Ethics Board Clears 2 Conflict Cases

The sister of a city employee has no conflict buying a city-built two-family house, since that family relationship appears to have no bearing on the pending transaction.

Same goes for the husband of a city employee who has applied for a city architectural contract unrelated to his wife’s work.

The city’s two-member Board of Ethics came to those decisions during a 45-minute public hearing held in the Corporation Counsel office’s fifth-floor library at City Hall.

The board, which is charged with providing broad-reaching oversight over potential conflicts of interest regarding city employees, appointees, and elected officials, met this past Tuesday to hear testimony on three cases introduced at its last meeting on May 21. The board, which has met only a handful of times in the past six years, reviews complaints and concerns filed by city employees concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest; it does not seek out complaints.

At the ethics board meeting, board chair Leslie Arthur and fellow member Roger Wilkins instructed board counsel Kathleen Foster to draft two opinions asserting no conflict of interest in two of the submitted cases.

One involves Marta Arroyo-Quirama, a Livable City Initaitive (LCI) administrative assistant whose sister Marisol Arroyo is looking to close on her purchase of an LCI-built two-family home at Judith Terrace. The other involves Kathleen Krolak, a city economic development officer whose husband Keith has applied for an architectural contract for an LCI housing rehabilitation project at 10 Orchard St.

The board did not rule on a third case before them, involving Michelle Mateo, a Kaurus Property Group realtor whose sister Jasmine Gonzalez is interested in buying a LCI-built home at 110 – 112 Judith Terrace. Neither Mateo nor Gonzalez is a city employee, but Mateo was hired by LCI to market the Judith Terrace properties.

The commissioners instead instructed Foster to research whether or not city contractors fall within the Board of Ethics’s purview before the board decides on whether or not there is a conflict of interest in this case.

The board will next meet on June 18 to review Foster’s draft opinions.

If the commissioners sign off on the conflict of interest clearance language in the first two cases, Foster said, then the board will distribute those opinions to the relevant employees and department heads, formally giving them the go ahead to proceed with the relevant transactions.

LCI Employee’s Sister Cleared

For the first case, the commissioners and Foster at the hearing interviewed Arroyo-Quirama and LCI Deputy Catherine Carbonaro-Schroeter, who oversees Arroyo-Quirama as well as the department’s property development efforts at Judith Terrace. Arroyo-Quirama’s sister, Marisol, has applied to purchase a LCI-built two-family home at Judith Terrace, and has also applied for LCI-funded downpayment assistance.

Arthur said right off the bat she saw no conflict of interest with the downpayment assistance application, since LCI has a separate loan underwriting committee that functions completely independently of the department. Arroyo-Quirama clearly has no decision-making power on that committee, she said.

So the only potential conflict of interest lay in whether or not the city employee has any influence over helping her sister purchase the house.

Arthur asked Arroyo-Quirama what kind of work she does at LCI.

Typical executive assistant work, the latter replied, such as copying, scanning, filing, mailing. ​“I don’t do much more than regular administrative assistant work,” she said.

Schroeter added that, though Arroyo-Quirama has worked for LCI for over a decade, the latter didn’t start working in the property development department until June 2018. The city-hired realtor had already started marketing the properties on Facebook at community management team meetings and through other real estate listings by that time, she said.

Furthermore, she added, Arroyo-Quirama’s sister is not jumping any other potential buyers on a wait list, since she was one of only two people to apply for that specific Judith Terrace house. The other interested applicant, Schroeter said, did not meet the project’s income and mortgage eligibility criteria. Applicants could earn no more than the area median income, which is $82,000 for a family of four, and their annual mortgage payments could not exceed 30 percent of their annual income.

Do you feel the five Judith Terrace two-family homes built as part of this LCI project were properly advertised? Arthur asked.

“They were fully marketed,” Schroeter replied. LCI put out a RFP for a realtor in 2016, started Facebook posts and community outreach on the project in 2017, and posted the property on a multiple listing service (MLS) in 2018 to ensure a wide swath of interested homebuyers could find the new properties.

Arthur said that she has no problem with Arroyo-Quirama’s sister going forward with her purchase of the home. Wilkins agreed.

“The actual person making the decision is not directly connected in any way,” he said, noting that the city employee seems to have no influence over whether or not her sister is eligible for the home purchase.

Orchard Street Youth Homeless Project

In the second matter before the board, Arthur and Wilkins interviewed economic development officer Kathleen Krolak, Krolak’s supervisor economic development deputy Steve Fontana, and Schroeter.

Krolak’s husband Keith, a local architect, has applied to do the architectural design work for a nascent LCI project to rehabilitate a vacant three-family house and adjacent garage at 10 Orchard St. in the Hill and convert the properties into a youth homeless shelter and job training site. Schroeter is overseeing the project for LCI as it gets off the ground.

Krolak explained that her role in the economic development department involves helping new businesses looking to come to New Haven navigate city regulations, figure out what they are allowed to open where, and then publicize their businesses once they are open.

She has a passing relationship with some employees in LCI, she said, but only insofar as many City Hall workers are on friendly terms with staffers in other departments. She in no way has any award-granting power in LCI, she said, and has no influence over whether or not her husband can or will be picked for the Orchard Street contract.

Schroeter said the project in question will involve LCI building out a youth homeless shelter to accommodate 16 to 18 people per night. The building will include a kitchen, a dining room area, and general use space for job training services.

Schroeter reached out to five different architects in town to submit bids to do 40 percent of the project’s construction drawing (the rest will require another bid, she said) and to provide a cost estimate for the project. Keith Krolak was not one of those architects to whom she reached out, she said; he heard about the project from a developer friend and submitted an application.

Not only is he eligible to do the work, Schroeter said, but Krolak also submitted the lowest bid. Kathleen Krolak said that Tuesday’s meeting was the first time she learned any of the details of the project that her husband had applied for. It was also the first time she found out that he had submitted the lowest bid.

“Do you have any decision-making powers on any contracts,” inside or outside LCI? Foster asked again.

No, Krolak said.

Arthur and Wilkins instructed Foster to draft an opinion finding no conflict of interest in Keith Krolak’s application. Krolak’s husband appears to have found out about the contract independent of his wife’s work, they said. He appears to have submitted an application independent of his wife’s work. And he will or will not be awarded the bid independent of his wife’s work.

“I don’t have any problems with [this application] at all,” Arthur said.