Get ready to remove those ear plugs: If Giovanni Zinn has his way, the city will buy a new garbage truck that lowers the sanitation system’s carbon footprint and that doesn’t emit the signature 5 a.m. screech of its diesel-powered counterparts.
City officials join Quinnipiac Gardens tenants and tenant union organizers for Thursday press conference. According to LCI, Quinnipiac Gardens has no outstanding housing code violations.
(Updated) The mayor and top City Hall housing officials traveled to an apartment complex on the east side of town to promote a newly proposed law empowering tenant unions — and to encourage renters to band together to advocate for fair rent and safe living conditions.
Up next at Long Wharf Theatre (clockwise from top left)?: Model smoking INSA pre-rolled joint; theater's sign on Sargent Dr.; INSA cannabis chocolates; theater's current home in the Food Terminal.
That possible future won a vote of support from an aldermanic committee that greenlit the legal sale of marijuana on Long Wharf — including on an industrial stretch of Sargent Drive where a Massachusetts-based cannabis dispensary hopes to move in to the longtime, soon-to-be-former home of Long Wharf Theatre.
Wildaliz Bermúdez has a vision for New Haven’s Fair Rent Commission: Not just to consider disputes over individual rent hikes, but to piece together a big-picture sense of housing costs and living conditions in the Elm City.
The next time New Haven decides whether to “scoop and toss” municipal debt, a small group of officials will continue to make the call without a broader debate and vote among the full Board of Alders — despite the efforts of a city alder to make a change.
At least, that was the outcome of the latest vote on an effort to change the process by which municipal debt restructurings take place.
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Thomas Breen |
May 27, 2022 3:02 pm
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City Librarian John Jessen.
A decades-long champion of reading and neighborhood engagement who bolstered the public library system’s social services as he led it through a pandemic, City Librarian John Jessen passed away from cancer on Friday. He was 56 years old.
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Thomas Breen |
May 26, 2022 2:06 pm
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Entrance to Wheeler Street waste-transfer site.
A controversial Annex waste transfer station won permission to keep its doors open for another two years — so long as it takes extra steps to cut down on rodents, bad smells, speeding and idling trucks, and inadmissible wet trash.
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Thomas Breen |
May 26, 2022 1:44 pm
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Ed Mattison (center) chairs a 2019 City Plan Commission meeting.
For the past 14 years, Ed Mattison has had as up-close of a view as anyone of New Haven’s changing built environment — and has helped guide that development through countless volunteer hours spent trying to balance the strictures of land-use law with the real-world needs of people and neighborhoods.
It was a good run. Mattison announced Wednesday that, thanks to an obscure and sometimes overlooked city law, he’ll be stepping down from his post on the City Plan Commission to make way for new voices to take the lead.
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Maya McFadden |
May 26, 2022 11:36 am
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Educator Amber Moye at City Hall: New Haven "shouldn't be indebted to a system that doesn't work."
Amber Moye told city lawmakers she and her fellow teachers got a glimpse of how to change the way kids learn to read — how she believes New Haven is ready to follow the state in making the shift.
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Thomas Breen |
May 24, 2022 1:19 pm
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Monday night's full Board of Alders meeting.
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Newly approved redistricting map.
New district lines for the city’s 30 wards are now locked in for the next decade, now that the Board of Alders has voted unanimously to approve a redrawn map that accommodates New Haven’s recent Census-counted population growth.
At Monday's budget hearing, clockwise from top left: Finance Committee Chair Marchand, Newhallville Alder Avshalom-Smith, city union members filling in the chamber and calling for good contracts, Majority Leader Furlow.
Even in times of apparent fiscal plenty, New Haven’s needs are so great, its fixed costs so persistent, and its coffers so relatively strapped that taxes have to go up.
That argument prevailed Monday night as the Board of Alders approved a final new city budget that cuts the mill rate by over 9 percent, and then phases in new higher property values over two years instead of five.
Juana Valle and Salvador Jimenez with family pup Bella.
Thanks to the Fair Rent Commission, Juana Valle and Salvador Jimenez won’t have to part with their family’s chihuahua — but they’ll still need to fight to stay in their home.
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Thomas Breen |
May 19, 2022 2:56 pm
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Newly approved City Plan Commissioner Joshua Van Hoesen.
A three-time Republican candidate for alder and current Westville community management team chair has been approved as the newest member of the City Plan Commission.
A planned new 14-story apartment tower won its final needed city approval — clearing the way for 136 one-bedroom apartments to be built atop a surface parking lot right next door to the State Street train station.
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Maya McFadden |
May 18, 2022 9:27 am
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Harp unveils mayoral portrait.
Photos with Harp were in high demand at Tuesday's portrait unveiling.
Virtuous. A leader. Unique. A powerhouse. Poised. A quiet storm. Empathetic. Committed.
Those were among the words that accompanied a joyous ceremonial unveiling and installation in City Hall of the official portrait of former Mayor Toni N. Harp.
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Thomas Breen |
May 17, 2022 8:48 am
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West Rock/West Hills Alder Honda Smith with Monica Clark, Iva Johnson, and Von Robinson at City Hall on Monday.
A new music studio, a washer and dryer, a pottery kiln, and more programming for west side youth and seniors alike are one big step closer to coming to a reborn Valley Street community center — now that the alders have formally accepted a $550,000 state grant for “The Shack.”
Finance Chair Adam Marchand (center) with Vice-Chair Ron Hurt.
Luxury developers and megalandlords won’t get as bountiful de facto taxpayer-funded tax breaks as originally planned — because an aldermanic committee endorsed an amended new city budget that drops the mill rate by over 9 percent and phases in the latest citywide revaluation over two years instead of five.
Hi/Bye: Outgoing 911 Director Stratton, at March press conference announcing his appointment.
A month and a half after taking over the city’s 911 call center, Kevin Stratton is leaving City Hall — with the future leadership of the turmoil-wracked department now up for grabs.
Redistricting Committee Vice-Chair Sal DeCola and Chair Evelyn Rodriguez.
Board of Alders map
Proposed new ward lines, which received a favorable committee vote on Tuesday.
A “least-change” New Haven ward redistricting map is en route to adoption, after receiving a favorable vote from the aldermanic committee charged with drawing new Census-adjusted ward lines.
A 58-year-old New Haven man is locked up in the Whalley jail, accused of phoning a bomb threat that cleared out City Hall for two and a half hours late Thursday afternoon.
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Thomas Breen |
May 6, 2022 12:37 pm
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Entrance to Wheeler Street waste-transfer site.
Do seagulls on the site of an Annex waste transfer station mean that the place is filthy, smelly, and in violation of city zoning rules?
Or does that web-footed, salt-water-drinking avian presence reflect nothing more than the facility’s riverfront location — and the fact that there are lots of seagulls up and down the coast?
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Thomas Breen |
May 4, 2022 12:56 pm
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Tuesday night's Board of Alders meeting.
The Board of Alders unanimously adopted a rent-capping amendment to the city’s new “inclusionary zoning” (IZ) ordinance, completing a three-month update process sparked by an apparent defect in the original version of the law.
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Thomas Breen |
May 4, 2022 9:35 am
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Point person Carlos Sosa-Lombardo: Next up, finalize and "execute" Yale contract.
The Board of Alders green-lighted the Elicker Administration’s long-delayed plans to set up a non-cop crisis response team — as they approved a $3.5 million contract with Yale, and voted to accept a related $2 million federal grant amid criticism that crucial financial details are missing.
