New Haven Mayor Toni Harp said she has heard the complaints of New Haven’s rank-and-file cops about their chief, and she wants to help make peace.
There’s “low morale” in the department, Harp observed on her regular “Mayor Monday” appearance on WNHH radio.
She made the remark four days after city cops voted 170 – 42 to express “no confidence” in Chief Dean Esserman’s stewardship of the department.
“For many officers who have been on the street and working their way up the ranks, having a chief who hasn’t done that is a problem,” she said. “I have to take into consideration what they feel.”
At the same time, “from a policy point of view,” Harp said, Esserman “has done a phenomenal job” of “moving the department in the right direction.”
So, she said, she wants “to be a peace broker. I’m sure if we all work together, we can” address the rank and file concerns.
Harp had been meeting biweekly with union leaders until the commencement of contract negotiations, at which point their attorneys advised against the sessions, she said. She said she hopes personally to lead reconciliation efforts with the assistance of her chief administrative officer, Mike Carter.
Back To Fire Drawing Board
Also on the program, Harp said she has asked a search committee to start over in preparing a list of finalists for the position of fire chief.
The committee had given her two names, she said. Then one of the finalists, Interim Chief Ralph Black, dropped out two weeks ago.
She said she wants more than one name from which to choose. “It’s my choice. I’m the mayor. I’m not going to take one name,” she said.
Salvatore Back In?
Harp said on the show that negotiations have reopened between developer Randy Salvatore and the city to try to salvage his plan to build apartments, stores, offices and research space on 20 acres of largely fallow land in the Hill neighborhood. Salvatore stormed out of a Board of Alders committee meeting June 22 when the committee voted against a zone-change approval he needed for the project, after months of negotiations with board leaders. Salvatore confirmed Monday that negotiations have resumed and he remains “optimistic” that the project can be revived.
The mayor was less optimistic about a related development impasse between the alders and a builder — Yale University — over a plan to construct a 280,000-square feet biology lab off Whitney Avenue. Alders backed by Yale’s UNITE HERE unions have held up the plan for months through an unrelated procedure involving approval of a campus-wide parking plan. (Read about that here.)
Yale has since “suggested” to the city that New Haven “is not the only place [it] can build a tower,” Harp said. The city counted on receiving about $4 million in building permit fees this fiscal year from the planned start of construction on the tower — which means a huge hole would be blown into the budget if that construction doesn’t occur. Harp said she doesn’t believe the parking concerns should stop the project. “They [board leaders] know if we lose the permit fees,” Harp said, “that will be their fault.”
Click on the above audio file to hear the full “Mayor Monday” episode, which also included a discussion of job-creation ideas Harp picked up during a visit to Cleveland to meet with the the CEO of Key Bank; and of why she supports the “Black Lives Matter” movement.
Monday’s “Mayor Monday” episode of “Dateline New Haven” was made possible in partnership with Gateway Community College.