Council to meet on 5-year plan, budget

WEST HAVEN — The city might have a budget to present to the Municipal Accountability Review Board before the June 15 deadline.

A special meeting of the City Council has been noticed for June 7 to take action on the city’s five-year capital plan and Mayor Nancy Rossi’s budget review.

On May 17, the Municipal Accountability Review Board, a state panel that provides oversight to financially distressed municipalities and has the power to approve or reject the budgets of those municipalities, rejected West Haven’s budget. The city has until June 15 for the MARB to approve a budget before the state board can approve its own budget for the city.

The issue that came up most during the MARB’s discussion on May 17 was a renegotiated police contract intended to recruit and retain police officers by providing a $10,000 pay bump and annual raises for the remainder of the contract. Several MARB members said they did not see a clear explanation in the city’s five-year plan for how it would afford to sustain the program once one-time federal grant funding dries up.

“You have a massive, uncovered liability in the operating budget,” said Thomas Hamilton, chief financial officer of Norwalk Public Schools, in that meeting.

Board member Bob White, a bankruptcy attorney, said there was “a deliberate hiding of the ball” to avoid explaining how the city would be able to afford the increase in salaries as well as covering the impact it would have on pensions. He rejected Rossi’s explanation that the five-year plan was insufficient because of last-minute changes approved by the council before the MARB meeting, saying that edits made to the first year of a five-year plan should have no impact on having solid justifications for spending in the subsequent four years.

City Council Chairman Peter Massaro, D-6, said Tuesday that the council had not taken any action on approving a new budget and five-year plan because they were waiting for Rossi.

It was not immediately clear if the five-year capital plan or budget review documents listed on the June 7 agenda were intended to address the MARB’s concerns about the city’s fiveyear plan. Rossi did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

City Council Finance Committee Chairwoman Bridgette Hoskie, D-1, said it was her belief that the special meeting would cover the state panel’s issues.

“I am under the impression the plan will address the MARB’s concerns,” she said.