Tim Tai, Staff Photographer

After local legislators spent much of 2021 fighting a crippling budget crisis, Mayor Justin Elicker proposed a no-cuts budget on Tuesday focused on reinvigorating city services and stabilizing New Haven’s economy.

Elicker submitted the budget to the Board of Alders and shared it with the public at a press conference at City Hall. Elicker is asking for more funding for schools, youth services, public safety, the Livable City Initiative and more. 

Those investments are made possible in part by increased contributions from the state government, federal government and from Yale, which came about after years of public protest and advocacy. This year, the city also conducted a revaluation of all New Haven properties, which revealed a rise in property values across the board. Elicker announced plans to phase in property tax increases over the next five years. 

“I am proud to present the City’s Fiscal Year 22-23 proposed annual budget,” Elicker wrote in a letter accompanying the budget. “Looking forward to this new fiscal year, we continue our commitment to fiscal responsibility and to meet the resident priorities of public safety, essential services, sound infrastructure, and enriching community programs … The City will continue to provide efficient, quality services while being conscientious of our financial position this year and in years to come.”

Under the proposal, New Haven’s general fund expenditures will grow from $606 million to $633.1 million. Elicker highlighted multiple programs that will contribute to that increase. All libraries will now be open seven days a week. The city will hire 25 new employees, including housing inspectors, Youth Department staff members and a Chief Technology Officer. 

Elicker also wants to spend more on public safety, hiring a new lieutenant and sergeant for the police department while also increasing the number of officers on the force. The city is still searching for a new police chief to replace Acting Police Chief Renee Dominguez. 

Despite these increases, Elicker acknowledged that many departments will not receive the full funding they requested. New Haven’s fixed costs, which include the historically underfunded pension system as well as debt service payments, continue to increase. The city has also had to spend more on healthcare due to the COVID-19 pandemic, while revenues from parking meters are down. 

“I hear constantly from pretty much every staff member that we do not have enough resources and do not have enough staff to do the job that we feel like we want to do,” Elicker said during the press conference. “We’re doing our best to give you the support you need, but also balancing the residents’ concerns around an ability to pay taxes that are reasonable. And that balance is something that I think we will always feel that tug and pull over.” 

City sees influx of cash to deal with budget deficit 

The specter of debt, underfunded pensions and impacts of the pandemic on city financing had pushed New Haven to the edge of financial ruin in the past. During the 2021 fiscal year budget, Elicker unveiled two budgets: a “Crisis” Budget that had cuts due to funding issues and a “Forward Together” budget without the cuts. In the end, the Board of Alders passed the Forward Together budget with some changes due to gaps in state and University funding. 

This year, due to work done by New Haven advocates, Elicker and State Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, the state reformed its Payment in Lieu of Taxes, or PILOT, program which reimburses municipalities in the state for non-taxable property. More than 50 percent of New Haven’s property is non-taxable and previously the city was only reimbursed at a 26 percent rate. But with the reforms passed by the state, the reimbursement rate is now 50 percent. This has led the city to see an increase in funding from $41 million to $90 million. 

“[I’m] really grateful for the work not just by City Staff and Elected Officials, but also New Haven residents, in getting Yale to pay more to the city, as well as securing more PILOT money from the state,” Ward 1 Alder Alex Guzhnay ’24 told the News. “[It] allows us a lot more leeway and I believe they’ve had positive effects for the proposed budget and our city’s finances.” 

The recent agreement between Yale and New Haven to increase Yale’s contribution to New Haven has also helped bridge the gap with an additional $10 million in contribution. Although Yale is one of the largest property owners in the city, the majority of its property is tax-exempt. Historically, Yale has paid New Haven around $10 million in lieu of taxes, in addition to paying approximately $5 million in property taxes. In November, New Haven and Yale announced a new agreement to pay over $20 million in lieu of taxes for the next five years. 

Local organizers affirmed the role that New Haven residents played in getting Yale to pay more to the city. 

“I don’t think that the increase in the budget would have changed without community advocacy, for sure,” Karissa McCright ’22, who is involved in campus organizing, told the News. “I think a big part of that is both the community and the students, undergrad and graduate students, coming together to demand more of the University.” 

However, with the recent revaluation of Yale’s non-taxable property increasing by almost $700 million dollars, Elicker was questioned about the deal and whether he would ask Yale to increase its contribution to the city. 

“I stand by that agreement,” said Elicker. “There’s always more work to do with the University to explore additional ways that they can help the city. But I’m not going to stand here and demand that you know, give even more right now, I think that we’ve made a lot of progress.”

BOE asks for $9 million, gets $5 million

Notably, the Board of Education is not receiving all of its requested funding. Elicker said the Board requested an additional $9 million; Under the current proposal, they would receive an additional $5 million, for a total of $195.8 million. 

Last year, the mayor proposed only a $3 million increase in NHPS’s funding. The Board of Alders halved that request in the end and only provided an additional $1.5 million dollars to the BOE. 

“At a time when record numbers of educators are resigning and retiring from our district, we would hope that city leaders recognize the urgency of the current situation,” said New Haven Federation of Teachers President Leslie Blatteau. “Our students deserve fully staffed schools to meet the complex needs of this intense time. And our communities deserve the reassurance that the city will fully fund our public schools.” 

Following last year’s budget approval, NHPS has faced staff leaving the district, chronic student absenteeism, bus shortages and an increase in food prices, which has further stressed the school system. 

NHPS unveiled its general funds budget two weeks ago, branding it as a status-quo budget. According to NHPS spokesperson Justin Harmon, the district has planned mitigation strategies in place to produce a balanced budget even without the full funding request the district made. 

“The budget proposed by the New Haven Public Schools covers our current operations with no services added,” Harmon wrote in an email to the News. “We have been significantly underfunded for a number of years. The mayor’s budget proposal does not include our entire budget request, but it goes further toward full funding than we have seen in the past. We hope the alders will sustain this crucial funding.”

Elicker acknowledged that the BOE is regularly criticized for requesting large sums of money. However, he pointed out that the BOE employs the largest number of city employees and is the largest branch of the city government. 

Elicker also fielded criticism from Addys Castillo, the director of the Citywide Youth Coalition, who said that she believes that it is important for the city to invest into local organizers and community groups instead of adding more staff members in the youth services department and providing indirect funding.

“If [Elicker’s] doing it to just provide more positions within the city, how does that impact young people?” Castillo said. “I think sometimes the city takes on more than they can chew. And by that I mean the city wants to be a provider of direct services. That is very expensive, and it’s not cost effective when there’s already folks in the community, other community based organizations that could be easily doing that work.” 

Elicker informs the city about a phase-in of property tax increases 

The city also anticipates that it will receive more revenue from property taxes: $294.3 million this year, compared to $288.7 million in the current fiscal year. Under Connecticut state law, cities must conduct a revaluation of all real estate every five years. This year’s revaluation revealed that property values have risen significantly in the last five years — by more than 60 percent in parts of Fair Haven, Chapel West, the Hill and Newhallville.

Elicker said that while this revaluation is generally a positive sign, it also means that property taxes will increase for most residents. In order to be “more equitable and fair” and prevent a sudden jump in taxes, Elicker is proposing that the city phase in its property tax increase over the next five years. 

City Assessor Alex Pullen explained that this phase-in will occur in five equal increments and will be the same for residential, commercial and industrial property. Elicker also wants to decrease the property tax rate, from $43.88 to $42.75 for every $1,000 worth of taxable property. This, he said, would help to combat the spike in property taxes brought on by New Haven’s rise in property value. Ward 25 Alder Adam Marchand said there have been city budgets with and without property tax phase-ins in the past, and that the phase-in question “will be one of the topics that gets discussed a lot.” 

Elicker was also asked if he supported shifting revaluation from every five years to an annual evaluation. 

“In an ideal world, I think we do that, but there’s just such a high cost to that,” Elicker said. “It’s costly. I mean, it is an opportunity to talk about our overreliance on real estate taxes, and how I think we all can agree that there should be a much different system for collecting revenue, because cities like New Haven are disproportionately relying on real estate taxes when we have so much non-taxable property and real estate taxes don’t effectively correlate to one’s income, like income tax, or like some other taxes.” 

Much work remains to be done before the mayor’s 500-page plan is implemented. The Board of Alders will conduct a series of public hearings and workshops to gather input on the budget. Elicker said he also plans to host “several virtual town hall meetings” to review the budget and explain the revaluation process. Once the Board votes on the final budget proposal, the mayor can approve it as adopted or veto specific items. 

“Of course it’s helpful to have more resources to work with,” Ward 14 Alder Sarah Miller ’03 told the News. “The question now before the Board of Alders and our community is whether this is the best way to spend it.”

The Board of Alders approved last year’s budget at its second May meeting.