Not Hamden's Best Day ....

Not Hamden’s Best Day - Reflections on the Budget 2006/2007

By: Curt Leng, Finance Chairman

Last week, I voted against the 2006-2007 budget. I was one of three Council members to vote against the budget. While there are many reasons that I made the choice to oppose this budget, the main reason is because I think it burdens Hamden residents with a tax rate that they don’t deserve following a flawed Reval.

We worked hard as a Council to cut the Mayor’s initial budget proposal. This became even more difficult once we were informed that there was a $500,000 typographical error in the Finance Department’s budget, followed by the almost impossible exercise of cutting an additional $3,000,000 in revenue as a result of the failed State car tax proposal that was in our original budget proposal and lastly a $600,000 error caught one day before the budget vote. With over $4,000,000 to make up before the tax rate went down a penny – this year was nearly impossible.

After this year’s flawed revaluation of property, where property was overvalued by the tail end of the housing bubble, while most commercial property wasn’t increased to the proper level because the Reval was statistical instead of hands on, we leave our residential property owners to pay for the vast majority of our increase in the Town budget. We could have done better.

I want to make it clear that I am accusing anyone of not trying to improve this year’s situation – the Administration and my fellow Councilmembers - worked very hard and made many tough choices. This was the most difficult budget that I have seen in my decade of service to the Town. We faced incalculable fiscal “messes” that needed to be cleaned in numerous areas of Town government in order to put the Town back on the road to financial recovery. The Administration took the lead on this and the Council backed the plan 100%. All items that our independent auditors recommended for improved financial health were implemented.

Still, I feel we could have done more to help our residents.

Some Council members were exploring the idea of giving residents true relief in this difficult Reval year. Two ideas that I supported were;

1) A phasing in of the Revaluation over a 2-year period. This would have lessened the immediate sticker shock of massively increased taxes in one year and allowed families, especially our seniors and working class families to plan for the increases over a two-year period;

2) The other plan that I strongly advocated for right up until the day we voted on the budget was a progressive plan that would have provided all Town residents with a reduced mill rate. This plan would be implemented with a new and interesting taxation approach of approving two mill rates – one for motor vehicles and one for residential property. This split mill rate would have kept our car taxes the same as they are now – as they do not increase in a Reval year, and would have reduced the residential mill rate by over another mill.

This plan, along with the Council’s hard work, would have resulted in a 2+ mill reduction for all residential property. This is a plan that I would have proudly voted for – been proud to be part of. Unfortunately, we were not given the opportunity to enact it.

We were told on the day that we needed to vote on the budget that the Town was unable, I believe unwilling, to implement the improvements to our financial system for the two-tiered progressive tax – even though improvements to the system were already planned for this summer. There were 4 and ½ months to make the improvements.

Instead we only cut the mill rate by one mill. Because we didn’t implement progressive “outside of the box” plans, because we didn’t make deeper cuts to certain areas of the budget, such as overtime, new positions and some purchases, I voted against this budget.

In my opinion, we failed. We failed despite hard work and effort given by all. But in the end, we failed.

If you have ideas or comments about the budget, please contact me at councilmancurtleng@sbcglobal.net.

(In the coming weeks I will try to elaborate on where I believe we need to go from here. To be continued ….)

Budget Work 2006 ....

The following is a series of budget articles that I've written for the Hamden Daily News that I share with you today on my BLOG. I hope the information is helpful.
Please contact me at any time with questions of ideas, councilmancurtleng@sbcglobal.net.

Some Inside Information on the 2006-2007
Budget Work by the Legislative Council

By: Curt Leng
Chairman, Finance Committee

April 22, 2006

Council Budget Deliberations -- No Status Quo Here

This week my Republican friend on the Legislative Council, Ron Gambardella, wrote a "Guest Column" regarding the Town Council budget process that begs a response.

He first wrote about an account that supplies clean spring water for the employees of our town, and then compared it to an overall lack of interest in cost savings that the Council is working on for the budget.

I respect Councilman Gambardella's opinion, and in fact agree with him on some of the ways that we should be working to reduce this too-high town budget. However, taking spring water away from the town's employees and citizens that come into departments -- only to save $4,000 in a $160-plus million annual operation -- is not a fair or effective way to balance the budget.The water coolers did become a union issue -- due to the town's ignorance. OSHA violations were filed because the water coming out of many of our older plumbing systems was deemed either contaminated or at the very least quite unpleasant to taste. With the conditions that we make some of our employees work in -- old buildings, mold- and dirt-filled work areas -- the least we can do is offer clean, fresh water.Many times that Mr. Gambardella makes motions to reduce the budget; I carefully listen and sometimes support the ideas. I am one of the budget hawks who try to reduce whatever line item I possibly can from each department's budget. This is why I take exception to Councilman Gambardella's statement that there is a "lack of serious commitment to reduce the budget in any meaningful way."This is simply not true.


The status quo is something that this Council and the council before it have tossed out the window. Here are just a few examples of how we are budgeting in a much more fiscally conservative manner:

1) We have moved the majority of the town's overtime accounts in all of the departments into the Legislative Council's overtime budget so that every request for overtime spending can be carefully reviewed and approved by the 15-member Council. This has resulted in reduced overtime costs.

2) We have instituted new systems of consolidating common purchases that used to be spread throughout every department into a central account in the Purchasing Office, where the purchase of items in bulk has saved the town significant dollars. In past budget cycles, we centralized all printing, office and computer supplies, and this year we intend to do so with the purchasing of replacement or additional office equipment. We have learned that this centralization of purchasing has saved Hamden taxpayers approximately 20 percent in each category.

3) The Council has taken on key matters that have plagued the town's financial status, such as the pension, medical self-insurance and workers' comp funds -- all of which were in trouble -- and have made progress in each area. I'm proud to report that we've gotten on to a real payment plan for the pension fund that will save Hamden millions over the years, and have brought the workers' comp account from the red into the black. Even the medical self-insurance fund is improving!

4) We've also taken difficult steps to leave dozens of positions over the last several years empty that became vacant through retirement and/or other means. These unfilled positions have made departments do more with less, and have saved well over a half-million annually. These are pressing issues facing the town and they have been effectively worked on by the Legislative Council.

I still look forward to working with Mr. Gambardella on this year's budget -- the most difficult budget I have seen over the last decade of my involvement with the town. A more accurate picture of the work that the Council accomplishes needs to be reported to our citizens so that they know we are looking very carefully for any way to save taxpayer dollars and make the hurt of this year's revaluation less painful. This includes considering a phasing in of our revaluation -- which we are awaiting information on. Such a bold move would be looked at favorably by a number of councilmembers, myself included, and would be the kind of bold policy change that would help our residents.

Please feel free to contact me at councilmancurtleng@sbcglobal.net to talk about the budget or offer ideas you might have that we should look at in any attempt to reduce the tax burden.

(Democratic Councilman Curt Leng is serving his third term on the Legislative Council, and chairs the Finance and School Building committees.)


April 25, 2006

Word of the Budget Season: Consolidate

This week we will begin to deliberate the larger town departments like Public Works and guardian services -- fire and police. These departments total close to $30 million of the annual operating budget and have hundreds of individual "accounts" to research and make decisions about.

It is in areas such as these where we can find the largest annual increases and also the largest possible savings depending on the changes we consider. I see a few potential areas where we should seriously consider making cuts, such as some new positions, and other areas where we might want to return a position or product the mayor eliminated because the department head has made a good argument for it.

In what I promise will be my last word on spring water, I would like to point out that 10 of the 16 coolers that we supply are located in the following locations: the landfill, Public Works, fire/police training center, the daycare room at the Keefe Center, police headquarters and annex (two coolers in each building), community police, fire headquarters. That means that 10 are not in Government Center with its newer plumbing, but mainly in older buildings or construction trailers.

While it's clear Councilman Gambardella and I will did not see eye to eye on this issue, I am fairly confident that we may be on the same page with other ideas. The word of the week, in my opinion, should be consolidation.

It's a dirty word in some government circles. People think it will cut the service level that we provide our residents or hurt our already short-staffed departments. I disagree. I think there are several ways the town can explore consolidation that could result in significant savings for our taxpayers and the potential for increased services.

The first and potentially most effective effort at consolidating some duplication of service is between the town government and the Board of Education. Discussion started even before the purchase of Government Center that the Board of Education management, finance and personnel staff would share the building. Mayor Henrici has endorsed this idea and I believe that the Board of Education is open to the idea as well.

Not only would it be a good symbolic effort, bringing the town and Board together in the same building, but it would also cause immediate staffing and operating efficiencies.
Speaking of Public Works and Parks & Recreation, I think a comprehensive study should be initiated this year -- and I plan to recommend that it be put into this year's budget -- to see if town services would be more cost- and service-effective if we consolidated those two departments.

Parks & Recreation and Public Works overlap in numerous areas and sometimes even need to buy similar equipment twice -- one for each department -- which is simply crazy. I would like to see Parks & Recreation and Public Works consolidate manpower, equipment, manning for vacations and sick-time and provide the goal of even more efficient services.

In these two areas, Hamden has the opportunity to save hundreds of thousands of dollars over a relatively short time. I also think it would create a team spirit between the departments and between the town and Board of Education that cannot be measured in dollars -- but would be incredibly valuable to our government and our citizens.

In my next piece, I plan to write about the idea of implementing a "phase-in" over a two- or three-year period of the revaluation hit homeowners took this year. From what I have heard so far, and this is unfortunately without hard data, phasing in would ease the burden of the substantial tax increases.

If you have any comments on my thoughts or on any aspect of the budget, please e-mail me at councilmancurtleng@sbcglobal.net.


April 27, 2006

Progress Made With a Big 4

During the fourth night of our budget deliberations on Monday, we made some progress when working on the first of the Big 4 budgets: Public Works. The other Big 4 are Fire, Police and the Board of Education.

Carefully and with good friendly debate, we went through each of the Public Works' 70-odd individual accounts or "line-items" and cut over $125,000 from the budget. We did this by carefully reviewing what was asked for in each account, looking at multi-year trends and seeing what the department's current year-to-date budget status was three-quarters of the way through the current fiscal year.

It should be noted that we have not yet looked at any department's personnel. We are saving personnel for the next round of deliberations when we will see where salary cuts can be made. This is the area of our annual deliberations where the most savings can usually be found, with the average salary of one employee being roughly $45,000 plus benefits.

I plan to make the same motion that I did last year with regards to personnel -- a motion to eliminate funding for all current positions that have been made vacant due to a retirement, employees who have left Hamden employment or positions made vacant due to a promotion. This is not to say that I will not support funding some positions -- specifically those in the understaffed Finance Department, which has experienced numerous vacancies.

If this motion passes, it will force us to individually debate each position before it gets funding in the Council budget. Last year this proved to be a very good cost-saving experiment. It isn't easy to vote to put positions in the budget when we know that each position will increase the overall budget by over $50,000. (Traditionally, Police and Fire are not made part of this potion due to public safety and minimum-manning contractual requirements.)

While the overall night was a success, the discussion regarding the Hamden library and the subsequent vote to eliminate Sunday hours from Miller Library was, in my opinion, very unfortunate. Along with four of my fellow councilmembers, I voted against closing our library on Sunday. Sunday hours are very popular and a wonderful service for Hamden students, especially those without computers at home.

I hope we can reconsider this at a later date in the budget process. Sunday hours only cost the town approximately $30,000, plus some additional utilities, and I would have liked to see us remove funding from other accounts to save this $30,000 than to cut Sunday hours. Hopefully, together, we can come up with an alternative.

As always, if anyone has any ideas or suggestions, please feel free to e-mail me at councilmancurtleng@sbcglobal.net.