The Mayor's Veto Message Problematic For Council Democrats

 

June 30, 2011         Timothy T. Stewart

The Honorable Peter Denuzze

Town and City Clerk

27 West Main Street

New Britain, CT 06051

Dear Mr. Denuzze:

Years of weathering a stagnant economy as well as decreases in federal, state and local government funding have taken its toll on New Britain’s not-for-profit organizations. One of the more unfortunate outcomes of this situation has been the increased competition among these organizations for remaining funds, including the funding the City of New Britain receives from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), Emergency Shelter Grants (ESG) and HOME funds.

Each year here in New Britain, there is always much more in funding requests than the dollars we receive from HUD. There is a lengthy and oftentimes painful process as first the Commission on Community and Neighborhood Development (CCND) and then the Common Council hold public hearings and votes on the allocation. Complicating this already difficult process is the fact that many City programs and departments, in particular the Department of Municipal Development (DMD), join in the competition for this funding.

Another part of this annual process is that each year, CCND members and staff spend many hours performing due diligence on these applications, reviewing hundreds of pages of programmatic and financial information, only to be overruled by the Council. While the Council is the ultimate authority on this funding, much of their discussion and decision making goes on behind closed doors which allows political and personal relationships to influence the outcome.

Be assured my objections are not based on whether these agencies and programs provide worthwhile and valuable services to our community. They all do and I wish we did not have to make these Solomon like decisions. But the reality is not all requests can be funded 100%. My objection is that the changes of the Democratic majority on the Council are determined in caucus and give the appearance of favoritism to those agencies that have political or personal connections to Council members. This lack of transparency is a disservice to those organizations that are relying on the public process, rather than private conversations, to make the case for their programs.

The Council is giving the appearance that “who you know” is more important in the decision making process than the actual need of the organizations. For example, this year as well as last year, the Council overruled CCND to give funding to Urban Oaks ($20,000) despite the fact that Urban Oaks has over $67,000 of prior CDBG funding that they have not accessed which should be an outrage to all those organizations that were bypassed or received less funding in those years. Several members of the Urban Oaks board are active members of the Democratic Party.

Denuzze

Page Two

June 30, 2011

Another agency benefitting from Council changes to the CDBG allocation was Pathway Senderos. A prominent member of the local Democratic Party and member of the Pathway’s Board was lobbying very hard by phone and in person to increase funding by $20,000 and they were successful. Rather than the merits of Pathway’s application being discussed in an open forum, the decision was made once again behind closed doors.

Other agencies that benefitted by Council action were the Human Resources Agency of New Britain (HRA) and the Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC) both of which have recent connections to Democratic aldermen – until a few months ago, Alderman Trueworthy’s wife was employed at HRA and Alderman Sanchez was employed at OIC.

This year, these changes come at the expense of workforce development and in City programs themselves. The Council totally eliminated funding for the Future Workforce program sponsored by Capital Workforce Partners (CWP). CWP has been instrumental in the success of the local hiring on the police station project, which is currently at 30% (double of the goal set at the onset of the project). The Future Workforce program was especially critical as it targets young people entering the workforce. Over the past three years that the program has been in place, over 1,500 young men and women have had an instructional introduction into the workplace that has been the key to finding work after graduation. To pull the plug on a jobs program as New Britain families are struggling in order to fund an organic farm that should by this time be self-sufficient is incomprehensible to me.

Also severely impacted is the City’s Department of Municipal Development. The irony is that it is DMD staff that monitor the distribution and reporting of the HUD funding. They also assist our local not-for-profit groups in dealing with HUD regulations. I cannot even count the number of times a local not-for-profit has called City Hall in a panic, concerned that a program may close without emergency funding for repairs or to replace lost federal or state funding. Time and time again, DMD Director Ken Malinowski and his staff have come to the rescue. They will now be repaid by having to lay off 10% of their department (2 employees) due to lack of HUD funding.

As much as no one wanted to get to this point or how awful it may sound, New Britain has reached the point where “charity begins at home”. As we continue to deal with the fallout of the FY 2012 general fund budget, which still may include employee lay-offs, how can we add to that by not reserving sufficient federal funding for our own use? The City cannot help others cope with the needs in our community, if we do not have adequate staffing to do so.

For the above reasons, and with all due respect to the Council, I hereby veto Resolution #31463-1 of the June 22, 2011 meeting of the New Britain Common Council. I am hoping that this veto will give the Council a chance to review the available material and reconsider how the allocation of these funds will impact future City operations.

Sincerely,

Timothy T. Stewart

Mayor, City of New Britain

cc: Common Council

Gennaro Bizzarro, Corporation Counsel

Robert Curry, Finance Director