NORWALK, Conn. — Norwalk seems to find money when it needs it – but not for the urban core.
So said Common Councilman David Watts (D-District A) Tuesday, thoughts that were backed up by Councilwoman Sharon Stewart (D-At Large) and Councilwoman Phaedrel “Faye” Bowman (D-District B), in protesting $1.4 million of budget transfers to cover Norwalk Police Department expenses.
The hours’ worth of commentary touched on Head Start funding and the value of educational programs versus policing, but the “methodology” was dismissed after the meeting by Councilman John Igneri (D-District E) and Councilman Bruce Kimmel (D-At Large) as being designed only to catch attention.
“This is doing committee work on the Council floor, simply because it’s on TV,” Kimmel said.
“The parties that are raising questions are not at the committee meetings they are supposed to be at,” Igneri said.
Indeed, as the meeting began, Watts wanted to make sure it would be on television, as the video for the previous Council meeting did not work.
The budget transfers were broken into two items. First came $789,117 to cover the cost of the recently approved police contract. Kimmel, the Finance Committee chairman, retrod some of that territory: the net cost to the city is less than the cost of inflation, the police are getting a 2.25 percent raise but there are savings in health benefits and pension payments.
The $789,117 is money that is “basically owed to our police officers,” Kimmel said, as it is part of the contract that only Watts voted against.
Majority Leader Doug Hempstead (R-At Large) pressed that point, saying it would be against Connecticut law to not fund the payments. Finance Director Thomas Hamilton said not approving the transfers would require the police department to take some “pretty drastic action,” such as laying off the entire police force for June.
The money was set aside for the eventual settling of the contract, he said, with $308,645 from the 13-14 budget and $480,472 from the 14-15 budget.
“Norwalk always seems to find money when they want to fund things,” Watts said. “… Money magically appears and it’s always available, but when there’s other issues that concern other areas the money can’t be found.”
It’s a pattern that Council members are threatened with the prospect of something terrible happening if they don’t vote for an item, he said, referring to “scare tactics” and saying that Norwalk needs to change the way it does business.
Setting aside money was good financial practice and the real decision was when the Council approved the contract, Hamilton said.
Mayor Harry Rilling pointed out that the cost of the contract would have been the same if it had not remained unsettled, if the money had been paid to the officers all along, as they worked.
“Either way there would have been a million dollar increase?” Bowman said.
It would have had the same impact on the budget, Hamilton said.
“We talk about spending I think that’s just ridiculous. … I just don’t understand,” Bowman said.
It’s standard practice to set aside money for a contract, done in all cities and probably small towns, and it would be irresponsible not to, Kimmel said. Plus, Connecticut has binding arbitration, which forces two parties to come together to find a reasonable settlement, he said.
“You can’t go in there asking for zeros or you lose. You really lose,” Kimmel said, going on to say “you’d be laughed out of the room.”
“Anyone who thinks we’re going to get under one percent or zero percent, that’s just pie in the sky and, in my opinion, it’s anti-labor,” Kimmel said. “People have to live. They have to live, they have to make a living, they have to keep up with inflation, they have to pay their health care bills, they have to send their kids to school. What do you mean, zero-zero-zero because you don’t like the police? Is that the way it’s going to be?”
This was all just rehashing old business, going over an argument that was had in January, Council President Jerry Petrini (R-District D) said. Eloisa Melendez (D-District A) agreed.
“If you didn’t vote for police contract then it’s fair to not vote for something like this,” Rich Bonenfant (R-At Large) said. “ … But anybody here that voted for the police contract had to know the money had to come and it had to be made up, and it was sitting in an account just for that purpose. I just want to say if you voted for the police contract you sort of have a little obligation here to follow up and pay for what you voted for.”
Watts, who has been careful to allow others to speak since being rebuked as violating Council rules, then had his chance to express his offense to the anti-labor comment.
“In the nation right now there is tension with black Americans and police, but that’s not our city and please don’t paint any of our Council members as anti-police because that isn’t true and that’s wrong,” said Watts, who mentioned twice during the meeting that he might not be on the Council much longer, meaning he might not run for re-election.
Watts, Bowman, Stewart and Minority Leader Travis Simms (D-District B) – who said nothing throughout the meeting – voted against the expenditure.
Next up was a $550,233 budget transfer, which Kimmel described as “a little bit of a lot of things that the police require because of the retirements, the unanticipated retirements.” That included severance payments, police academy expenses and anticipated overtime wage settlements.
“We have been watching the amount of money allocated to the police department increase while other areas we don’t see a response,” Bowman said. There ought to be money for social programs and education, she said. The analysis that had been promised in January about the amount of money spent on police overtime versus the cost of hiring more officers had not been delivered, she said.
“In order for me to support something, what I need to see is a working relationship and some collaboration between all of the Council members, the mayor and the department heads, which we do not see, so that we can figure out how to stop wasting funding so that there is money left over to fund social programs, which apparently there is not, whenever we ask,” Bowman said.
And, “The more cost effective option is actually to invest in education and in social programs rather than the justice system,” Bowman said. “So I don’t understand if we have a money problem why we are throwing more money at the police department instead of actually focusing on creating programs and focusing more on funding education opportunities like Head Start.”
Head Start funding was drastically cut under former Mayor Richard Moccia in the wake of a scathing federal audit of Norwalk Economic Opportunity Now (NEON) and $2 million was cut from the city budget by the Common Council.
“I don’t know how established program like Head Start receives the same amount of money as the South Norwalk Community Center,” Bowman said.
“Crime prevention should include programs,” Bowman said. “If it’s just going to go to overtime, that’s ridiculous.”
Watts challenged other Council members to name a company that is paying overtime.
“Cablevision,” Glenn Iannaccone (R-At Large) said.
“Starbucks,” said another.
“The reality is overtime in the corporate world is somewhat done away with,” Watts said.
He returned to a phrase he used months ago: “pork” in the budget.
Kimmel asked Police Chief Thomas Kulhawik to repeat commentary from January – it’s cheaper to pay overtime than it is to hire new officers, Kulhawik said.
“It’s only certain people that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars of overtime,” Bowman said. “I don’t know who is supposed to be anti-police. I actually did talk to police officers about the contract. One, they said they didn’t care whether we did it now or not because they have been working without it for too long and they didn’t like the contract in the second place.”
“It is easy to pigeon hole a minority at the time when there is heightened concern and that is not true,” Watts said. “People, I respect the police, I depend on the police, they are true professionals. I think we have the best police officers here and we will continue to support them. What we won’t support is policies that we feel don’t go far enough and also a system where funds cannot be applied to the urban core.”
Stewart’s only commentary revolved around Head Start.
“When you cut the Head Start money you understaffed Head Start,” Stewart said. “That’s what happened. When you understaffed Head Start not only did the teachers suffer, the children suffered also. Then you also placed the Head Start workers, you put them back on DSS services because they couldn’t afford to pay for their own medical, they couldn’t afford to put food on their tables either so they had to go back to receiving food stamps. That’s what happened when you cut the money for that program. Then you put a whole bunch of people out of work. That’s what happened, now that was a shame but I don’t see anybody making a plea for that.”
Norwalk is currently funding the Norwalk Housing Authority’s Head Start program at about $350,000, Hamilton said.
“We sat down with them and reviewed their budget and found places where some things had been double counted or there were some items that they agreed didn’t need to be funded by the city, and so the number we settled upon, I believe, was a number the Housing Authority had essentially agreed that was the amount of money that was needed to support the program,” Hamilton said.
“Our commitment was to meet and provide them with money as they need it?” Rilling asked.
“Right,” Hamilton said.
The Housing Authority didn’t even know what it needed, said Stewart, who used to be a social worker for NEON. “They were totally understaffed when you went there.” The toddler program hadn’t been open and there are people with master’s degrees making $14 an hour, she said.
“They don’t even know what to do with that program and that was proven also,” she said. “… I think we need to put another committee on that.”
Simms, Bowman, Watts and Stewart voted against the budget transfer.
Igneri said he respected their argument but, “Their methodology doesn’t work because the Council is not the place to be debating these unless you want to be on the front page. If you want to discuss these items and make change, constructive change, they should be at the committee meetings.”
The issues have been discussed at the Finance Committee meetings, and numerous police officers were questioned, he said.
“For those who are on the committee and attend, we had all the answers. So I am really dismayed that we take an hour to go over things that were discussed for months in committee meetings,” Igneri said.
Watts is on the Finance Committee. According to meeting minutes, he has been at one of the last seven meetings, and was late to the one he did attend.
Kimmel took another approach. He was part of a Democratic minority when he was on the Common Council from 1997 to 2001, he said.
“Whenever there were programs that I wanted to push, that I wanted funded, I always argued for higher operating budgets,” Kimmel said. “You have to understand how government works. It’s either in the budget or it’s not in the budget. If you want things done often you argue for a higher spending cap and then take your argument to the Board of Estimate and Taxation. You just can’t wait until halfway through the fiscal year and then start saying we didn’t fund this we didn’t fund that. There was no argument during the debate on the operating budget to increase it. In fact, they argued that it was too high. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, and that’s what’s going on here. You have to approach this stuff in a responsible way.”
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