The city of Hartford recently cut $100,000 from a homeless shelter as part of its effort to keep taxes down and avoid layoffs. Hartford Mayor Pedro Segarra said he's still hoping find money to undo the cut.
These aren't easy financial times in cities like Hartford, where leaders say they've cut the budget until they can't cut it any more. That's how they end up with a choice like this: cut $100,000 from either a homeless shelter for families or from a program that prevents infant death.
Pino said the cuts were the result of budget negotiations between Segarra and the city council.
Raul Pino is the city's health director. It was his job to choose. "Up to the end," he said, "we tried to save this amount, because we knew how important this program is. It just came to a point where there was nowhere else to cut."
Pino said the cuts were the result of budget negotiations between Segarra and the city council, and it was his job to figure out what programs would lose money. He said the cut to the Salvation Army's Marshall House is especially painful because it means the shelter might also lose outside matching funds.
A Salvation Army official said that means that 30 adults with children could be without a place to stay come October. According to the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, the state had 458 homeless families on a night last January. Of those families, 72 were in Hartford.
Apparently, not everyone on the city council was aware of just what was on the table, even though it approved the city's budget, and the cut.
City Council Minority Leader Larry Deutsch said he didn't vote for either. "It's a little like the story in 'Sophie's Choice,'" he said, "where you're told to sacrifice one or sacrifice the other, when really, in truth, there are other choices. This is all at the hands of the mayor."
Deutsch said Segarra has spent more money in less noble ways, like studying whether to build a new minor league baseball stadium. City officials said they are looking for ways to restore funding to Marshall House.
