Hamden Mayor Garrett One-On-One

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
One question that came up quite a bit pertains to
uh Sean Grace, who I'm sure you feelded this this question.
Maybe not. Oh you look a little bit thrown by
this people saying it works for you. But it's also
the DTC chair. Isn't that a conflict of interest?

Speaker 2 (00:15):
So this came up during the charter and it was
decided by the Charter Revision Commission, and eventually what came
out of the charter was that a town employee can
be on private committees and can do what they want

(00:38):
in their free time. And so if if a person
is chairing a committee that is uh, you know, outside
of town the town.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
Government, then then that's their prerogative.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
And you know, I just want to make sure that
what we do within town government is on the up
and up, and I think that we do a pretty
good job of that.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
I heard a lot about the community center. We don't
want it, we don't need it. Money's better spent elsewhere.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
So we have we've set aside some grant funding for
the community center. We use some of the ARPA funds
the American and Rescue Plan Act, that's the COVID money
to build the community center. We also are planning on
using employees that we already have in town government to

(01:30):
staff the community center. And we also are planning on
building a fuel cell outside of the community center so
that we can power the community center, and whatever electricity
is left over can go into low income households to
help their energy costs. So the operating costs are not

(01:52):
going to be a burden on taxpayers.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
Neither is the construction cost.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
So first of all, you know, this is not going
to packed our budget, which I think is really important.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
A lot of people are skeptical about that though, with
the whole ARPA thing that we talked about, and they feel,
you know, funds have been misspent before, they'll be misspent
here too, and this time on something we don't even want.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
So are the person who deals with all of our
grants in terms of compliance and in even getting a
lot of our grants. We've gotten over fifty million dollars
in grant funding in the three and a.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Half years that I've been there.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
She's doing a wonderful job, and I'm not worried about compliance.
But the point that people keep bringing up that the
community doesn't want this community center, there are some loud
voices that don't want this community center. But just on Saturday,
I was at a youth symposium talking to There must
have been thirty five forty youth at this youth symposium,

(02:51):
and we talked about a youth center, because this community
center is mostly geared towards youth in our community. And
we talked a little bit about what this youth center
will do for kids for after school during the summer,
and they all wanted it, they said, all of them
said that they need something like this in their life.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
So it's not true that no.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
One wants the community center. It's just that some loud voices.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Don't want it.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
I did see several people saying that they had they
don't feel they're being heard. That they show up for
these town meetings that they speak, you're at them, and
they feel like their words are falling on deaf ears,
like we're saying, write out what we're concerned about, and
they're not being heard.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
So I do hear from a lot of different residents,
and I hear from others that don't feel safe speaking
in forums where there's you know, a rowdy crowd and
people are yelling, and they come to me privately or
you know, just the youth symposium that I was at
where I heard.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
From a different group of people. So I hear all voices.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
And I know that there are people who are frustrated,
and then I hear some voices who are encouraged by
some of the plans that we have. But it's my
job to make decisions for what's best for the community.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
And I think that creating more.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
Public safe is public spaces where our youth feel safe
and they have resources like mental health supports and workforce
training that they can rely on. I think that's a
good thing for the community.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Now there is a spike in property tax more than
a spike, significant increase in property taxes coming though. What
do you say about that and people their inability to
even maybe continue living in Hamden.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah, it's definitely really difficult. So what happened over the
last few years since COVID is that you have more
people coming into Hamden from either living in apartments or
from outside of our community. And we've seen bidding wars
on homes that have driven up the price, and so
that changes the market rate for which homes are going

(05:05):
on the market and then selling for so homes have
increased in value significantly. It makes it really difficult for
people to buy homes anymore. So what we saw in
our revaluation of all properties is that home values went
up on average fifty five percent. Meanwhile for commercial industrial

(05:27):
they went up about thirty percent. So there's a shift
in the grand list, a shift in the tax burden
from commercial to residential, and that's made it really difficult
for homeowners. So, you know, for us to provide the
same services that we've provided this year and in previous years,
that means that the mill rate is coming down because

(05:48):
our grand list went up, but taxes for individual households
are going up by an average of about twenty percent.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
The which thing. A lot of the bidding going on
for the houses here not people bidding who are going
to live in those homes. Those are people who are
going to buy that property and just turn and you
know they're going to flip that house.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
So in some cases, yes, but.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
We we've we're a resident well.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
We have welcomed a lot of new community members. There's
a house across the street from me that was purchased
by a family and and they're raising their family there.
This isn't you know a this isn't a landlord, this
is this is a family and I think that's going
on in in different neighborhoods all over Hamden. Sure there

(06:32):
are some people who are purchasing investment properties, but it's
you know, it's a really difficult time for someone to
purchase an investment property, which you know, at the top.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
Of the market.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
I mean, hopefully this is the top of the market,
but you know, I think these are families who are
moving into Hamden from other places.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
Put two town employees on administrative leave on the heels
of them filing a human resources complaint. But the person
they they're both complaining about not on leave, Karen Bivens,
who seems there's a history of conflict with how is
she not on leave too?

Speaker 2 (07:16):
So for this question, I am going to have to
rely on my HR department and I can't really comment
on the deffered.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
But there is like Q thus far. Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
So there's going to be a report released this week
and I think that'll help to clarify decisions that were made.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Okay, yeah, I can tell by your body language that
they're yeah that you told me. During the commercial break,
I apologize I talked too much this one. We're all done.
We're all done right there? No no a now, straight
from a Hampden resident. Why is Hamden Housing and Section
eight still not open to the public. COVID has been
over for years now. Why are they not open to public?

(07:58):
If every city office otherwise is the.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
Hand in Housing Authority is separate from the town. The
Legislative Council has appointments that they are able to make
to the board that oversees the Hamden Housing Authority, but
the the Hamden Housing Authority is separate from the town
and their board makes decisions for their housing. I know

(08:23):
that they do have a very long list. They're they're
usually pretty full. We have tried to help people get
into Hamden Housing Authority uh units and it you know,
it is run separate from the town, so we don't
I don't have authority over the Hamden Housing Authority.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah, okay, I'm just kind to get right now with
people asking who are listening now and again saying no
by and largeest Community Center, I mean, we really don't
want it. It's already in motion, so I I mean,
I can understand the catch twenty two there, but saying
how how was a budget even done without an audit.
How there was no audit done? How are we even

(09:04):
our audit is doing what we're doing?

Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yep, audit is almost complete o PM. Actually you have
to submit your audit to o PM and they track
the different communities that have submitted their audit, and out
of one hundred and sixty nine municipalities, only about seventy
have theirs done for December thirty first, twenty twenty four,

(09:28):
and then each month more and more turn them in.
To remain in compliance, it has to be the audit
has to be completed by June thirtieth, and so ours
certainly will be done. And it's definitely possible to create
a budget. When I was on the Legislative Council, there
was a late audit and we still were able to

(09:50):
complete the budget on time. And so we have a
lot of information that's on the town website. All of
our revenue and expense reports are on the town website,
and so we have a revenue and expense report that
is from year end fiscal year twenty four and so
you can use that to go line by line and

(10:11):
see what was spent in that year. And the budget
that I produced back in March has a lot more
information than people have seen before. We have five years
of past actuals on the budget, so there's plenty of
information to rely on to make determinations about what should
be in the budget.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
This one came in saying, isn't it true taxes were
going up an anyway? Even without this revaluation, town's asking
for over twenty million more from taxpayer sits here of
property values hadn't gone up, wouldn't you have had to
raise the mill rate to collect the same amount.

Speaker 3 (10:48):
So that's true.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yes, but we also aren't going up in our expenses
by an extraordinary amount. It's like four point eight percent.
A lot of that is for the tension. We have
two different pension funds that we have to contribute to.
A lot of it is for that. You know, medical
goes up a little bit, debt service goes up a

(11:09):
little bit. So you know, there are expenses that we
have to pay for to maintain the town. We have
unions in Hamden and they all are getting about three
percent increases for their general wage increase. And so yes,
we we do have to increase our expenses to maintain
the same amount of services.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
All right, and let's get to ARPA, which we touched
upon right at the outset there, and that came up
a lot too. What are your comments on ARPA.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
Well, ARPA is.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
A really amazing contribution that that the previous administration made
during COVID, and so this was an injection of a
lot of money for municipalities to be able to do
good things for their community. And so the Town of
Hamden got about twenty four million dollars in ARPA Fundation

(12:00):
I and some of it was spent by the previous
administration about six million dollars. And then for the rest
of the eighteen million dollars, the legislative Council put together
a budget that funded different things in hand, and some
of those were for public works for the fire department,

(12:21):
and then helped to fund a lot of different nonprofits
that helped do different things in our community related to
mentorship programs for kids and homelessness efforts, so there was
a lot and then also the Youth Center. So there
were a lot of different things built into that budget.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
And as it pertained start, because we had said at
the outset, that came up a lot somebody did, right.
You used federal ARPA funds to cover town employee salaries,
it's legal. But the reason given on the record was
that the money had to be allocated by December thirty
one this past year, and there were learns about it
being spent by the deadline of December thirty one, twenty

(13:06):
twenty six. PERSK goes under say public record shows that
the council only voted to temporarily move that money into
the general fund, but they didn't vote on spending.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
It right, so mostly accurate.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
So when we were approaching the deadline for obligations meaning
that so there are a lot of different Arbor rules
and so by and large you had to have everything obligated,
meaning that you had to have a contract.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
Yeah, basically you had to.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Have a contract for how that money was going to
be spent. So that had to happen by December thirty first,
twenty twenty four. We had a few projects that we
were not able to get under contract. We still wanted
to maintain the Council's, the Legislative Council's priorities on what

(14:00):
they had budgeted for. We also had a number of
projects where because the budget was created a little bit
late in the whole timeline of ARPA, we were worried
that the expenditures were not going to be able to
get made by December thirty first of twenty twenty six,

(14:21):
and so with these looming deadlines, we wanted to make
sure that the council's priorities for their budget were maintained,
and so we we worked really well with our our
grants manager and put these dollars the ARPA dollars and
use them for eligible municipal expenditures. And then we took

(14:44):
out local dollars out of the budget and put them
in restricted funds commiserate with the priorities set by the
legislative council for that funding. There was a little bit
of money that the council tabled and has not gotten
back to, and I'm sure they will when they have time.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
Right now they're dealing.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
With That's the thing. Many contend that council was not
involved at all, doesn't know anything, and it's required by
the town charter that they do.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
Every single vote went before the legislative council. My administration
has to deal with compliance. We had to deal with
in many cases setting up the program for expending these funds,
But the legislative Council was entirely in charge of putting

(15:36):
the budget together, and we have gone back to them
for votes and explained what every vote means. These were
all happening in public meetings, and so they are well
aware of everything that has taken place with ARPA because
it has happened during their council meetings.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
And so the entirety of.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
ARPA is really in front of them and has to
be because one of the requirements for ARPA was that
it be done by a committee making these decisions, and
so the Legislative Council was that committee.