Allan Appel Photo
Looking east on East Grand Avenue.
“Yale: Respect New Haven”
Just what do those signs really mean?
Do they mean something like: “Yale, just cough up more bucks for the city’s strapped coffers”? Then why shouldn’t the signs put the message more clearly , as in, “Yale, Pay More Taxes”?
That more blunt revision of the Yale unions’-supported New Haven Rising campaign sign to promote a greater Yale contribution to the city was proposed as part of a general reaction to Mayor Elicker’s proposed 2020 city budget.
Canham-Clyne, left, and Fair Haven Heights Alder Rosa Santana.
The back-and-forth unfolded Tuesday night at the regular meeting of the Quinnipiac East Management Team (QEMT) meeting, which attracted 20 people to the basement of St. James Church on East Grand Avenue, just near the Grand Avenue Bridge.
“I don’t get it,” local artist Bill Meddick said of the signs, which had been ubiquitous at the time of the last mayoral election campaign. (Click here for a previous Independent story detailing organizers’ explanations and strategy.)
His remark came up after Fair Haven Heights Alder Rosa Santana ran through highlights of Mayor Justin Elicker’s proposed new city operating budget, including a proposed 3.6 percent increase in property taxes. The proposed tax increase would raise the city’s mill rate from 42.98 to 44.51, with the goal of bumping up the city’s total property tax revenue collections by $11.6 million.(The mill rate represents $1 in taxes paid for every $1,000 in assessed property value.)
What caught the attention of the QEMT neighbors was neither the property tax increase nor the cuts in positions at the police and fire service.
Rather it was the signs and Yale University’s less than enthusiastic response to Elicker’s call for significantly increased voluntary contributions to the city in lieu of tax payments.
“I had to Google it,” longtime Quinnipiac Avenue resident Chris Stewart said of the signs.
Meddick questioned whether Fair Haveners should respect Yale back if the university’s turning a deaf ear to the budgetary need.
“We need to go to Yale strongly,” asserted local developer Fereshteh Bekhrad.
“It’s going to be very, very hard for our elderly citizens to stay in their homes” with the proposed increase in property taxes, said Santana.
Santana pointed out that the Board of Alders has two months to review the budge. She offered a ray of hope that maybe another revenue source might be found, other than a tax hike or more dollars from Yale. “I’ve heard talk of the state allowing the city to raise some” other revenue on its own, she said.
Local attorney Peter Treffers, returning to the issue of Yale and the signs, added: “I’m willing to put my own money into a sign that says, ‘Yale, Pay Your Fair Share.’”
Neighborhood activist Chris Ozyck, an employee of the Yale School of Forestry’s Urban Resources Initiative (URI), said he had a different perspective.
“This should be a conversation, not a demand. Yale could be the hero this year, but what about next year?” Ozyck asked rhetorically.
“Having the pressure to have that conversation,” he added, “is a good thing.”
“You can’t have a city with [close to] 60 percent of its land untaxed and the PILOT” (state Payments In Lieu of Taxes program) underfunded, said QEMT recording secretary Patricia Kane.
As the meeting ended, it was unclear if Treffers was going to move ahead fashioning his own signs
Another longtime Quinnipiac Avenue resident, Melissa Canham-Clyne, said people who want to be more involved with the campaign to advocate for greater contributions from Yale might join the Yale union-supported New Haven Rising organization .
I personally think, like many others, that Yale could contribute more to NH; but its not their obligation to totally bail out the City. By making Yale and the State out as the bad guys, we're just deflecting the blame from the real culprits - decades of Mayors and BOA's that have done a terrible job of managing the money that taxpayers entrusted them with.