by Thomas Breen
Yale Associate VP Alexandra Daum, with city dev director Mike Piscitelli.
Up goes the grand list.
Mayor Justin Elicker unveiled a budget proposal Friday afternoon that would see the city’s general fund increase by 4.4 percent — and the local tax rate jump by 4.01 percent — thanks in part to the rising costs of debt service, employee healthcare, and teacher and police salaries, as well as $5 million more for city schools.
The mayor also said that he is “optimistic” that more money could be on the way from Yale — potentially reducing the final tax rate — as the city and the university continue to negotiate over a new voluntary annual payment.
Elicker made those announcements during his latest budget-proposal press conference on the second floor of City Hall.
Standing alongside City Budget Director Shannon McCue and city Finance Department Project Coordinator Ron Gizzi, Elicker said that he has proposed a $733.3 million general fund budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1. That would mark a roughly $31 million increase, or 4.4 percent, above the current fiscal year’s $702.3 million general fund budget.
Elicker also proposed increasing the city’s mill rate from 39.4 to 40.98 — a jump of 1.58 mills, or 4.01 percent. (One mill translates to $1 owed in local property taxes for every $1,000 in assessed value.)
Click here to read the proposed budget in full.
The mayor is required by city law to submit a new budget to the alders by March 1 each year. His proposed Fiscal Year 2026-27 (FY27) budget now heads to the Board of Alders for three months of public hearings and review before being taken up for proposed amendments and a final vote in late May or early June.
Elicker’s FY27 budget proposal is his seventh since taking office in 2020, and the first of his fourth two-year term.
McCue and Elicker described a number of “fixed” city costs that continue to go up and up and that make up a sizeable portion of the city’s budget. Those include city healthcare and debt service costs, each of which is expected to rise by $10 million next fiscal year.
Elicker said that the city recently adopted long-in-the-works and much-needed new contracts for the police and teachers unions. Both of those contracts go a long way towards better compensating critical city workers and thereby improving retention, he said. But higher salaries and other provisions also come at a cost that the city is bound to cover. “Things cost money,” he said.
The mayor also described a number of programs that had previously been funded by federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) monies — like the city’s two-person climate and sustainability office, the city-owned hotel-turned-homeless shelter on Foxon Boulevard, the reading-and-math-focused New Haven Tutoring Initiative, and the non-cop emergency response crew COMPASS — that he has proposed transitioning onto the general fund, as all ARPA dollars have to be spent by the end of 2026.
Elicker said that his proposed budget includes a net increase of 13 full-time, general-fund positions, including two new parks caretakers to help with the planned Long Wharf Park buildout, a field tech to help maintain the city’s sports facilities, a new Elderly Services program manager for a planned new senior center at the old Barbell Club, a new deputy controller, and a new internal auditor “to ensure city funds are used” appropriately. Elicker said that that latter position comes in part in response to the scandals around hackers stealing $6 million in city funds by impersonating the school district’s bus contractor in 2023 as well as the ex-police chief’s more recent alleged theft of $85,000 in confidential-informant and youth-activity funds.
In regards to schools funding, Elicker said his proposed budget would increase the city’s contribution to New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) by another $5 million. “Our education system desperately needs funds.” The new teachers union contract — while “the right thing to do” — contributes to a higher schools budget. He said that the city has increased local contributions to NHPS by 63 percent since 2020. He also repeated calls for the state to significantly step up its funding of municipal education. (NHPS leaders, meanwhile, are considering requesting a budget increase of between $20 million and $40 million.)
On the revenue side, Elicker said that the state’s Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) to New Haven is now over $105 million.
He also said that Yale has agreed to maintain its current level of voluntary payments to the city — roughly $24 million — instead of following through on an $8 million drop that the city and the university had agreed to for the final year of a six-year deal struck at the end of 2021. That means no cliff this year for the roughly $10 million annual increase Yale committed to as part of the soon-to-expire deal.
Elicker said the city is in “active conversations with Yale” about its contribution to the city. “The conversation has been very productive” and he’s “optimistic” Yale may wind up agreeing to an even larger amount, thereby allowing for a lower city tax rate.
“The Mayor announced today that Yale University’s funding will not decline in the next Fiscal Year as was originally imagined by the 2021 voluntary payment arrangement,” Yale Associate Vice President for New Haven Affairs and University Properties Alexandra Daum told the Independent. “Yale is glad to be able to make that commitment as a precursor to a renewed multi-year commitment. As the Mayor said today, both sides are confident that we will be in a position very soon to announce a multi-year contribution. In addition to our financial commitment, Yale is also looking forward to sharing the details of the full suite of programs and partnerships between Yale and New Haven that will commence or continue in the coming years.”
While this is not a citywide revaluation year — the next one is scheduled for next year — McCue said that the city’s net taxable grand list increased by 2.5 percent, in part due to newly built buildings phasing out of the city’s tax assessment deferral program.
The mayor’s proposed budget states that the city’s net taxable grand list rose from $9,034,084,421 last year to $9,258,290,680 this year. That growth was driven in large part by a $7.8 billion jump in the real estate portion of the list.
And what about the city’s proposed acquisition of the old English Station power plant site and plan to turn it into a new public park and outdoor pool?
City spokesperson Lenny Speiller said that there is $5 million in the city’s special fund budget that is designated for the so-called Mill River Park plan. That money comes from the state’s Urban Act grant program, and is available to be used for the site’s acquisition, if the alders approve.