The public watches — online.
COVID-19 pandemic leads alders to close doors to public.
• Meeting live-streamed.
• Downtown sale approved to developer to build 166 apartments.
• Lord becomes “our” shepherd.
That meeting and vote took place Monday night during the full board’s regular bimonthly meeting.
While the 19 local legislators present at the meeting gathered in person in the Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of City Hall, interested members of the public tuned in via live video stream on City Hall’s Facebook page or through the Zoom teleconferencing app.
The meeting represented local elected officials’ first stab at legislating in the midst of a pandemic.
Gov. Ned Lamont waived the state’s open meeting laws over the weekend, allowing public meetings like that of the full Board of Alders to take place without members of the public physically present, so long as those meetings are made available online via audio and/or video.
The meeting was largely free of references to the global pandemic, with a notable exception being Edgewood Alder Evette Hamilton’s recitation of “The Lord Is My Shepherd” at the meeting’s start. (See more below.)
The alders present Monday voted unanimously in support of the city selling publicly-owned vacant lots at 848 Chapel St., 812 Chapel St., and 108 Orange St. for a total of $1,057,500 to Denz’s Northside Development company.
Denz plans to combine the land included in that swap with adjacent properties that he already owns in order to build a new 120-unit apartment complex at 842 – 848 Chapel St., the former home of the Kresge department store, and to build another 46-unit apartment complex at the southwest corner of Chapel Street and Orange Street.
Downtown Alder Abby Roth spoke up in support of the proposed deal., She said Denz’s prospective developments should help fill the two “big gaps” that currently beset the southern stretch of Chapel Street between Orange Street and Church Street.
The project made possible by the land deal will also boost the city’s taxable grand list, she said, at a time when roughly 60 percent of all city property value is currently tax-exempt.
And the deal will lead to the city setting aside $100,000 into a new affordable housing fund.
“This will greatly benefit a neighborhood in the heart of downtown that currently has many empty storefronts,” she said.
Newhallville Alder Kim Edwards also spoke up in favor of the proposed deal. “This is a tax-paying project,” she said.
“The Lord Is My Shepherd”
The public watches — online.
Besides the fact that no members of the public were present at the meeting, the contents of the discussion and process of the various votes that took place Monday night proceeded largely as usual with little of controversy on the agenda: at a steady clip, with committee chairs for the various items voted on introducing those proposed matters and, occasionally, another alder or two voicing their support before a unanimous vote in favor.
Watching online, one might not know that the city is in the early stages of a pandemic.
The few references made to the COVID-19 outbreak came, for the most part, indirectly. Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison celebrated a recent partnership between the alders’ Black and Hispanic Caucus and the public library that led to a week of screenings of a documentary about Historically Black Colleges and Universities. She said that four of the five planned screenings went well, while the fifth was cancelled “due to the current circumstances.”
Roth took a more direct approach, expressing her gratitude for medical providers on the “front lines” of the pandemic. She urged anyone watching and listening to abide by public health experts’ advice to maintain “social distancing” of six feet or more from others so as to minimize one’s risk of contracting the virus.
At the end of the meeting, Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers asked any alders unsure about what the process for holding public meetings during a state of emergency will be like going forward to come to the podium to talk to her.
One of the more somber references came at the beginning of the meeting, during the “divine guidance” section”: a rotating opportunity for each alder to address his or her colleagues about whatever issue is on their minds.
Monday night’s was Edgewood Alder Evette Hamilton’s turn at the podium. Her “divine guidance” was brief — and eerily on point for a meeting that took place right as New Haven, and the country, braces for many more positive cases of the novel coronavirus.
Hamilton decided to read an excerpt of what she called “the holy word” from the New King James Version of the Bible: Psalm 23, Verses 1 through 6. Hamilton replaced each reference to the first-person singular with the first-person plural.
“The Lord is our shepherd,” she said. “We shall not want. He makes us to lie in green pastures. He leads us beside the still waters. He restores our souls. He leads us in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
“Yea, even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil. For you are with us. Your rod and your staff, they comfort us.
“You prepare a table before us in the presence of our enemies. You anoint our heads with oil. Our cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives. And we will dwell in the house of the lord forever.”