Yurii Stasiuk, Contributing Photographer

New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker submitted his budget proposal on Friday for fiscal year 2024-25, which includes new staff in parks and housing.  

Elicker announced his budget proposal in City Hall flanked by Michael Gormany, the city’s budget director, and other city officials. The budget proposal, which has to be approved by the Board of Alders, will restructure the Livable City Initiative, create a separate Parks Department and add 33 new city staff. The new expenditures will be mainly sponsored by increased property tax revenue. 

“This year’s budget is both responsible and responsive,” Elicker said at the press conference. “It’s responsible in that we continue to invest what we need to in pensions and debt … It’s responsive to calls from the community and the needs of a growing city.”

Structural changes, new positions in housing and parks

In this year’s budget, the biggest change Elicker proposed is changes to the Livable City Initiative, which has been criticized for its inability to protect tenants from negligent or predatory landlords.

“If anyone that lives in New Haven will walk around the city, [they] will understand that we have a serious housing challenge,” Elicker said.

The proposed budget includes funding for five housing inspectors to join the current team of 13. It also provides funding for two additional LCI staff workers, including one housing attorney.

LCI will see structural changes as well, Elicker said. 

“We need someone waking up every day that’s focusing on what the original intent of LCI was — inspections, housing, rental housing safety, rental housing accountability,” Elicker said of the change. 

The program’s housing development authority will be delegated to the Economic Development Administration, and LCI will instead fully focus on housing inspections and landlord accountability. 

In the new budget, Elicker also proposes to separate the Parks Department from the current Parks and Public Works Department. The two were merged in 2020. 

“We have heard a lot in these past several years from many community members … about how our parks are one of the most important assets in our city,” Elicker said. “The city needs to do better in ensuring that our parks are well maintained, there’s more responsiveness to community needs [and] the athletics fields are better maintained.”

The city will be divided into three park districts, with one manager assigned to each. These managers will be responsible for communicating with the residents on park-related concerns. 

The new budget also includes four additional staff members in the reconstituted parks department, including a superintendent of fields, a parks foreperson and two technicians who will focus on maintaining the city’s athletic fields.

Increased city expenditures 

The FY25 proposed budget has over $680 million in spending planned, approximately $17.6 million more than last year’s budget, for an increase of 2.66 percent. 

The increased spending is mostly the result of inflation and increased fixed costs, according to Elicker. But there are some new expenditures in the budget.  

In total, Elicker proposed adding 31 full-time and two part-time city positions. Besides new LCI and Parks Department positions, these include four sworn officer leadership positions in the Police Department and three captains in the Fire Department. 

According to Elicker, all new positions will account for approximately $2.97 million in spending — less than half a percent of FY25’s budget. 

Last year, Elicker proposed adding 34 new positions, of which alders approved only nine, citing concerns about the number of city government positions currently vacant.  He said that the only overlap between last year’s and this year’s proposed positions is fire captains, which he is required to add by the memorandum of understanding with the fire department. 

Educational expenses, which traditionally are the largest expenditure in New Haven, increased by $5 million to around $208 million for the fiscal year 2024-25, mostly as a result of increased teachers’ salaries, per the city’s contract with the teachers union. 

Debt service payments and contributions to the city pensions fund will increase by over $2.7 million in a new fiscal year, which Elicker attributed to the city’s financial responsibility.

“We don’t restructure our debt or do any fancy gimmicks to push costs into the future,” Elicker said. 

Financing expanded budget

Under the New Haven Charter, expenditures in the budget must be equal to the city income. 

“One of the hardest parts of my job is balancing the strong demand for more city service and having a tax rate that is something that our residents have the ability to pay for,” Elicker said. “In today’s world, you can’t even do the same without more [money] because of our increased fixed costs.”

Increased tax revenue accounts for most of the city income rise in fiscal year 2024-25. This year, the city will increase its mill rate — the amount of tax paid for every $1,000 in property value — by 3.98 percent, from 37.20 to 38.68. The city temporarily lowered the mill rate from 43.88 in the fiscal year 2021-22 to 37.20 last fiscal year to ease the transition after the reevaluation of the property values. 

According to the budget proposal, the city also hopes to get $2 more million in funding from the state compared to last fiscal year. 

The Board of Alders’ finance committee will hold several public hearings and workshops, and the full Board is expected to approve the budget in May. The Board can, and likely will, amend the budget. In the coming weeks, Elicker will also hold budget town halls to communicate his proposal to the community. 

The fiscal year 2024-25 will start on July 1.