New Haven – Mayor Toni N. Harp today announced several noteworthy details regarding the city’s financial outlook as work continues toward a five-year budget overview. A complete, approximated five-year forecast is expected early in 2019.
Earlier this year Mayor Harp said, in the wake of state aid reductions made known midway through the second quarter of Fiscal Year 2018, that a projected, estimated five-year city budget might help protect the city from such ill-timed, damaging setbacks.
Research underway in the development of that five-year forecast underscores some of the unique challenges faced by the City of New Haven:
- The value of New Haven’s Grand List that is tax exempt under state law is higher than that of any other municipality: half-again as much as Bridgeport and more than twice that of Hartford.
- More than a half-dozen Connecticut cities and towns have mill rates higher than New Haven’s, including Waterbury, Bridgeport, New Britain, West Haven, and Hamden.
- New Haven’s current mill rate is less than it was in FY2007, FY2011, and FY2012, and remains just 1.43 mills higher than when Mayor Harp was first sworn-in.
- New Haven’s current budget expenditures increased about 1.5% over the previous year; its four-year mill rate increase of 1.43 represents a cumulative increase of about 3.4%.
- State aid for public education though Education Cost Sharing has been the same since FY2010 despite rising enrollment and increasing costs for supplies, utilities, and maintenance.
Mayor Harp points to several ongoing, positive economic trends as rationale to be optimistic about New Haven’s bright fiscal future. Its unemployment rate has dropped from 10.7% in 2014 to 5.4% in 2018: the city’s employers have added 3,100 jobs in that time. And in that same time approximately 1,000 market rate housing units have been added along with nearly as many subsidized housing units.
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