by | Mar 21, 2025 8:03 pm | Comments (10)
Thomas Breen file photo
Lt. Brian McDermott, cleared by IA.
A city police investigation found that Morris Cove’s former top cop did not provide special treatment for the neighborhood’s alder.
According to Police Chief Karl Jacobson, the alder in question eventually received a misdemeanor ticket for leaving the scene of a car crash.
by | Mar 21, 2025 4:01 pm | Comments (11)
Thomas Breen photo
126 Sheffield. The fire department found it is "very well possible" that someone in the basement "improperly discarded a cigarette end at the floor near the wall that surrounded the oil tank."
File photo
City fire investigator Reyes (second from left) with property manager David Kone, at the scene of the Jan. 31 blaze. One of the six tenants displaced in the fire, who is now homeless, previously lost his home in a different Xu-house fire.
Either a cigarette or mixed wiring could have ignited a mattress in a basement of a Newhallville three-family house that burst into flames earlier this year.
Those details are included in a newly released report that sheds light on what may have caused just the latest of five fires in two years at different properties controlled by Bethany-based landlord Jianchao Xu.
Continue reading ‘FD Report: Latest Xu-House Fire Began With Burning Basement Mattress’
by | Mar 21, 2025 12:17 pm | Comments (19)
Thomas Breen photos
Wexler-Grant in Dixwell, to merge with ...
... Lincoln-Bassett in Newhallville.
Grappling with low enrollment and decaying buildings, the city’s public school district plans to merge Wexler-Grant and Lincoln-Bassett into a single PreK-8th grade school next academic year.
That doesn’t mean the total number of schools in New Haven will drop, however, as the district then plans to convert the current Wexler-Grant site into a new alternative middle school focused on “project-based learning.”
by | Mar 20, 2025 8:58 pm | Comments (19)
Zachary Groz photo
Post workers and friends march on Elm
Carrying red, white, and blue signs reading “U.S. MAIL NOT FOR SALE” and chanting “Whose Post Office? The People’s Post Office,” roughly 15 U.S. postal workers marched down Elm Street to protest a recently announced Trump- and Musk-led effort to slash the service’s workforce and budget.
Continue reading ‘Postal Workers Protest Proposed DOGE Cuts’
by | Mar 20, 2025 4:26 pm | Comments (34)
Laura Glesby photo
Mayor Elicker (right): Trump’s administration is “illegally stymieing and setting up roadblocks to cut off funds that we’ve been legally awarded,”
New Haven has joined a second nationwide lawsuit against the Trump administration, this time over the city’s loss of access to tens of millions of dollars in already-allocated grants addressing climate change and clean energy.
by | Mar 20, 2025 2:10 pm | Comments (14)
Thomas Breen photo
Elicker (center): "We don't need any more of these shops."
Grand Asmoke Shop, time to local license up.
Mayor Justin Elicker put pen to paper at a City Hall signing ceremony that could lead to $1,000-a-day fines for rule-breaking smoke shops — as part of new local regulations governing where and how retailers can sell tobacco and vaping products in New Haven.
by | Mar 20, 2025 9:30 am | Comments (4)
Facebook and GoFundMe
The victims of the July 2024 fatal crash: Dajsha Knight (top left) with her mom, and Madysin Hilker (bottom center) at her high school graduation.
One driver’s decision to drive past the double yellow line on Middletown Avenue caused a three-vehicle crash that killed two people and severely injured six others.
Police have now arrested the man allegedly behind the wheel, along with another driver who purportedly fled the scene.
by | Mar 19, 2025 8:21 pm | Comments (14)
Maya McFadden Photos
HSC junior Jonaily Colon: "Adding more funding, as proposed in this bill, will help us be able to focus on what matters in school: Learning."
Cross senior John Carlos Serana Musser: Why do we have leaky roofs and no teachers in our classrooms when the state has a record budget surplus?
HARTFORD – Ever since his first year at Hillhouse High School, Badu Smart knew he wanted to take honors biology. He worked hard to secure a spot in what he hoped would be a more rigorous science course — only to find out that the class had been canceled for lack of a teacher.
Smart, who is now a senior at Hillhouse, shared that story with state lawmakers Wednesday as he traveled to Hartford with 80 fellow New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) classmates to speak up about teacher shortages, building disrepair, and other challenges faced by a city school district in need of more state funding.
by | Mar 19, 2025 12:13 pm | Comments (29)
Jordan Allyn photo
Elicker: "I have a bald spot because I’m losing my hair over trying to get these projects done."
“I’m paying more in taxes, but the services that I’m receiving as a resident are not going up,” Yoland Highsmith told Mayor Justin Elicker at a city budget-focused town hall.
Gloria Bellacicco agreed, criticizing the Tweed Airport expansion for taking too long and disrupting quality of life. “To be honest, I haven’t seen New Haven finish one project that it starts,” said Bellacicco. “So if you’re going to raise our taxes, finish the projects, please.”
by | Mar 19, 2025 9:39 am | Comments (6)
Paul Bass Photo
CTVIP CEO Len Jahad at WNHH FM ...
FILE PHOTO
... and working on the agency's garden.
New Haven’s street outreach workers had a new challenge: dealing with kids as young as 11 caught up in community trouble.
They also took on the new challenge of focusing on teenaged girls whose group spats could lead to bigger trouble.
Those two challenges reflect the growing mission of the CT Violence Intervention & Prevention (VIP) project as it passes its fifth anniversary hitting the streets to defuse beefs and mentor young people in New Haven and Hamden.
Continue reading ‘"Credible Messengers" Expand Street Outreach’
by | Mar 18, 2025 3:41 pm | Comments (16)
Thomas Breen photos
ConnCORP's Ian Williams, with ConnCAT's Steve Driffin: This redevelopment project represents "a total transformation" of the corridor.
At work on Monday.
Nearby, underground, in the Construction Academy's new classroom.
As a construction crew worked to lay the foundation for “ConnCAT Place on Dixwell,” redevelopers behind the neighborhood-transforming effort gathered in an underground classroom a few hundred feet away to lay the foundation for a more diverse, locally rooted construction workforce.
Continue reading ‘Dixwell Rebuilders Plan Construction Academy’
by | Mar 18, 2025 12:43 pm | Comments (16)
Laura Glesby photo
Fair Haven Health's Dr. Tejada Arias: Medicaid affects every generation.
Politicians and healthcare providers gathered to send a message that cutting Medicaid is a matter of life and death.
They made the case that at stake is the well-being not only of those insured by the program — including roughly 60,000 New Haveners — but of their families and communities as well.
by | Mar 17, 2025 8:41 pm | Comments (23)
Thomas Breen file photo
Watch out, smoke shops: New rules on the books.
Laura Glesby Photo
Furlow (at mic): “This is one step towards a more healthy and vibrant city.”
New Haven officially has room for one last smoke shop — which will have to obtain a municipal license, alongside all of the city’s 212 existing tobacco retailers — thanks to new zoning and public health regulations passed by the Board of Alders.
by | Mar 17, 2025 1:20 pm | Comments (35)
Thomas Breen photo
The Dewitt St. block where the fatal shooting took place.
(Updated) An 8‑year-old boy died from an apparently accidental gunshot wound Sunday night while at home on Dewitt Street in the Hill.
Continue reading ‘8-Year-Old Dies From "Accidental" Shooting’
by | Mar 17, 2025 12:56 pm | Comments (16)
Thomas Breen photo
More apartments, fewer bedrooms, coming to Henry St.?
The new owner of a pair of historic Dixwell row houses is seeking permission to reconfigure them into more apartments — raising concern from at least one neighbor about the impact on neighborhood parking.
Continue reading ‘More Apartments Sought For Dixwell Row Homes’