Two candidates seeking to become Dwight’s next alderman offered contrasting views on the Yale-New Haven Hospital dispute at a candidates’ debate.
Not surprisingly, the candidate who works for Yale’s unions blasted the hospital’s conduct during an ongoing labor dispute, while the candidate who’s working at the hospital called the issue irrelevant to the Board of Aldermen.
The two candidates squared off at debate held Tuesday night at Yale’s African American Cultural Center. They face each other next Tuesday, Sept. 11, in a Democratic Party primary to succeed Ward 2 Alderwoman Joyce Chen, who’s stepping down. Candidates from Dixwell’s Ward 22 also debated. (click here to read about that race.) Both races involve wards that include a chunk of Yale students along with longer-time New Haveners living in adjacent neighborhoods.
The party-endorsed candidate in Dwight’s Ward 2, Gina Calder (pictured), came to New Haven in 1998 to attend Yale and became active in the Dwight area shortly after. Now a student at the Yale School of Public Health, she completed a summer internship three weeks ago for Yale-New Haven Hospital’s guest services and patient relations department.
Her challenger, Frank Douglass (pictured at the top of this story), was born in the Elm Haven housing projects and has lived in New Haven ever since. He is a chef at Yale’s Trumbull College dining hall. Douglass has worked with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Community Organized for Responsible Development (CORD) since the beginning of the dispute between hospital management and the union.
The two were asked at the debate to address “the crisis at Yale-New Haven Hospital,” where a union is trying to organize 1,800 blue-collar workers. A union election — the terms of which were negotiated with city officials as part of the process of approving a new cancer center at the hospital — was called off after an arbitrator found violations on the part of Yale-New Haven Hospital management.
“You’re talking about the vote with the unions,” Douglass said. “I think that was wrong — totally wrong, and we all know it was wrong. People really support the right to form a union, so I feel that what the hospital did was totally wrong and they need to correct that [with a card-check neutrality agreement].”
“A lot of energy and attention has been spent on making sure that our workers are paid a livable wage,” Gina Calder said. “And that’s important, but what do we do after? What if I get sworn in in January and the whole situation has been resolved? Then what? What are we offering to those workers, what are we offering the community, to make sure they consistently have access to jobs with livable wages, that they can work their way up the ladder, that they can see a future for their children that is better than anything they ever had for themselves.”
Community Policing
Neither candidate was completely satisfied with the state of community policing. Both said that it is important for police to have stronger ties within the community.
Calder said the remedy lies in hiring more police to establish walking and bicycling beats, and also to increase cooperation between the Yale University and New Haven police departments.
Douglass said the department should hire more people who come from the communities they are policing to establish trust between the force and the neighborhood.
“It’s like, you can’t send me into a Spanish-speaking neighborhood if I don’t speak Spanish,” Douglass said.
On gun violence, both candidates said the issue needs to be settled by creating opportunities, not by locking people up.
Douglass said he would hold a youth summit within his first 100 days in office to get an idea of what the young people in his community want and need, and that he would come up with a plan from there.
Calder said she has been pressuring the university to add spaces in its new construction projects to facilitate community programs.
When asked if she would have voted for the tax increase alders approved in May, Calder said it would have been a tough choice.
“I shy away from anything that is going to create an extra burden for taxpayers,” she said, “but I don’t know what other options they had.”
Douglas, on the other hand, took a decisive position.
“Hell no, my taxes are too high now,” he said.
As for the Shartenberg site development approved by the BOA the same night, Douglass said he saw it as a form of corporate welfare.
“Billionaires don’t need tax breaks,” Douglass said. “We do.”
Calder said the city has gotten stuck in what she called “desperation mode.” That’s when a city government thinks the only way to attract developers is to give out sweetheart deals.
- * * *
Related stories on the Sept. 11 aldermanic primaries: