City increases budget by $30 million Uni. Council to advise on free expression

Wednesday’s budget announcement was vastly di erent from Elicker’s 2021 budget address where he laid out two separate budgets, including a crisis budget which proposed cutting services and raising taxes. Amid a pandemic, unmitigated debt obligations and underfunded pensions, New Haven was “on the precipice of collapse in 2021” according to Elicker.

Elicker said that “smart fiscal decisions” over the last two years, which include the stabilization of pension funding and an increase in the state’s contribution to the city through the Payment in Lieu of Taxes program reimbursing municipalities in the state for non-taxable property, have contributed to the city’s “strong position” today.

“We had a $66 million gap in the budget in 2021,” Elicker told the News. “It’s been a really, really challenging three years. But when you think about where we’ve come, how far we’ve come, it is quite remarkable. It’s in part because of our team but it is also in large part because of the partnership and leadership of our state delegation and the many people on the ground, encouraging and pushing, you know, the university to contribute more to the city.”

State Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney and New Haven activists, including members of New Haven Rising and UNITE-HERE, have spent much of the last two years advocating both in Hartford