New Haven schools? They’re good. Community policing? Needs work.
So far that’s where Greg Dildine stands on issues.
He’s beginning a campaign for alderman from an open seat in Westville’s 25th Ward. So far he doesn’t have a lot of positions on city issues, but he’s just starting out.
He doesn’t yet have an opponent yet, either. He does have dozens of neighbors behind him.
They stood with him at his McKinley Avenue home on Sunday, as Dildine kicked off his campaign to replace retiring incumbent Ina Silverman. Fifty of his Westville neighbors showed up, including friends, supporters, and people curious to learn what the new candidate is all about.
What he’s about so far is listening and communicating. The stay-at-home dad, who’s 40, said that he doesn’t yet have “an agenda” and is in the process of gathering information from his potential constituents on issues important to the ward.
In conversation with the Independent, the candidate staked out positions on several topics, like New Haven schools — he thinks they’re good — and community policing — he thinks it needs improvement.
From the 1970s through the 1990s, Ward 25 had a reputation for sending independent Republican aldermen (typically liberal Republicans like Jonathan Einhorn and Rosalind Berman) to the full board to challenge the City Hall on citywide issues like downtown development and patronage, even though the ward’s voters tend to be Democrats or liberal independents. That’s because voters supported the idea of a check on the power of New Haven’s one-party Democratic machine. Serious Republican candidates have largely vanished in recent years.
If elected, Dildine would take over from the ward’s three-term Democratic alderwoman, Ina Silverman (pictured), who is set to retire at the end of her current term. Silverman, who declined to comment on Dildine’s candidacy or her retirement, has signed on as treasurer for Dildine’s campaign.
Silverman was joined at the campaign kick-off by Aldermen Bitsie Clark, Carl Goldfield, and Moti Sandman.
Neighbors converged on the Dildine household at 1:30 p.m. on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Walking up the driveway past the well-manicured lawn and pebbled stucco house, locals gathered in front of the garage to socialize and snack on watermelon and cookies.
Dildine lives on McKinley avenue with his wife, Laura Bontempo, an emergency medicine doctor at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and his two children. Ross is 2 years old. Maria, a first-grader at Edgewood, turned 7 on Saturday. The family moved to Westville from Boston five years ago.
The candidate addressed the crowd briefly. “I want to add to my commitment to the neighborhood,” he began. Dildine is the treasurer for Friends of Edgewood Park and he is a tutor at the Edgewood Elementary School.
The “key issue” Dildine identified was “listening and communicating.” He said that he wants to be an effective conduit of information and ideas between “downtown” and “you guys.”
Other issues he named were responsible city spending, traffic calming, and “making sure Edgewood school remains a top choice.”
Asked later about if he thinks that New Haven has good schools, Dildine said, “I do.”
“You wouldn’t send your kids there otherwise,” he added.
“School reform is something people are always talking about,” Dildine said. “What reform means to me is listening and talking to people… I just want to make sure our voice is reflected.”
Edgewood School is unique, Dildine said, in that it is a magnet school that has managed to maintain the feel of a neighborhood school.
On the question of whether school board members should be elected or appointed, Dildine said he hasn’t yet formed an opinion. “That’s something that I need to listen to more people about… I don’t have a position.”
In general, Dildine said that he is favor of “transparency and oversight.”
Asked about community policing, Dildine gave his definition of the term. “To me it means the community interacting more one-on-one with the police… To me knowing the cops is important.” Dildine spoke of the importance of personal neighborhood connections with the police who patrol Westville, so that residents are on close terms with their local officers.
Does the current policing situation meet his definition of community policing? “I don’t think we know everybody, no.”
“In general, I’d like to see more of a [police] presence,” Dildine said.
Dildine did not come out for or against city subsidies of Tweed Airport, saying that the more important issue is that taxpayers know what they are getting for their money.
“In general, oversight of how we’re spending our money is really important,” he said. “What’s the return on that investment?”
The largest issue, and the main job of an alderman, is communication, Dildine reiterated. If elected, he plans to expand on Silverman’s Ward 25 newsletters and to use the internet to reach all of his constituents. He also mentioned maintaining regular “office hours” at his house, when neighbors could come by to talk with him.
The candidate’s focus now is knocking on doors and talking to Ward 25 residents. “That’s how you start,” he said. “I don’t have an agenda ready to go out.” A more specific list of policy priorities will “coalesce from a general list” as he talks to his neighbors, Dildine said.
Bargara Segaloff, co-chair of the Ward 25 Democratic Committee, was at Sunday’s event. She said the committee will meet on July 20th to decide on an official endorsement. If no other Democratic candidate comes forward, Dildine is expected to secure the endorsement.