City officials were taken by surprise last week when the person who was the city’s Finance Director, Ron Cicatelli, was escorted out of City Hall Friday morning. What started as a normal day at 355 Main St., turned out to be one of the most unusual days ever – that’s saying a lot for a building that has seen some strange things since it was opened 48 years ago.
Cicatelli, who had been appointed Finance Director a scant five months ago, departed his job after handing in a one-sentence resignation letter to Mayor Nancy N. Rossi. It was then the man was allowed to pick up his personal effects and, in what is standard operating procedure in most businesses, he was given an escort.
Why he determined to quit, and why he determined to quit so abruptly has many officials, longtime observers and average citizens scratching their heads. Just last week a staff member told this writer Cicatelli was looking for new digs in the New Haven area, and planned on moving his entire family. He may, but not as a member of West Haven’s Finance Dept.
Still, the question asked by many is why he quit. That is something that hasn’t come out – not yet. In a city like West Haven where city officials sometimes act like sparrows on a fence in their less guarded moments, the chances of the reasons coming out are pretty good.
We do know that there was friction between the mayor’s office and the Finance Dept. in the last few weeks. Friction is normal, but takes on even more significance when a city such as ours in the monetary straits it is. We don’t know the proximate reason for the dispute that was reported, but we can guess it had to do with process – it’s always about process.
Given Mayor Rossi is a hands-on type of personality, friction between she and her various departments have been the stuff of the city’s rumor mill for months. She is nothing if not single-minded, and has shown herself to be a bit of a noodge over the first year of her term. Being a noodge is not a bad thing, and being single-minded in a city that needs leadership isn’t bad either. The difference is in delivery.
There was talk of hiring an assistant soon, and one wonders if the very soon announced Frank Ciepilski, the person who took the job Monday morning, was in the running for that position.
Whatever the reason for Cicatelli’s departure, and the luck of having someone to fill the gap so readily, the city is now entering into that yearly exercise called “budget preparation.” Since last March when Rossi issued her first proposed budget, she had to defend, cajole, bargain and scratch her way into making the plan palatable for the Municipal Accountability Review Board (MARB), the panel that was given the task of overseeing city financial maneuvering by the General Assembly.
Getting the Fiscal Year 2019 budget massaged in such a way that MARB approved was a gargantuan task — one that took most of the rest of 2018. Not having a Financial Director as we get into the first phases of budget prep would be something not to be wished on a worst enemy.
Ciepilski has fine credentials, but he will have to get up to speed quickly. Cicatelli had some time to get himself acclimated to the players and the system. With only weeks to go before the Board of Finance begins the budget process, he will need a crash course.
While that was going on, the city was told it would get the funding necessary to fill a budgetary gap left when the General Assembly reneged on its commitment to West Haven in the form of state aid back in 2017. That budget battle saw most of the state’s 169 towns and cities get the budgetary rug pulled out from under them. The difference is City Hall did not make any adjustments, and found itself staring down an $8 million hole.
MARB has dangled the funding in front of city officials for more than a year – since it was empaneled after the city bonded to pay off its 12-year-old operating deficit. The money is still not safely in city coffers. Two more steps need to take place: the state wants a review of fire service and consolidation, and the audit has to come through. Once those two tasks are completed, an April 30 deadline has been set where it is hoped the funds can be put aside.
With the budget just around the corner, and the closing of the yearlong effort to redesign municipal spending coming to an end, city taxpayers know that higher taxes are coming as well. The five-year plan approved by MARB includes incremental increases over the length of the plan.
The city is not out of the woods. The next budget cycle is going to be pivotal to see if newly imposed spending limits and staffing limits can be maintained. There is a hard road ahead, and the episode of last week might be an indication of just how hard things are going to be.