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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Budget Critics Warn Against Reliance On Struggling State

Alders at Monday night’s budget hearing at City Hall.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017 - Weeks before the city has to finalize and approve a new fiscal year budget, a handful of government watchdogs expressed their deep concerns that the proposed budget relies too much on expected aid from a state on the brink of financial disaster.

Such was the prevailing sentiment at an hour-long public budget hearing held by the Finance Committee of the Board of Alders at City Hall on Monday night.

Although the aldermanic chambers were crowded with city employees waiting for a closed-door executive session meeting later in the evening about union negotiations, only a half-dozen citizens testified before the committee, which has spent the past few months holding hearings on the mayor’s proposed $554.5 million operating budget for Fiscal Year 2017-18. The Board of Alders must approve a final city budget by the end of the month.

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Lights, Cameras ... Action! Eyed For Parks

Edgewood basketball court, among those slated for resealing.

Friday, April 7, 2017 - New Haven basketball players can look forward to smoother surfaces and clearer three-point lines at courts throughout the city. Wooster Square will be better lit at night. And more security cameras may pop up in city parks.

City parks director Becky Bombero outlined those and other planned improvements during a presentation at a hearing held by the Board of Alders Finance Committee at City Hall on Thursday night on the Harp Administration’s proposed $554.5 million operating budget and $68.7 million capital budget for the coming fiscal year.

Bombero, joined by Deputy Director of Parks & Squares Bill Carone and Deputy Director of Recreation Bill Dixon, went through nearly each item of her department’s propsed $4.29 million city capital budget for fiscal year 2017-2018, zeroing in on the various improvement projects, both big and small, that are already or are about to be under way. The parks department’s proposed city capital budget marks a $1.395 million increase over this year’s; its proposed general fund budget is flat at $5,293,300.

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Youth Center Mired In Delays, Overruns

DANIELA BRIGHENTI PHOTO

Thursday, March 30, 2017 - A year after expecting to open a new center for disengaged and homeless youth, city officials offered explanations for a series of mishaps and delays — and asked for another $200,000 to complete the job.

The center is question is “the Escape, a drop-in center for New Haven teens that will also provide 15 beds for homeless young men between the ages of 17 and 24.

It was supposed to open by January 2016. Then March 2016. It still needs lots of work.

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