Mayor Proposes 11% Tax Hike

March 2, 2018 - 

Mayor Toni Harp is calling for a 11 percent tax increase and a $1 million reduction in the rainy day fund in a proposed new city budget that she described as the most difficult one she has ever had to draft.

It includes 11 new positions and assumes the city will receive millions of dollars in new contributions from big not-for-profits like Yale and labor union concessions.

The mayor unveiled her proposed budget Friday. It would cover the fiscal year starting July 1.

Harp said she hopes to counterbalance an anticipated decrease in state aid and building permit fees next fiscal year with concessions from municipal employees, intradepartmental efficiencies, and hoped-for increases in voluntary contributions from partners like Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital.

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Mid-Year Car Tax Increase Coming

Alders prez Walker-Myers breaks news to neighbors Tuesday night.

Wednesday, December 6, 2017 - 

New Haveners will receive a slightly higher mid-year car tax bill in January 2018 as the city looks to stay within budget without cutting social services, in the face of reduced state aid.

Board of Alders President and West River Alder Tyisha Walker-Myers revealed that news to neighbors at Tuesday night’s Dwight Community Management Team meeting, which was held at its regular monthly location in the gymnasium of Amistad Academy on Edgewood Avenue.

Walker-Myers told the two dozen attendees that the city will send out semi-annual car tax bills in January 2018 that will reflect a mid-year increase in the local motor vehicle mill rate from 32 to 37 mills. That means that residents will pay $37, rather than $32, for every $1,000 worth of assessed value for their cars.

That’s a mid-year adjustment for the fiscal year that began July 1. Taxpayers have already paid a car tax bill for the first half of the fiscal year based on the 32 mill rate.

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East Rock Gets Behind Cedar Hill Campaign

A sign for drivers passing through Cedar Hill. (Lucy Gellman photo)

Tuesday, May 23, 2017 - Thanks to support from the rest of East Rock, isolated Cedar Hill will receive $10,000 toward a grassroots beautification effort designed to build community pride and to connect to surrounding areas of the city currently separated by highway overpasses.

That was the result of a decision of the East Rock Community management team at its monthly meeting Monday night at mActivity gym on Niccoll Street. The team voted to allocate the entirety of its annual Neighborhood Public Improvement Program (NPIP) funds towards the project in Cedar Hill, a small set of self-contained streets at the northeastern tip of the East Rock community.

For each of the past three years, the Livable City Initiative (LCI), the city’s anti-blight agency, has made available $10,000 in NPIP funds to each of the city’s community management teams to help them address neighborhood quality-of-life concerns.

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“Participatory Budgeting” Takes On Olive Street Speeding

Friday, May 19, 2017  - Olive Street will be the beneficiary of a new mobile, radar speed sign next year as the result of an annual exercise in “participatory budgeting”: a democratic decision-making process that empowers a neighborhood to decide how to spend a small share of the city budget.

During its monthly meeting at City Hall this week, the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team (DWSCT) voted to dedicate $5,000 of its annual $10,000 in “Neighborhood Public Improvement Program (NPIP)” allotment towards traffic calming on Olive Street.

For the past three years, the Livable City Initiative (LCI), the city’s anti-blight agency, has distributed $10,000 in NPIP money to each community management team in New Haven to spend as it chooses. The program allows community members themselves to debate and decide on which quality-of-life issues they would like to address in any given year.

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