Thomas MacMillan Photo
People’s Caucus budget mastermind, Alder Michael Stratton.
(Updated with city, schools response.) Slash the finance department in half. Cut $583,000 from city libraries. Take $40 million away from public schools. Cut taxes by 5 percent and create a “WPA” jobs program. And become more like Lowell, Mass.
Those are some of the recommendations laid out in a proposed spending plan unveiled Friday by the People’s Caucus, a breakaway group of city lawmakers.
The 59-page document includes a critique of Mayor Toni Harp’s proposed $511 million budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Harp’s budget includes a 3.8 percent property tax increase.
Harp’s budget is now under consideration by the Board of Alders Finance Committee. City lawmakers will take a final vote on the budget at the end of May.
The People’s Caucus — a group of six alders formed as an alternative to the union-affiliated board majority — will hold a public meeting on its document at 3 p.m. on Saturday at the Hall of Records at 200 Orange St.
Click here to read the People’s Caucus (PC) “Residents Proposed Budget.”
City spokesman Laurence Grotheer dismissed the budget out of hand. He released this statement: “At first glance, it seems those who invented this alternate budget have no regard for sound fiscal management; to eliminate half the finance department would be to dismantle effective oversight of city spending and likewise, elimination of the economic development department would ravage the city’s ability to generate jobs for residents or provide tax relief through an expanded grand list. Moreover, the heartless cuts proposed for New Haven Public Schools would undoubtedly mean teacher layoffs, fewer classroom materials for students, and a diminished educational experience for New Haven children citywide.”
Early Saturday morning, schools Superintendent Garth Harries released this statement:
“The tens of millions of dollars of defunding proposed by the Peoples Caucus is simply irresponsible. They would require devastating cuts in services, staff and programs, relegating our students to factory schools with large classes and minimal supports, and cutting adults off from the opportunity to return to school and work. We look forward to more constructive discussions with the City and Alders about our proposed budget and how we can continue to invest smartly in our kids’ futures.”
The PC proposal is not a stand-alone budget; it’s a critique and list of modifications to Harp’s proposal. Read on for a few highlights:
Books? Last Century.
The PC proposal calls for massive cuts in nearly every department.
The PC proposes to cut library funding by $583,000, compared to Harp’s budget. That includes cuts to private security and maintenance contracts, and to “preservation of periodicals,” and information technology.
New Haven cops and public works can guard and maintain the libraries, said Alder Michael Stratton, the People’s Caucus member who spearheaded the budget drafting.
In the digital age, the library shouldn’t be spending money on preserving books, Stratton said. “This is an online world we’re living in.”
Preserving books can be left to Yale’s Beinecke and Sterling libraries, Stratton said. Those institutions have staff who “pay attention to books in an anal-retentive awesome way,” he said; the city doesn’t need to do it, too.
Just Like Lowell
The PC would slash the finance department in half, to get it down to the size of the finance department in Lowell, Mass. Lowell, which has a population of 109,000, is one of two cities that the PC proposal refers to frequently. Stratton said Lowell and Irving, Texas, have won awards for their municipal budgets.
Stratton said New Haven’s Finance Department is far overstaffed. The Finance Department also doesn’t need fully staffed sub-departments under the auditor, the treasurer and the controller, Stratton said.
The IT department within the Finance Department needs to be entirely eliminated, Stratton said.
“It’s a complete waste of money. The people sitting in that office haven’t updated anything,” Stratton said. The city is using long outdated software, he said. “These people, they don’t have it. Get rid of them.”
Stratton said he’d replace the IT department with a “Chief Information Officer.”
City Controller Daryl Jones told the Finance Committee last week that the IT department needs a big investment of money to bring it up to date. The mayor’s proposed budget calls for a $1.6 million investment in IT.
No More Adult Ed
By far, the biggest cuts in the PC budget would be in education. The budget calls for the school board to make $40 million in cuts to its $397 million overall budget, which is mostly funded by state money.
Stratton has said that the city can make more cuts by ceasing payment for Board of Ed health care costs, which are not currently separated out in the city budget.
The Board of Alders does not have line-item control over the Board of Ed’s operating budget; it can just be voted up or down to approve or deny it as a whole. The PC budget nevertheless includes a list of ways to dramatically cut the budget.
Among other things, Stratton would get rid of adult education programs. “Those services are available through Gateway [Community College] and other community colleges,” the PC proposal states.
“We’re enabling people who drop out,” Stratton said. “It’s not the core of our program.”
The adult education program offers English-as-a-foreign-language classes, GED classes, and other high-school equivalency programs, all of which New Haven is required to offer for free to New Haven residents according to state law, according to adult education staff.
The PC proposal also calls for the Board of Ed to cut administrators by a third. Stratton said administrator salaries account for millions of dollars, money that’s going toward people who don’t work inside classrooms. He said the Board of Ed could save $7 million by cutting one-third of administrative staff, including assistant principals and department heads.
“As People Did In The Depression”
With all the cuts, the PC budget states that the city would have a surplus. That money would go toward paying down debt, reducing taxes by 5 percent, and a number of new initiatives.
That includes the creation of a Works Progress Administration-type jobs program, like the federal government created in the Great Depression.
“A big issue, we’re finding, is jobs,” said Stratton. People need to get back into the workforce. “They need to get back into the rhythm of work.”
The WPA program would hire about 200 people, probably through parks or public works, Stratton said. “We’d get them doing the same sorts of things as people did in the Depression.” They’d clean parks, pick up trash, maybe paint murals.
They wouldn’t be hired permanently. At the end of a year, they’d get help to get a “private sector” job.
The city would have to find a way to keep the workers off the city payroll, “because we don’t want them on the health insurance and pension plans,” Stratton said. The city wouldn’t want to get roped into paying long-term health care and pensions for the temporary WPA workers, he argued.
Cut library funding? Doesn't the library get like .75 parts of a penny on the dollar right now?
Talk about squeezing blood out of a turnip.
p.s. Alder Stratton, though I admire your zeal, someone needs to clue you in to a little nasty thing called the digital divide.
Oh, though if the Beinecke is willing to care for the homeless during the day...