Mayor DeStefano was in Nevada yesterday, and look what happened: This Timothy Dwight School second-grader took over his chair. His classmates, meanwhile, invaded the Board of Aldermen and passed a law banning the sale of chocolate in New Haven.
One of DeStefano’s own appointees actually welcomed the revolutionaries into City Hall while the boss was out of state.
“Good morning! Welcome to City Hall!” cried Deputy Economic Development Director Tony Bialecki as three second-grade classes from Dwight poured out of a bus onto the the Church Street sidewalk.
Bialecki was supposed to be negotiating with developers of projects like the Shartenberg site. But he took time off to help Senior Public Advocate Len Aronow lead the students on a tour of their city’s center of government.
Bialecki introduced the students to their City Hall and offered a little history lesson. Click on the play arrow to watch.
How do you interest second-graders in the Office of Vital Statistics? How do you even explain it? Well, you talk about what happens when you are born, get married, and die in New Haven. Bialecki had an idea: He went in and retrieved his birth certificate, showed it to the kids. Click here to watch.
Then the students got to work. They marched to the second floor to the aldermanic chambers. The chambers were empty. So the students filled the seats of the aldermen and pretended to be aldermen themselves. They took up a bill to ban the sale of chocolate in stores in New Haven. They heard testimony, first, from their teacher MaryLou Davis, who pretended to be a chocolate manufacturer pleading against passage of the bill. Click here to watch her testimony.
Class parent Sam Smith, stepping into the role of representative of the dentists’ lobby, offered a compromise based on chocolate “in moderation.” Click here to see if he persuades you.
Now this was tough: Teacher Arline Ben-Israel loves chocolate. But she was pressed into service to portray a woman urging the “aldermen” to pass the ban because she lost all her teeth by eating chocolate. Click on the play arrow to watch.
Her second-graders didn’t all applaud her speech — they like chocolate, too. But her position prevailed. Lamont Burroughs (shown occupying Fair Haven Alderwoman Erin Sturgis-Pascale’s seat) and his classmates voted 28 – 10 to pass the ban on chocolate sales in New Haven.
Next the bill had to go to the mayor for a signature or a veto. The real mayor, John DeStefano, was in Reno, Nevada, for a government conference. So second-grader Victor Coto filled his chair. Len Aronow asked Coto whether he planned to allow his classmates’ bill to become law or whether he would wield the veto pen. Victor’s response: “I want it to be sold.”