Negotiators, clockwise from top left: Fernandez, Weisselberg, Alvarez, Gormany, Piscitelli.
Mayor Justin Elicker has dispatched a team with both long governmental experience and youthful perspective to hammer a deal with Yale for greater support for the city.
Elicker enlisted a former 2013 mayoral campaign foe, ex-city economic development chief Henry Fernandez, to lead the city negotiating team. The team has held several meetings with a team of Yale representatives including Senior Vice-President for Operations Jack Callahan and Associate Vice-President for New Haven Affairs Lauren Zucker to explore both potential forms of increased financial contributions as well as potential creative collaborations on projects to benefit New Haven. Representatives of Yale professional schools are also lending expertise. Elicker’s looking or help with the city’s structural deficit as an estimated $13 million deficit looms for the coming fiscal year. (Click here to read a previous article about the negotiations.)
Two weeks ago Elicker refused to identify whom else besides Fernandez he had appointed to represent the city in the discussions. “I always want to be transparent, but I don’t think it is necessary in this case,” he said at the time. “It’s my prerogative to have my team meeting with the university. I don’t think that’s a public matter.”
Two weeks later, he has had an apparent change of mind. Monday his spokesperson, Gage Frank, released the following names of others on the city team:
• City Budget Director Michael Gormany.
• City economic development chief Michael Piscitelli.
• City legislative affairs Director Kevin Alvarez.
• Susan Weisselberg, who held various local government jobs (director of school system “wraparound services”; coordinator former Mayor John DeStefano’s $1.5 billion school construction initiative for 14 years) and served as deputy state budget director under former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.
Fernandez and Weisselberg are serving as volunteers on Elicker’s negotiating team.