Thomas Breen file photo
Who's playing identity politics? Squaring off in Wooster Square Park over the Columbus statue removal, in 2020.
Mayoral candidate Shafiq Abdussabur made a play for East Shore voters by calling for tax cuts for airport neighbors and questioning the removal of Wooster Square Park’s Christopher Columbus statue.
In the process, he and incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker ended up accusing each other of playing “identity politics.” Neither meant it as a compliment. Or as having the same meaning.
Abdussabur — one of three Democrats challenging two-term incumbent Mayor Elicker for the party nomination in a Sept. 12 primary — took those stances as part of a position paper his campaign released Monday for the East Shore’s Annex and Morris Cove neighborhoods.
Some people in those neighborhoods have blasted Mayor Elicker for supporting the expansion of Tweed New Haven Airport to accommodate commercial flights by Avelo Airlines to (as of this coming June 19) 17 cities.
Abdussabur’s platform calls for, among other measures:
• Rezoning Morris Cove and Annex as “airport impact zones” with a lower mill rate than the rest of the city.
• Renegotiating the Tweed community benefits agreement with New Haven to increase money for noise pollution reduction, environmental improvements, and traffic calming.
• Having experts including from the Yale forestry school independently review the impact on wetlands depicted by a recent environmental assessment.
• Upping admission fees at Lighthouse Point Park for out-of-town visitors.
Read Abdussabur’s full statement here.
Erasing History?
Sophie Sonnenfeld Photo
Statue being removed.
Local twitterer Aaron Goode's take on Columbus statue defender's campaign endorsement.
Abdussabur’s statement also takes aim at Elicker for the removal from Wooster Square Park, amid the June 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, of the Christopher Columbus statue.
The statement accuses Elicker of not being “fully transparent about the statue removal.”
“As Mayor, Shafiq will work with the Department of Arts, Culture, and Tourism; cultural stakeholders like the New Haven Italian-American Heritage Group; and the Parks Commission to embrace all of New Haven’s cultural communities,” the statement reads.
One of the leaders of the anti-removal protests, New Haven Italian American Heritage Group President Louis Pane, has endorsed Adbussabur’s campaign.
In a conversation with the Independent, Abdussabur was asked whether, beyond the process, the statue should have come down in the first place.
“We have to be careful when we put things up and take things down,” the candidate said.
“Stop playing identity politics. Identity politics cannot be the future of New Haven. That is not a vision. That is division.”
He said he worries about whether removing statues ends up removing different groups’ histories rather than having diverse communities work together to confront history.
“The best way to deal with our history is to embrace all aspects of it. We can’t erase history. If we erase history, we’re no better than the dark history that these symbols represent sometimes. It’s serious stuff,” he said.
He suggested a better approach than removing the statue would have been to bring opponents and supporters of the statue together, then craft a solution that acknowledges both their perspectives.
He also argued that removing one statue important to one ethnic group sets a dangerous precedent — that when different groups come into power, they’ll move to tear down symbols important to others.
“The statue got torn down because of a movement that was sparked by racial injustice around police brutality. Then it got to: Let’s get rid of all these statues. There should be a process to that. To just get rid of it literally erases the history of a culture. So what do we do? Ten years from now does somebody come along and say, ‘We don’t want the statue of King Lanson?’”
“Taking down the statue was the right decision,” responded Mayor Elicker, when asked for comment on Abdussabur’s argument.
Elicker noted that Italian-American leaders including U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and funeral home director William Iovanne supported the statue’s removal.
He also spoke of how Iovanne and other community leaders participated in the process of creating a replacement statue that pays tribute to Wooster Square’s Italian-American heritage.
“The fact that many Italian leaders were with us when we decided to remove the statue, and that the replacement was led by a committee comprised of many Italian leaders, shows that we came together as a community at a difficult time,” Elicker argued.
“It wasn’t easy. It was the right decision. Stoking identity politics when there has been a long and thoughtful healing process is not what the city needs.”
Tom Goldenberg, another Democratic mayoral candidate, said he needs “to have more conversations” before weighing in on the issue. The other candidate, Liam Brennan, could not be reached for comment before this story was published.
Tweed Turbulence
Paul Bass File Photo
Flight takes off from Tweed in March with 1 millionth Avelo passenger.
Abdussabur and Elicker also clashed on the airport expansion.
Abdussabur argued that the city could have gotten more money from its agreement on the Tweed expansion to address noise, air pollution and traffic fallout from the rapid airport expansion; should get an independent expert view on the wetlands impact; and should rezone Morris Cove and Annex as “airport impact zones” with a “lower mill rate compensating East Shore residents for their hardship while following FAA purchase assurance and sales assistance strategies to mitigate any potential impact on property values from the rezoning without putting taxpayers and property owners on the hook. “
In an interview, Abdussabur was asked whether that would increase taxes for already struggling taxpayers in, say, the Hill and Newhallville to make up for lost revenue.
He responded that he would make up the lost revenue by boosting city tax receipts: By promoting (and thus helping to grow) commercial districts; and by filling hundreds of currently open city jobs with people who would live here and contribute to the tax base. He also said he’d make up the gap in part through cost savings by fully staffing the police department, thereby saving millions a year on time-and-a-half overtime.
Elicker responded that New Haven made out well in the Tweed community benefits agreement, wiping out the city’s $1 million airport subsidy. (Read details about that deal here.) He said wetlands will double as part of the expansion under a “clear classification of what is and isn’t a wetland,” which would only be confirmed by another delaying study.
And he dismissed the neighborhood-specific mill rate proposal as “pandering to people and making up magic revenue” while failing to “bring us together” as a city. He also questioned whether state law allows it. Such an effort would run into legal headwinds — as Danbury learned in this 1976 case — because of the presumption under Connecticut law that municipalities are creatures of the state and thus can exercise powers only when specifically granted state permission under a doctrine known as Dillon’s Rule. The Abdussabur campaign noted that municipalities have the obligation under law to initiate the process to seek state enabling legislation, which is what it envisions doing.
As for Lighthouse Park parking, city residents currently drive in for free there. Out-of-staters pay $30, in-state out-of-towners $25. Elicker questioned how much a city can, or even should, keep raising those rates. That debate has occurred annually at the state Capitol, where New Haven State Rep. Roland Lemar has pushed a bill to limit how much wealthy towns like Greenwich can keep raising parking rates to try to keep outsiders off their beaches. Read about the latest round of that debate here.