit Commission (FRAC), an independent review board that analyzes the city budget, estimates that the recently passed budget is already $20 to $50 million out of balance.
TONI WILL NOT GET REELECTED. HERE IS GREED showing it's ugly head. Remember her slumlord son who probably still owes 1 million in taxes....????
GD the mayor for betraying the poor fools who voted for her. Between her recent raise and the 37 other raises, get mad. We have school buildings with no books. We have cops with no ethics. We have parks with no caretakers. We have storefronts that are empty. We have children and parents with no food. We have hundreds of homeless with no roof. Only 20,000 of us even vote. Welcome to Hell.