Paul Bass Photo
Smith, at right, pictured at his April reelection campaign kick-off.
Michael Smart thinks the city clerk’s office is stuck in the last century? Ron Smith said he knows better — and he mailed a letter to the Independent to say so.
Ron Smith, who has run the City/Town Clerk’s Office for the past 10 years, finds himself running for reelection against two, and possibly three, challengers for what is normally a forgotten, uncontested $46,597-a-year part-time position. The clerk is responsible for overseeing the filing of land records and other official documents as well as certifying legislative votes, campaign forms and election results.
One of those challengers is Michael Smart, who launched his campaign last week with a promise to bring the office into the modern technological age by making more public records “easily accessible” and “downloadable” online; and adding some night-time hours to accommodate business people who work during the day and need to file official papers. (Read about that here.)
Smith called the Independent to ask for a chance to respond to Smart’s remarks with a press release. Then he mailed the release to the Independent’s office. The letter arrived Monday.
“If alderman Smart even occasionally visited the office to electronically file his Tax abatement committee reports, he would clearly witness that the office is indeed functioning in the 21st century,” the release quotes Smith as saying. “The office is clean, well lit, and functionally arrange so as to allow visitors, those with handicap, or minimal computer skills to easily search, find data or gain assistance. The office is staffed with highly a skilled 20-year experienced assistant clerk and four other clerks all of whom have taken and passed the civil service exam with the highest possible scores.” (Smart, a Wooster Square alderman, chairs the Board of Aldermen’s Tax Abatement Committee.)
Smith also said that the mayor’s office sets office hours; that “there has never been a complaint for the need of later hours”; and that the office does stay open late when needed to accommodate heightened demand for “voter registration and voter identification.”
Smith also criticized Smart and another clerk candidate, Westville Alderman Sergio Rodriguez, for voting for a new city budget that includes a tax hike and for voting in support of selling two downtown streets to Yale for $3 million.
Smart, who is African-American, also said at his campaign launch last week that he wants to “diversify” the clerk’s office by having some staff who are not African-American.
“The Aldermen should take time to research and accustom himself with the rules of the office of the secretary State of Connecticut, the Statues of the State of Connecticut, and the rules of the New Haven City Service Commission regarding testing qualification and appointments,” Smith responded in his statement.
Gloves Come Off: Meanwhile, a mayoral candidate expected to be spurned for a key union endorsement has joined in criticizing the political moves of the city’s dominant political force, Yale’s UNITE/HERE Local 34 & Local 35. Those unions helped elect a majority to the Board of Aldermen two years ago. They are expected to back state Sen. Toni Harp in this year’s Democratic mayoral primary, which takes place Sept. 10. Seven Democrats are running in that race.
In a release issued Tuesday, Democratic mayoral candidate State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield criticized the “union-controlled” Board of Aldermen for passing the new city budget with the tax increase. He also criticized the board for the sale of streets to Yale.
Holder-Winfield also took credit in the release for working with “other state legislators” “long hours, from early morning meetings to watching the sun come up on all-night debates,” to find an extra $6.3 million in state aid to the city at the end of the session. That enabled aldermen to trim the size of the new tax hike, from 7.7 to 4.9 percent.
Click here to read Holder-Winfield’s release.
In the release, Holder-Winfield also branded as “ridiculous” criticism that another candidate, Henry Fernandez, leveled a day earlier against New Haven’s state legislators (as reported here). Fernandez laid much of the blame for the city’s fiscal woes to the delegation’s failure, in his view, to get the state to fund the Payment In Lieu Of Taxes program (which reimburses cities for taxes lost of exempt properties) at 100 percent.
“Not only did we bring in more funding than was expected, and managed to lower taxes passed by the city, but Connecticut is still struggling financially and doesn’t have the kind of money that Henry is talking about,” Holder-Winfield stated. “PILOT funding already accounts for almost half of the city budget, taking the kind of money Henry’s talking about is impossible for the state to afford and irresponsible for the sustainable budgeting of our city. It just shows how little Henry understands the ways that the state government interacts with the city.”
Holder-Winfield also gave a back-handed compliment to state Sen. Toni Harp, who is another mayoral candidate this year. He credited Harp for her leading role in delivering dollars to new Haven as co-chair of the legislature’s Appropriations Committee — then added that therefore the city “can’t afford” to lose her in Hartford. Translation: The city can’t afford to have her elected mayor instead.
The One-Half Of 1 Percent: National campaigns sometimes focus on “the 1 percent,” meaning the richest people in America. New Haven mayoral candidate Kermit Carolina said it’s time for a discussion for how to deal with the “one-half of 1 percent” — “repeat, violent offenders” who are shooting up neighborhoods.
He called last week for a civil injunction to bar those troublemakers from certain street corners. His opponents criticized the idea (in this article by the Register’s Mary O’Leary) as raising questions of both constitutionality and effectiveness. Carolina subsequently issued a statement responding to the criticism by saying his idea is but one part of a larger “bold discussion” that needs to take place on how to curb crime.
“It is imperative that the idea of civil injunctions not be taken out of context; this must not be used as a sound bite. Civil injunctions are part of an overall plan, and do not reflect the entire plan. I have repeatedly called for the expansion of Community Policing, job-training opportunities, effective re-entry programs and targeted wrap-around services for families,” the release quotes him as saying. Click here to read the full release.