Paul Bass Photo
Hamden GOP mayoral candidate Ron Gambardella at WNHH FM.
Ron Gambardella has done the math. He’s an accountant, after all.
The math says: Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by almost five to one in Hamden (about 19,000 to 4,000). And he’s running for mayor as … a Republican.
But that’s not the complete math. Hamden also has around 13,000 unaffiliated voters.
On top of that, Democrats are split about who their next mayor should be. They just had a primary, and sent their incumbent mayor packing.
The last Republican mayor, Barbara DeNicola, finished her term in 1999.
“I know the numbers are against me,” Gambardella said in an interview on WNHH’s “Dateline Hamden” program.
But he has a plan. Several.
The plan includes appealing to conservative and moderate Democrats who don’t agree with their local party’s leftward turn.
“When Barbara won that election, there was a deep divide in the Democratic Party,” Gambardella noted. He’s hoping for a rerun this year.
The plan also includes keeping the message, keeping the discussion, local. So people who may recoil from national Republicans see a different face of a local party.
“There’s nothing to fear in me,” Gambardella said. “I’ll be working across the aisle. I’m open to new ideas.”
Gambardella faces Democrat Lauren Garrett in the Nov. 2 general election. Al Lotto, who had dropped out of the race as the mayoral candidate of the Independent Party, has now returned to the race and petitioned his way onto the ballot as an independent.
On hot-button issues like racial representation in town and the distribution and sale of newly-legalized recreational cannabis, Gambardella said he’ll start by listening rather than presenting an agenda. He said he would invite people from all sides to sit on committees to discuss the issues civilly and craft solutions.
He vowed to “push the government out to the public.”
He does advocate specific positions on the two issues he hears about most when going door to door: Town finances, and crime.
Hamden makes the state’s highest per-capita debt payments each year, he noted. Its mill rate has risen above 50 mills. There’s been talk about whether Hamden will be the next municipality to surrender to the Municipal Accountability Review Board (MARB), the state agency that can swoop in to overrule decisions of municipalities hopelessly in the red, exchanging some autonomy over local decisions in return for a bail-out. (Click here for a previous story about Hamden’s hesitance to do that.)
In the meantime, the challenges facing local decision-makers include raising revenue, either through new development and/or tax rises; and/or cutting services.
Gambardella, who’s 66, recalled watching the town’s fiscal problems deepen, thanks to borrowing and unpaid pension liabilities, back when he served on the Legislative Council for two terms and when he ran for mayor in 2007 and 2009.
If elected, he said, he’d work to offer businesses a break on their annual property declarations when they invest in new equipment: Rather than pay 95 percent of the assessment in the first year, they’d pay 50 percent. “Incentives do in fact work,” he said, citing his experience doing the books for small businesses in his day job.
He promised to work with municipal unions on needed structural reforms as contracts come up for renegotiation. Specifically, he would look to tackle rigid job descriptions in departments like public works, to manage more efficiently, he said.
In order to build up the tax base, he spoke of working with Quinnipiac University to build a “walkable” mixed-use neighborhood similar to New Haven’s Yale-themed Broadway district.
He suggested offering landscaping companies naming rights to town buildings and parks and ballfields in return for maintaining them. He’d give annual awards to companies that do the spiffiest jobs.
Even the building of a new animal shelter could open revenue opportunities by selling naming rights to parts of it, Gambardella suggested. The town currently uses North Haven’s shelter for animal calls. Gambardella advocated building a new one in southern Hamden. (Click here for a previous story about the issue.)
Overall, he cited his personal experience as equipping him with the tool to tackle fiscal challenges: an MBA in finance, undergraduate economics degree, 19 years in the former SNET’s finance department, at one point overseeing a $1 billion budget.
Crime is at the top of the list of concerns of many voters he meets, he said. Especially the elderly.
“There are people who are scared of shopping in Hamden,” he said.
He was asked if that includes him.
“I’m not scared personally,” he said. “Seniors are scared.” They have started shopping in Wallingford and North Haven instead of in Hamden as a result, he said, which makes it even harder for the town to rebuild its commercial base. He blamed the media for sensationalizing crime, fueling citizens’ fears.
Gambardella said he has also heard fears from residents of southern Hamden about walking the neighborhood at night, in the wake of some recent shootings.
He advocated beginning to shore up the police force — and save money on overtime — by hiring back retired officers. Those officers are already receiving benefits, he noted. And they could fill patrol slots for which the town is currently paying overtime.
Click on the above video to watch the full interview with Republican mayoral candidate Ron Gambardella on WNHH FM’s “Dateline Hamden.” At-large Legislative Council candidate Andrew Tammaro, who’s helping Gambardella with his campaign, also participated in the discussion.