Paul Bass Photo
State Rep. Pat Dillon at WNHH FM: "It's great if you bought DoorDash stock five years ago, not if you had maybe 10 people on your staff, serving people, and now you're down to two."
Pat Dillon started visiting voters on her 22nd round of seeking election to a state legislative seat when she learned something new: the Amity Walgreens is closing.
The voters who broke the news considered it a big deal. Dillon said she does, too, and intends to incorporate it into her work if elected on Nov. 5 to represent New Haven’s west-side 92nd General Assembly District for a 21st two-year term.
“I just found out on the doors this weekend — a lot of distress out in the Amity area that the Walgreens out there is closing,” Democrat Dillon said during a conversation Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
“This Walgreens will be closing on Nov. 13,” a recording for the Walgreens outpost, at 1471 Whalley (in a shopping plaza at the corner of Litchfield Turnpike), notifies customers, informing them their prescriptions will be transferred to the downtown York Street store.
That’s a big deal, Dillon said, in part because of the trend it represents: consolidation of larger-footprint chain retail outlets in recent years, as part of the continual shift to online shopping. Needed jobs disappear along with those empty spaces, she said. She noted that New Haven thankfully escaped this round of Stop & Shop supermarket closings, which reflect the rise in home grocery deliveries by companies like Amazon.
Dillon said she’d like the state delegation to work with city government on a strategy for filling the empty storefronts, helping current small business owners stay in business, and preparing people for retail jobs.
A big part of that challenge faces restaurants, Dillon said. Conversations with west-side restaurant owners led her to work with colleagues to secure $150,000 in state federal-pandemic-relief dollars to create a small-grant fund, administered by Westville Village Renaissance Alliance. Local restaurant owners can use the grants to pursue new strategies to deal with changing consumer behavior accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, such as adding equipment and staff to pivot to more take-out business or a different target audience. (High-chairs, anyone? Or big-screen sports?)
Dillon said she’d like to work with the city to match that money in order to expand the program’s reach to areas like Upper State Street — and more broadly concentrate more job-creation and retention outside the downtown jobs-of-the-future realm.
“I want to make sure that City Hall is on the same page. They’re spending a lot of time over at Yale, and I think that’s great. And Yale is working on getting state money for their stuff,” while existing neighborhood retail businesses need more support, Dillon said.
“I was looking at the post-pandemic effect. It’s transformed our economy in a lot of ways, our work habits. It’s transformed our housing needs. Remote work has basically meant that a lot of people are not going out to restaurants. The restaurants that we have are relying on takeout and so much more heavily,” she said. “It’s a national issue, because people are cocooning. And it’s great if you bought DoorDash stock five years ago, but not if you had maybe 10 people on your staff, serving people, and now you’re down to two, because all you’re doing is takeout.” West-side Alder Richard Furlow originally called the challenges facing specific restaurants to her attention, Dillon said.
City Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli said he will look into the restaurant grant program Dillon mentioned, of which he hadn’t been aware. In reference to small-business efforts in general, he said, “Our Together New Haven programs include some of the City’s traditional grants like the façade improvement program and leasehold improvement, both of which support brick and mortar small businesses citywide. More recently, the city is a partner with the NHE3 collaborative which is administered by the Community Foundation.” He added that the city has spent $1.5 million in federal pandemic-relief dollars and another $7 million from the state on small-business efforts. He pointed potential applicants to the city’s Small Business Resource Center and the Together New Haven website for details.
Dillon, then an alder, first ran in 1982 to represent the 92nd District, which includes Westville, parts of Dwight and Edgewood, and now Hill North. She lost that year to Republican Roz Berman, then won the seat in a rematch in 1984, retaining it ever since. She faces Republican Morris Sumter in the Nov. 5 general election. Sumter accepted an invitation to appear on “Dateline,” then failed to show up.
“I’m feeling good about the Mets,” said Dillon, who grew up in Queens, “and I want everyone to have a job.”
Lightning Round
The “Dateline” interview included a “lightning round” on where Dillon stands on state issues. Some examples:
• She supports proposals to adjust the “volatility cap” in a 2017 bipartisan “fiscal guardrails” agreement to free up money for underfunded services.
• Asked about whether she supports some Democrats’ efforts to impose a 7.5 percent tax rate (rather than 6.99 percent) on incomes over $1 million or a “mansion tax,” Dillon said she’d first look at restoring higher taxes on realized capital gains that vanished with the 1991 state income tax deal as well as restoring an exemption lost in the 2017 fiscal guardrails deal for aid to distressed municipalities.
• She said she’s “ambivalent” about proposals to ban students’ use of cell phones in school: “I’m ambivalent because of kids who need to go through to their parents during shootings.”
• She supports restoring the abolition of fares for CT Transit bus rides temporarily put into place during the pandemic. She added that she would support increased overall transit services on the west side of town, including an expansion there of Yale’s shuttle. “We’re paying for trains into New York for people who live on the shoreline. We don’t have transportation for the interior.”
• She supports the Nov. 5 ballot referendum authorizing the state legislature to approve no-excuses absentee voting. “People’s work habits are different. People have childcare needs. I’ve seen it in my own district. It’s really important. And there may be things that come up that you had not anticipated.”
Click on the video below to watch the full discussion with State Rep. Pat Dillon on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven,” as well as a previous interview with incumbent Martin Looney. (Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of “Dateline New Haven.”)