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Joshua Van Hoesen on WNHH FM.
Joshua Van Hoesen is determined to give Upper Westville voters a choice — about who represents them, and about how their city will stay solvent in the future.
Van Hoesen, a 31-year-old lead software engineer, has filed papers to run a second time for alder in Upper Westville’s Ward 26.
Like all 30 wards, 26 is represented by a Democrat, Darryl Brackeen. (Brackeen could not be reached for comment about whether he is running for reelection.)
Van Hoesen is running as a Republican. A self-described small-government, fiscal conservative, he has resigned from seats on the Republican State Central Committee and New Haven Republican Town Committee to focus on the most local of seats and issues.
“I was spending a lot of mental effort thinking about problems that I could not necessarily address” about internal state and national party politics, Van Hoesen (pronounced HOO-sen) remarked during an appearance on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program. He decided to focus on “how I can be more involved in my local community.”
“I’m a Republican because I like small government. A lot of times I think government does a fairly decent job at organizing but not providing services in the most equitable and efficient manner,” Van Hoesen said. He cited the recent revelations of deferred maintenance that has left kids shivering and HVAC systems decaying in schools throughout town. City government hires a private contractor to maintain that maintenance. Van Hoesen disagreed with people for calling for government moving all that work in-house; rather, he argued, the deferred maintenance shows that government does a poor job of being in charge of it.
He adds that he’s not a Libertarian: “I do believe there is a place for government. The private sector cannot handle everything.”
Since moving from the East Shore and buying a home in Upper Westville two years ago, Van Hoesen has served as co-chair of the Westville/West Hills Community Management Team, using his tech know-how to help guide neighbors into the virtual wilds of Zoomocracy early in the pandemic.
Little-Known State Option
One of his top issues as a candidate is New Haven’s long-term fiscal health. He owns a rental property in addition to the home in which he resides. He agrees with other property owners that New Haven taxes are too high, putting a squeeze not only on him but on his tenants whom he would need to pass along some of the cost of mill rate hikes. “I hate to raise rent years after year after year, especially when I know that my tenants aren’t making more money year after year.”
That doesn’t mean one can swear off all potential tax increases, he said. Rather, it means the city, stuck with a structural deficit estimated as high as $66 million, needs a long-term plan to get to fiscal health
Toward that end, Van Hoesen called for a focus on the biggest drivers of the city’s long-term fiscal imbalance: underfunded pensions and other expensive benefits guaranteed in municipal labor contracts.
“I believe everyone should be paid fairly. We all deserve benefits for the work we have done,” Van Hoesen stated. “A lot of promises are not sustainable. Some of the promises we continue to make for the future are not sustainable.
“Eventually we are going to hit a wall. The people we have promised benefits to, we’re going to say, ‘We can’t pay it.’ I never want us to hit that point. We have to start now. How do we recover from the promises we made that we can’t support?”
In the short term, the city needs to pay more into its pension funds to reflect realistic returns, rather than the 7.75 percent built in recent years’ estimates. Mayor Justin Elicker proposes getting closer to a more actuarily based 7 percent in the coming year’s budget. Van Hoesen said the city needs to get all the way there.
The mayor has proposed two budgets this year — a so-called “crisis” version, and a “forward together” version. While they differ dramatically in terms of tax increases and service cuts, they both assume a 7.25 percent annual rate of return for the city’s two pension funds. The “crisis” version would pay $83 million into the city’s pensions next fiscal year, while the “forward together” version would pay $84.7 million into the pensions.
Long term, the city should explore going through the state’s municipal pension solvency loan fund to cover the amount by which it has underfunded pensions. The fund enables cities to bond at a lower interest rate. He cautioned that he would not use bonding to cover operating costs in order to obtain up-front cash and avoid difficult long-term choices (a practice known as “scoop and toss”).
He characterized that solvency fund as a preferred alternative to having the city declare bankruptcy or seek a state bailout under the Municipal Accountability Review Board (MARB), the state agency that can swoop in to overrule decisions of municipalities hopelessly in the red.
And then, in negotiating new contracts, the city should insist on 401k-style defined contribution plans rather than the current defined benefit plans, Van Hoesen argued.
Read more bout Van Hoesen’s campaign platform here. Click on the above video to watch the full interview with Van Hoesen on WNHH FM.
@Paul Bass
For the pension question how about offering for one of the possible answers "Reduce Pension benefits".
This option would greatly reduce the City's pension costs.