The mayor’s 300+ page proposed budget can be reduced to one sentence: The party is over.
For years, certain parades and festivals had been held despite their organizers failing to pay for associated costs in full. This is one of Hartford’s open secrets. Even when the events may not have been well-executed or marketed, the City of Hartford continued to pick up the tab. Cultural events like festivals and parades could draw money into Hartford, but a single glance at the food trucks present for many of these events shows this not to be the case. How, then, can the strain on the HPD traffic division and on the DPW (for funsies, visit Bushnell Park at end of day following one of the major festivals before the crews come out in force to remove litter, empty the trash, and hose everything down) be justified if negligible revenue is created? Should Mayor Bronin’s proposed budget be adopted, we could still have parades for days, if we pay for them without help from the City.
The deficit we’re looking at is $48.5 million for fiscal year 2017, and that is if Hartford does not get shanked by Governor Malloy’s budget.
Losing the whipped cream is not enough to fix this.
Bronin’s recommended budget includes cutting 96 positions. Among those cut would be 27 from DPW, ten from Office of COO, four from Communications & New Media, four from Human Resources, and three from Corporation Counsel.
Service reductions, intending to trim $15.5 million from the budget gap, would include admin consolidations and restructuring customer service in tax assessment and collection. Community grants would be reduced.
In budget documents, Bronin says his recommended budget “prioritizes funding for the most vulnerable citizens.”
Summer youth employment would escape mostly unscathed.
Even with cuts to the library’s budget — a recommended 4.3% reduction from the adopted FY2016 budget — the mayor expects that none of the branches would need to close. At the same time, it looks like efforts to move the Park Branch into a larger building have been paused. The previous administration said money had been earmarked for relocating the library from Park and Babcock to Park and Broad, but recent talks indicate this to be less than 100% accurate.
Education, under the mayor’s budget, would be flat funded.
Beyond the cuts, Bronin is proposing that the City amp up its collection of fines, current taxes, and delinquent taxes.
The mayor’s proposed budget would reduce the Office of the Chief Operating Officer by 63.4%. This is not massive savings overall, but it’s not insignificant to go from over $1 million to just under $400,000.
The Communications & New Media budget would be reduced 22.2%. Families, Children, Youth & Recreation would be cut 24%. Meanwhile, Fire and Police would both see their budgets increased, 12.6% and 19.9% respectively. In dollars, that’s $4,064,175 and $7,562,514 in proposed increases for Fire and Police from the adopted FY2016 budget to the recommended FY2017 budget.
The fire department would see an update of “policies and procedures to maximize department personnel and other resources” under Bronin’s plan. Though Bronin’s document is not more specific than that, our suggested starting place for that would be revisiting any contract that may require ladder trucks be sent out for every call to reduce costs of fuel, wear-and-tear on vehicles, and number of employees tied up on medical calls (if two will do, why send four?).
The Sisson Avenue fire station is slated for complete renovation, as is the fire training facility in the North Meadows.
Bronin’s recommended budget would include providing public education about the appropriate use of 9-1-1 to reduce misuse of services, along with the implementation of strategies to reduce financial strain of false alarms.
For police, there would be a reassignment of Business District Service Officers and other special duty cops to patrol. The number of Community Service Officers would be reduced. There is also an effort to continue reducing youth arrests. In FY2013, 1,000 youths 17 or under were arrested. That number was brought down to 585 for FY2015. The estimate for FY2017 is 475.
While Fire and Police would account for 6.53% and 8.18% of the total budget, education takes up 50.96%.
Those, and other cuts and initiatives, would get Hartford through FY2017, but beyond that, there are no promises. Bronin says outright that this is not a sustainable budget.
City Council will weigh in on this next. The public has opportunity to speak up on Wednesday, April 27 at 6 p.m. If you want to talk, get there early to sign up. This will be at Bulkeley High.
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