by | Mar 25, 2025 3:00 pm | Comments (41)
Paul Bass photo
Steve Orosco, at right, filing campaign papers with City Clerk Michael Smart.
An east side Republican jumped into New Haven’s mayoral race Tuesday with a mission to bring Donald Trump’s political momentum to the city’s low-income neighborhoods.
by | Mar 25, 2025 2:00 pm | Comments (11)
Laura Glesby Photo
Skyy Merritt: "I'm really good at math" thanks to New Haven Counts.
These days, 10-year-old Skyy Merritt knows what’s going on in math class. That wasn’t always the case.
At a packed budget hearing in the Board of Alders chamber, Skyy watched her mom explain the reason for her academic progress: a tutoring program that’s been helping her with math and reading multiple times a week for the last year.
by | Mar 25, 2025 12:58 pm | Comments (14)
Thomas Breen photos
Human pickleballers, including Mayor Elicker (right), indoors ...
... and mural-depicted pups outdoors, at Westville's Pickleville CT.
Mayor Justin Elicker rolled up the sleeves on his collared shirt, didn’t loosen his tie, readied his paddle, and then chased and swung at a yellow perforated plastic ball — to help celebrate the ribbon cutting of the city’s first indoor pickleball courts.
by | Mar 24, 2025 5:01 pm | Comments (19)
Laura Glesby Photo
Mell Savage on being unhoused: "Their entire life is in their backpacks."
Nora Grace-Flood File Photo
More Pallet "Tiny Homes" proposed.
A coalition of unhoused activists marched into City Hall to meet the mayor’s proposed city budget with a spending plan of their own, as summarized by a song: “More housing, defund the police!”
by | Mar 24, 2025 2:27 pm | Comments (20)
Thomas Breen photos
Now closed: Walgreens, at 436 Whalley.
Soon to open: New smoke shop, at 837 Whalley.
(Updated) Whalley Avenue customers now have to head downtown to fill their Walgreens prescriptions — even as a new smoke shop moves in to satisfy their Westville smoking needs.
by | Mar 24, 2025 11:36 am | Comments (12)
Thomas Breen photo
50 Liberty: Another new owner, another sale way above tax appraisal.
A Fairfield County investor has purchased a three-family house on Liberty Street for $492,500, marking that property’s fourth sale in as many years.
The seller sold it for $182,000 more than he paid for it — while the city taxes it as if it’s worth half as much as the actual sale price.
Continue reading ‘Investor, Not City, Profits On 4th Resale’
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.”