A Healthful-Food Paradise Envisioned

Corner stores stop selling candy near schools, and put fresh fruits and vegetables for sale on the sidewalks. The city, now a well-respected center for fresh seafood, collects your compost at the curb. New Haven’s ice cream trucks have been reined and its wriggly ​“livestock” has been put to work. And a new food policy czar oversees it all.

New Haven would look like that based on what the candidates for mayor suggested at their latest debate.

Those visions suraced Wednesday evening in the basement of the Beulah Heights Church on Orchard Street, where five candidates for mayor faced a crowd of 160 people for a 90-minute debate about food and food policy.

The first-of-its-kind event, organized by the New Haven Food Policy Council and Yale’s School of Public Health, is a sign of just how far the food movement has come in New Haven. As moderator Mark Pazniokas, a reporter for the Connecticut Mirror, remarked at the outset, ​“The very fact of this event is newsworthy”: 20 years ago when Mayor John DeStefano was elected, ​“there were no food forums.” Now access to healthful, local food has joined taxes, crime, schools, and bike lanes as a prominent political issue in New Haven.

The candidates — Kermit Carolina, Justin Elicker, Henry Fernandez, Toni Harp, and Sundiata Keitazulu — reached broad agreement on the topics discussed: food access, urban agriculture, school food, and support for food-related industries in town.

With some differences on specifics, all candidates agreed that city government should include a position for a food policy director working on food-related issues in New Haven.

Elicker, celebrating his 38th birthday, made a splash by pulling out props, as he did in a candidate forum on the arts.

First he pulled out two boxes of sugary cereal: examples, he said, of what kids are fed in schools. That needs to change, he said.

Then, during finals remarks, Elicker pulled out cartons of eggs laid by the chickens he and his wife keep in their East Rock backyard. He distributed a half-dozen to each of his rivals as he spoke about how disconnected people have become from the source of their food.

Some highlights from the debate:

Fernandez (pictured) and Elicker both spoke about the importance of zoning when it comes to food policy. Fernandez said zoning regulations should allow stores to sell fruits and vegetables on the sidewalk, they way they can in New York City.

Elicker said city zoners should create a ​“healthy food zone” around schools, where stores can only sell healthy foods. He said he would also regulate ice cream trucks. ​“I get calls from parents fed up with ice cream trucks parked outside of schools, tempting their kids.”

As he has in previous debates, Keitazulu (pictured) hammered at a single idea all night: This time his idea was that people should have their own backyard gardens. That’s the way it was when he was growing up, he said. ​“We never went to the store to buy nothing,” he said. The city needs to educate people on the economic benefits of growing your own food, he said.

Several candidates called for transportation improvements as a way to improve access to food. Elicker talked about reforming the ​“spaghetti network” of buses and combining the city’s bus system with Yale’s shuttle service.

Carolina (pictured), principal of Hillhouse High, said the schools should have mandatory home economics classes as in the past, to educate people on how to cook and eat well.

He also spoke about the need to make sure young kids have enough to eat, in part as a way to cut down on crime. Hungry kids are kids who will turn to theft, he said.

All the candidates talked about improving access to food assistance, including WIC, SNAP, and subsidized school lunches. That comes through education and making sure school parents fill out the forms, they said.

Harp (pictured), a state senator, called for the creation of a citywide composting system, an idea with which others agreed. She also said more land should be available for gardens. She said whenever she sees worms on the sidewalk, she thinks, ​“That’s our livestock. We could be using them to grow food.”

Elicker said the city could stimulate the local food economy by having schools buy food locally, and by supporting the ​“food incubator” program to get food businesses off the ground.

Fernandez said New Haven needs to do a better job of marketing itself as a center of seafood production. He noted that boats leave Fair Haven every day to collect oysters, clams, and lobsters in the Long Island Sound. ​“We have this entire seafood industry here,” he said. ​“We need to be proud of our seafood.”

Carolina said he’d promote gardening by having contests.

Fernandez called for recess in the schools, to make sure kids are getting enough exercise. Crime also needs to be reduced, so that people can run and play in parks, he said.

Speaking about a ​“sense of place,” Elicker asked people to imagine if the city closed a street on a Saturday and converted it into a ​“walking promenade” for outdoor dining.

In closing statements, Fernandez connected the discussion to social justice. He said that while New Haven’s restaurants are to be ​“cherished,” the city also needs to be mindful of the exploration of workers, wage theft, sexual harassment, and forced overtime that occur in the food industry.