A mayoral veto this month reducing federal funds that will go to meet basic human needs and community services shows the difference between the city's Democrats and the Stewart-led Republicans.
The Stewart Administration wants to take away at least $62,000 from community services and hand it over to acting Municipal Development Director Ken Malinowski who intends to use the funds to pad his office budget with another administrative position.
The veto message and the list of Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) grants can be found HERE.
This is not a case of cutting back to save taxpayer money. The federal appropriation is already in place. The longstanding federal program which used to provide upwards of $4 million to the city has steadily dropped over 30 years. It has hovered at $1.5 million in recent years. In the budget priorities of the Stewart regime federal funds for direct services for residents are losing out to the City Hall bureaucracy.
Mayor Stewart and Malinowski, misinterpreting and exploiting a letter from a Housing and Urban Development official, cited a guideline that only 15% of the city's $1.5 million allocation of CDBG funds go to basic human needs and community organizations. But New Britain and other distressed cities received an exemption to the 15% rule more than 25 years ago -- an exemption still in effect that gives the city more leeway in how the federal funds can be used. The real threat to losing federal funds may lie in the way Malinowski has previously administered federal funds. These include an unaccounted for $100,000 developer loan for which the city had to pay back HUD and the potential loss of federal money for a poorly planned Arch Street project for veterans that was hatched during Malinowski's time in the first Stewart administration.
- Dozens of residents turned out at the June 11th Council meeting to protest Mayor Stewart's veto of funds for community services under the federal CDBG program.
The Democratic majority on the Common Council approved $371,000 for direct services in May restoring funds taken away by the Mayor's Commission on Community and Neighborhood Development (CCND) which set a $319,000 allocation for community services. That prompted the Mayor to send her veto message that could not be overturned. Two Democratic Aldermen -- Michael Trueworthy and Carlo Carlozzi -- didn't vote citing conflicts under HUD regulations. No member of the Republican caucus was moved by the many residents who sought restoration of funds at the June 11th Council meeting.
Stewart's and Malinowski's agenda, like the Boehner and Ryan crowd in Washington, hits anti-poverty services particularly hard, including programs at the Human Resources Agency (HRA) such as the Food Resource Center, Las Perlas Hispanas Senior Center and the Polish Outreach Office. Small grant program funds at the OIC (youth employment) and Prudence Crandall Center were also eliminated.
The upheld veto leaves the Common Council with no choice but to adjust the allocations and with fewer dollars to go around this time for neighborhood services and organizations.
The Common Council meets on Wednesday, June 25th, for its last meeting before the fiscal year begins July 1.
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