Coalition calls on Yale, hospital to contribute more to city’s budget.

NEW HAVEN — A coalition of familiar groups, with some new names, again has asked Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital to greatly increase their voluntary contribution to New Haven on the day that the Board of Alders was poised to cut millions from Mayor Justin Elicker’s proposed fiscal 2021 budget.

The group’s strategy is to collect as many names as possible on a petition to the two institutions, which the coalition hopes will be successful in generating more funds from the city’s largest employers by later this summer.

Sarah Miller said the inequality in the city among black and brown neighborhoods “is not an accident of history. Rather , it a result of history. And a big part of the history that stares us in the face all over town is Yale’s enormous property footprint for which they pay very limited taxes. The charitable purpose that allows for Yale’s tax exemption is education and yet year after year our public schools run a deficit and cannot afford the core staff and supplies needed to meet children’s needs,” she said.

Miller, who is part of New Haven Public School Advocates, said there is not enough money in the system to do what needs to be done. She said the wealth of both institutions, which are also the city’s biggest employers, increases daily. She said there are losses, but they are positioned to weather them.

Yale has nearly 14,000 faculty and staff, and it has promised to hire more in low-income neighborhoods. The university pays the $12 million a year in voluntary payments.

“Our $12 million voluntary payment in the most recent fiscal year was the highest from a university to a hometown anywhere in the United States, and represented a 44 percent increase from the payment we made just three years earlier,” according to Yale University past statements. “And that is only one part of what Yale gives directly to the city. In that same year, we paid $5 million in property taxes on our non-academic properties (making us the city’s third-highest taxpayer). Yale is supporting the New Haven community during the COVID-19 pandemic through a growing number of initiatives and programs. Examples are outlined” at https://bit.ly/2X1VGVM.

Speaking of its operating budget, Marna Borgstrom, president and CEO of Yale New Haven Health, recently said in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has gone from a $300 million surplus to a $350 million loss.

Yale University, in response to previous criticisms, has listed the contributions it makes to the city, such as the $5 million in property taxes on its non-academic properties and the $5 million each year in permitting fees. Yale has also noted: Its medical school sponsors free clinics; the law school offers probono legal advice; and the architecture school designs and builds homes for the economically disadvantaged. Yale students also volunteer in the city, provide tutoring, mentoring, tax preparation, ESL classes, and food pantry services, Yale has noted.

It has said it supports the schools as a co-founder and primary funder of New Haven Promise, having contributed $4 million to cover full tuition at any public university in the state for eligible New Haven public school students. Since 2014, the program has awarded scholarships to 1,900 students and has placed 400 paid interns at Yale.

Miller said the many community programs that Yale offers do not address the city’s need for fundamental structural change.

Miller said the bright spot, in what she views as a dark moment in the city’s history, is the coming together of people in New Haven “who are done settling for the status quo.”

“In this moment of crisis, we invite our anchor institutions to collaborate with us in a new spirit of partnership to advance education and improve health not only within the walls of Yale but also the city we all call home,” she said.

The city has estimated that if the university were not tax exempt, it would generate $144 million in revenue annually for New Haven. The city would have TO subtract the money it now gets in PILOT from the state and the fire contribution from the university.

New faces among the advocates included Elizabeth Gonzalez, a mother of four, and her daughter, Jaidy Gonzalez, a senior at Wilbur Cross High School, who are members of the Semilla Collective, a grassroots group that has been providing food for immigrants and others hard hit by illness from the coronavirus and financially, due to job losses.

Elizabeth Gonzalez first got to know the group when it helped her with groceries back in March and some cash, an organization that has reached 300 families since then.

Due to the pandemic, Gonzalez said the hours both she and her husband worked were cut back.

She said they pay taxes, do not use food stamps and try to send money home to their parents in Mexico. “We cover all of our expenses with our hard work and effort,” she said.

She said she and her family are paying their fair share of taxes, which is what the hospital and the university should do.

Jaidy Gonzalez said it is hard to feed her big family, but she was excited to get help from her neighbors, which she is now paying back by volunteering for Semilla.

Kiana Flores, a junior at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School and a member of New Haven Climate Movement, said it was important to actively work to prevent disaster from climate change.

“Time is running out. Denying New Haveners access to such an enormous amount of money will only lead further to the decline we are already experiencing,” Flores said of Yale and the hospital’s tax exempt status.

“Yale University has denied its place in New Haven for too long,” she said. “We can no longer tolerate this massive amount of nontaxable property.”

Albert Alston, who is with the Local 3429 of the New Haven Public Schools paraprofessionals union, said they are short staffed and underpaid, despite the important work they do. He said they are assigned as substitute teachers at all grade levels, which makes it impossible to carry out their normal duties.

He said they are burned out because there are not enough resources in the New Haven school system. Students who should have one-on-one help are not getting this support. An infusion of tax revenue from Yale would help with these issues.

Esul Burton, a member of Yale College Democrats, who just graduated from Yale, said the university needs to do better in light of the proposed tax increase and budget cuts in New Haven.

“The COVID-19 crisis threatens to compound the structural inequality already present in New Haven. Any path forward must require a radical re-imagining of Yale’s responsibility to the city and its residents,” Burton said.

Scott Marks, who leads New Haven Rising, said for over 80 years communities that were red-lined to keep out black and brown people are still paying the price.

He said the inequality has left sectors without affordable housing and now they are suffering food scarcity. He said they are the same neighborhoods where black and brown residents are dying at a higher rate than other groups to COVID-19.

As a large corporation, he said Yale recovered greatly from the 2008 recession and it will again, but the neighborhoods left behind suffer high foreclosure rates is high and the schools struggle.

The list of groups supporting the petition to Yale and Yale New Haven Hospital includes 18 groups so far.

The university’s tax-exempt properties made up 42 percent of New Haven’s tax-exempt grand list, while the hospital’s tax-exempt properties add another 9 percent. Altogether, the total universe of tax exempt land is just under 60 percent of the city’s grand list.