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Thomas Breen |
Oct 2, 2023 12:39 pm
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Health Equity Fellow Sophie Edelstein and Coordinator of Community Mental Health Initiatives Lorena Mitchell.
Male New Haveners are almost three times more likely to die by suicide — not “commit suicide” — than female city residents.
That’s according to a newly published City of New Haven Suicide Prevention Guide, which through a deep dive into data and a person-focused shift in language seeks to promote better mental health through understanding instead of stigma.
An overview of how the latest round of ESSER funds has been budgeted.
New Haven’s school system has spent over $37 million of the last batch of federal ESSER pandemic-relief funds — on everything from salaries to school supplies to HVAC upgrades — leaving $42.9 million still to spend by October of next year.
Gormany and Matteson at Thursday's Finance meeting.
The Elicker administration won a key initial vote of support for its plan to increase pay for department heads, coordinators, and other non-unionized managers, as an aldermanic committee endorsed salary range bumps and cost of living adjustments in an effort to ward off even more City Hall vacancies.
Half of the 18 Mill River St. property to be sold by the city to neighboring landlord Michael Smart.
Paul Bass file photo
City Clerk Smart: Just providing parking for tenant, following sliver lot rules.
Should the standard sale of a small plot of unusable city land to adjacent property owners trigger an ethics review — if one of the potential buyers is a citywide elected official?
Members of two city commissions recently raised that question at two separate public meetings, even as both boards ultimately voted in favor of selling a vacant 1,887 square-foot lot on Mill River Street to a holding company controlled by City/Town Clerk Michael Smart without first consulting the Board of Ethics.
A mysterious tube — carrying something out of a Clifton Street house’s sewage-flooding basement, through the backyard, over a neighbor’s fence, and out beside the Quinnipiac River, and installed without permits or permission from the riverbank property’s owner — led the Fair Rent Commission to drop two tenants’ monthly rents to $1 apiece.
It also put a convicted mortgage fraudster who is still involved in New Haven rental real estate back in the spotlight.
Landlord lawyer Herb Reckmeyer (right): Why not move? Tenant Tia
Cuthbertson: "Everybody deserves to live in a safe environment."
Tia Cuthbertson Photo
The mice in Cuthbertson's apartment.
The last time Tia Cuthbertson used her oven was over a year ago. She was preheating the appliance when she noticed a cloud of smoke — and found a charred mouse inside, burning alive.
Cuthbertson has now received a dramatic reprieve from the Fair Rent Commission, which lowered her rent to $1 per month until her megalandlord, Ocean Management, clears out the mice that have invaded her apartment and fixes other problems.
Acting Director Rebecca Bombero: Consultant-led process "could lead to a reconfiguration" of parks-public works.
The Elicker administration is moving towards a potential un-merging of the parks and public works departments — or an entirely different parks-service setup altogether — by seeking a consultant to host community conversations around how City Hall should tend its public greenspaces.
Alder Adam Marchand: A land bank allows city housing initiatives to "compete."
Alders unanimously voted to form a land bank, issuing the final seal of approval on a long-brewing plan to create a quasi-public nonprofit designed to purchase blighted houses, rehabilitate them, and sell them at below-market prices to owner-occupants.
Acting Controller Mike Gormany and Mayor Elicker: "Remarkable progress" on city's financial front.
Higher than expected property tax collections, building inspection revenue, interest rates, and city employee vacancies helped New Haven’s budget end last fiscal year more than $22 million in the black.
After the city sends roughly $15 million of that surplus towards a record police-misconduct settlement, that means the city can bank another $7 million-plus for a rainy day.
New Haven will pay Richard “Randy” Cox the largest municipal settlement in a police misconduct case in this country’s history with the help of surplus budget funds — and no new borrowing — after official approval from the Board of Alders for how to cover the uninsured portion of a $45 million agreement.
Fed up with waking up to the rancid stench of flooded sewage in her apartment building’s basement, Hope started knocking on some of her neighbors’ doors at 1275 – 1291 Quinnipiac Ave.
Within six weeks, Hope had joined with other organizers with the Connecticut Tenants Union to gather 21 signatures from residents of the building’s 20 units. They officially filed the paperwork to become New Haven’s third and fastest-to-form tenants union on Wednesday afternoon.
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Thomas Breen |
Aug 22, 2023 8:27 am
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Newly sworn in police recruits John Brunetti, Aisaiah Rodriguez, William Massey-Simmons, and Eric Lopez on Monday.
Four police recruits with cops in their families and roots in the Greater New Haven area raised their right hands and swore to live up to the responsibilities of their profession — before heading off for training in Waterbury, and hoped-for careers in New Haven.
Secretary of State's Office: This new ward map didn't make the deadline.
Less than two weeks after the Board of Alders put new ward boundaries into effect, the state office in charge of elections has determined that the old ward lines must stay in place for the upcoming primary and general elections.
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Laura Glesby |
Aug 18, 2023 4:20 pm
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Zola, on Court Street with her dog Teddy: "It seems like they made it almost impossible to get onto the ballot."
Seven petitioning alder candidates in six different wards have qualified to make it onto September’s Democratic primary election ballot, while two — Dixwell’s Fred Christmas and Wooster Square’s Andrea Zola — didn’t make the cut.
Abdussabur: "The extraordinary rejection rate for the candidates of color raises a 'red flag' as to whether uniform standards were applied to all petitioners."
Mayoral challenger Shafiq Abdussabur has filed a lawsuit in state court seeking to get his name on the Sept. 12 Democratic primary ballot — claiming that he did in fact gather enough petition signatures to qualify, contrary to the findings of the city’s registrar of voters.
Democratic Registrar of Voters Shannel Evans (right) drops off certified petitions with Deputy City/Town Clerk May Gardner.
Brennan, with campaign staffers Abdul Osmanu and Michael Morris, after clinching primary ballot access.
Liam Brennan became the only mayoral challenger to make his way onto September’s Democratic primary ballot Wednesday — after the registrar of voters office certified his campaign’s petition, and rejected dozens of pages of signatures submitted by fellow mayoral hopefuls Shafiq Abdussabur and Tom Goldenberg.
Sample land-bank deal as envisioned by city gov't.
Thomas Breen photo
City dev officials Dean Mack, Mike Piscitelli, and Mark Wilson on Monday.
A new affordable-housing-focused nonprofit that could compete with real estate speculators on the open market took another step closer towards coming into being — as alders endorsed creating a quasi-public “land bank” charged with buying, fixing up, and selling blighted properties before megalandlords get there first.
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Thomas Breen |
Aug 15, 2023 8:39 am
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Acting Controller Mike Gormany, with Corporation Counsel Patricia King: Budget surplus transfers "would be the primary mechanism for the Cox settlement."
A key panel of alders signed off on $16 million in budget-surplus transfers and, “if necessary,” new city borrowing, in order to cover the uninsured portion of a $45 million police-misconduct-and-paralysis settlement.
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Thomas Birmingham |
Aug 11, 2023 1:47 pm
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Darlet Gordon's view of her 333 Blatchley apartment's bathroom ceiling, in July.
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1476 Chapel resident Amanda Watts: “They really just think that they can just do whatever they want with us because of our tax bracket and our income."
The two-minute video begins with a shot of a home about to crumble.
“Look at my bathroom ceiling,” intones a pained voice. ”It’s almost going to cave down!” The narrator, a 56-year-old resident of Fair Haven named Darlet Gordon, points the camera toward the yellow-brown surface of her ceiling, folding and peeling like a day-old sunburn, as it steadily drips water down at her. All the while, she repeats to herself “Oh my god, look at it.”
Then, minutes later, boom. It came crashing down on top of her.
George Crawford Manor was previously in Ward 7 (left) and is now in Ward 3 (right); September polling place unclear.
When alders sat down for their August full board meeting on Monday night, Downtown Alder Eli Sabin represented the residents of the Dwight public housing complex George Crawford Manor.
By the time the alders rose from their seats at the meeting’s close less than an hour later, those hundred-plus George Crawford Manor tenants had a new representative: Hill Alder Ron Hurt.
That sudden change has left the secretary of the state’s office stumped so far as to whether or not new ward maps can legally apply when voters cast their ballots in September’s primary.
Majority Leader / Charter Revision Commission Vice Chair Richard Furlow: The aim is to “keep the process simple.”
It’s official: voters will get to decide in November whether or not New Haven should implement four-year terms for mayor and alders — although to understand what they’re voting for, they’ll need to do their homework in advance.
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Laura Glesby and Thomas Breen |
Aug 1, 2023 10:25 am
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The Foxon Boulevard hotel might soon become a homeless shelter.
The Days Inn hotel on Foxon Boulevard will become New Haven’s first non-congregate homeless shelter to serve both individuals and families by this upcoming winter, if an Elicker administration proposal comes to fruition.
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Nora Grace-Flood |
Jul 31, 2023 11:48 am
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Ex-social services chief Mehul Dalal: "There's no secret plan."
Loved ones of lives lost to overdoses stepped out of the shadows and into City Hall to express both support and skepticism towards medically supervised injection and drug consumption sites — and to slam a mayoral candidate’s public opposition to such harm reduction centers as politicizing and polarizing opioid addiction.
Justin Bialecki taking the oath Monday: City born and raised.
The city’s fire department looked around the country to find its next assistant chief — and ended up selecting a longtime member of their own firehouses here at home..
