Laura Glesby Photos
Attorney Mednick and Commissioner Furlow charting charter's path ahead.
How much power should politicians have to restructure local government? And which city department heads should have to live in New Haven?
The Charter Revision Commission didn’t land on any answers to those questions at its final scheduled meeting. It voted to let the Board of Alders issue a recommendation instead.
The commission finalized a set of recommendations for the once-in-a-decade charter revision process on Tuesday evening, ahead of the May 15 deadline — including an upvote for four-year terms for alders, the mayor, and the city clerk.
The recommendations will next go before the Board of Alders, which can decide to either approve the commission’s proposal or ask that the commission revise its submission.
By the end of a months-long process, the commissioners voted in favor of all but two proposed changes, making some tweaks along the way.
They voted to make the city’s founding document gender neutral, to increase compensation for the city’s 30 alders, and to explicitly expand the types of city agreements needing alder approval to include Memorandums of Understanding and settlements. All of their recommendations will be reviewed by the Board of Alders, before making their way to a voter referendum on the November ballot.
But by the end of the commission’s last meeting in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall Tuesday night, two questions remained undecided.
One was whether to remove a requirement that city department heads be “electors” residing in New Haven.
The other was whether the establishment of city boards, commissions, and departments should remain in the charter or be moved to the code of ordinances — the latter of which would enable alders and the mayor to more easily make changes to the city’s organizational structure.
Since the commission didn’t reach a solution on these issues, the Board of Alders is now tasked with reviewing the questions and making a recommendation about how to proceed. Then, the commission will reconvene to review the alders’ ideas.
No matter what, in November, voters will have the power to approve or reject proposed changes to the charter by way of at least one ballot measure.
Department Heads' Homes Debated
Corporation Counsel Patricia King: "The mayor needs talented people who have the necessary experience."
Mayor Justin Elicker’s administration initiated the push to remove residency requirements for department heads, citing the difficulty of attracting qualified candidates to fill the city’s many vacancies.
At a previous meeting, commissioners agreed — with some dissent — to recommend retaining the residency requirements for department heads, perhaps instituting a process by which the mayor could request a waiver of that mandate for certain candidates.
On Tuesday, Corporation Counsel Patricia King made one last effort to change the commissioners’ minds.
“The mayor needs talented people who have the necessary experience,” King said. With the current requirement in place that department heads be eligible New Haven voters, current employees of the city who live outside of New Haven “are disinclined to take those positions because they would have to move. This discourages the talent we already have.”
King suggested that some candidates may live outside of New Haven because they can’t afford to live here, or can’t find a home in time for the application. “Especially given the current housing market, it’s just not practical.”
As for the proposal to include a waiver, King argued, “the amount of time a waiver would take, in this job market, would discourage a qualified candidate.” King added that the Board of Alders would have to make sure that such a waiver was applied “evenly,” based on a set of standards.
King noted that the city went one year without a Chief Administrative Officer, one of the top roles in City Hall. She argued that removing the residency requirement could have sped up that process.
To that point, Commission Vice Chair and Board of Alders Majority Leader Richard Furlow responded that in his view, the city’s top supervisory positions — Chief Administrative Officer, Economic Development Administrator, and Community Services Administrator — should all have to live in New Haven.
“As an alder, I do as much as I can to purchase, eat, even go to the movies on Temple Street” and support local businesses in New Haven. “It’s my duty to invest in the city I live in,” he said. Would non-resident department heads feel that same obligation to New Haven?
“Those are the most important jobs,” King responded — so it’s important that the mayor be able to hire the best candidates, she argued.
“I would like to see a better-faith effort,” Furlow replied. “We have 135,000 people in New Haven.” Between SCSU, Yale, and Albertus, “this is University Capital. We can’t find someone in New Haven?”
Commissioner Serena Neal-Sanjurjo, a former head of the Livable City Initiative, later agreed. “We are in a city of educational institutions that do a very good job of training and teaching.”
“We have made a yeoman’s effort,” said King.
Furlow continued that he thinks a compromise would be possible: a middle ground in which some, but not all, department heads would no longer be required to live in New Haven. But since the commission has to meet a May 15 deadline for issuing its first round of recommendations, there wouldn’t be time to take on the task of sorting through the various positions.
Charter Or Code?
The commission.
At the end of the meeting, the commission paused to consider the sections of the city charter establishing the scope and organizational structure of city departments, boards, and commissions.
Currently, the charter outlines a set of guidelines for each city department, including the “duties and powers” of each department, the required staff members, and the qualifications required for department heads. (For example, the charter mandates that the city’s controller have “at least a Bachelor’s degree in accounting, finance, or a similar field” and have at least five years of experience in a finance-related field.) Similarly, the charter outlines the makeup of the city’s various boards and commissions.
On Tuesday, Steve Mednick, the attorney guiding the commission through the charter revision process, raised the question of whether some of those provisions in the charter should be taken out from a document that’s only revised once a decade — and moved to the city’s code of ordinances, which can be changed at any time through the Board of Alders.
“I really believe that alders and mayors … should be creating a government that serves the times they live in,” said Mednick.
“With guardrails,” he added as a caveat.
Mednick suggested that some critical boards and commissions remain in the charter: the Board of Education, Board of Ethics, Civil Service Commission, City Plan Commission, and the Board of Zoning Appeals. Others, like the Board of Library Directors and the Civilian Review Board, could be required to exist by the city charter — but structured in the code of ordinances, with more flexibility for policymakers to shift their structures.
Similarly, Mednick said, some departments — like the Corporation Counsel, Finance Department, and public safety departments — should remain outlined in the charter. Others might be better defined by the city’s code of ordinances.
Establishing some departments by ordinance would offer more flexibility for actions like Mayor Justin Elicker’s decision in 2020 to split up the former Parks, Recreation, and Trees department, combining Parks and Trees with Public Works and Recreation with the Youth Department.
Elicker made that change by way of the city’s budgeting process, with approval from the Board of Alders. Technically, though, those departments’ current organization contradicts the city charter. Mednick argued that, at the very least, the commission should consider aligning the charter with the changes that Elicker and the alders made.
“I hope we do come up with a compromise,” said Commissioner John Keyes. He added, however, “Are we biting off more than we can chew?”
Furlow advocated that, though facing a May 15 deadline, the Commission shouldn’t rush the process of reviewing “the most important document the city has.” He added that given the recent restructuring of the former Parks, Recreation, and Trees department, “I am concerned that we are out of alignment” with the charter.
So, Furlow proposed, the commission could simply leave the question up to the Board of Alders — on which Furlow and fellow commissioner Sal DeCola serve — and reconvene to review what the alders come up with. It could do the same with respect to the residency requirement.
The commissioners unanimously voted to let the alders decide on both issues.
The Public Speaks
One member of the public unaffiliated with the city showed up to testify.
Tuesday also marked the last public hearing held by the Charter Revision Commission. At the hearing prior to the commissioners’ deliberations, only one member of the public who wasn’t a city employee arrived to offer testimony.
Anstress Farwell called on the commission to expand the city’s five-member Board of Public Health Commissioners, a body tasked with instituting public health regulations, to include two additional members: one focused on environmental justice and another devoted to violence prevention.
Farwell’s proposal, developed in conjunction with Jose DeJesus, Christopher Ozyck, and Sean Reeves, aims to expand the scope of the board to include a focus on social determinants of health — the non-medical factors, like resource access, social support, and climate, that affect people’s well-being.
While the commission did not take up the proposal, it did remove a requirement that two of the commissioners have at least five years of experience as clinical doctors, public health policymakers, or higher education in a related field.
Farwell also took a moment to advocate for establishing city boards, commissions, and departments in the code of ordinances. “So you don’t have to wait ten years if people feel that something needs to change about the organization,” she said.
Ordinance amendments require about “six months of very careful deliberation,” Farwell added — so such a change wouldn’t mean that the city could change overnight.
Anstress Farwell.
See below for previous articles about this year’s Charter Revision Commission process.
• 4‑Year Terms, Residency Requirements Embraced
• Immortality Loophole Looms For Board Lifers
• To Split Or Not To Split Traffic & Police Boards
• Charter Revisers Eye Alder Pay Bump
• If It’s Good Enough For Hartford, Middletown
• Elicker Administration Pitches 4‑Year Terms
• Union Targets Mayor’s Ed Board Influence
• Ready. Set. Revise!
• 9 Approved For Charter Revision Commission
• Alders Establish Charter Revision Commission
• 4‑Year Terms Back Up For Debate