Thomas Breen File Photo
Claudia Herrera at the 2019 Democratic Town Convention.
Fair Haven community activist, Democratic ward co-chair and professional dental assistant Claudia Herrera will be the next alder for Ward 9 — not because she especially wants the job, but because she couldn’t bear the thought of an “empty chair” representing her neighborhood.
Herrera will assume the role of local legislative representative for Ward 9 on Friday. She is replacing former East Rock Alder Charles Decker, who abruptly resigned his post on Aug. 31 because he was moving out of the district.
Because Herrera, a Democrat, is the only candidate who registered to run for the empty seat, there will be no special election to replace Decker. The city clerk’s office formally issued a notice on Thursday that there will be no special election for the seat, and that Herrera will become Ward 9’s alder by the end of the day on Friday.
This isn’t the first time this year that a dearth of candidates for neighborhood-level office has meant that no election has been needed in the wake of an alder’s resignation. After Beaver Hills Alder Shafiq Abdussabur resigned to pursue a school cleaning contract, Tom Ficklin replaced him after being the only candidate to sign up to run.
Ward 9 includes a section of East Rock between Humphrey Street to the south, Willow Street to the north, Orange Street to the west, and East Street to the east. It also includes a section of Fair Haven from Clay Street to the south, Willow Street to the north, the Mill River to the west, and Blatchley Avenue to the east.
In a recent interview with the Independent, Herrera said that she reluctantly submitted her name for the open seat on the 30-person Board of Alders in the absence of anyone else in her district who was interested in running.
She sees her upcoming time on the board as a temporary gig, until someone else decides to step up.
Herrera, who’s currently a Democratic Party co-chair for the ward, said she learned from a news article that her now-former alder had resigned. Decker was eight months into his third two-year term on the Board of Alders.
The ward combines parts of East Rock, home to a large number of Yale graduate students, and Fair Haven, a neighborhood across the Mill River with a growing community of working class Latino immigrants. The Ward 9 alder is challenged with representing both sides of the river, which have distinct needs and priorities: according to DataHaven, Fair Haven’s poverty rate of 33 percent is over twice as high as East Rock’s, while East Rock tends to see a relatively high turnover of residents from year to year. Herrera will be the first alder based in Fair Haven to represent the ward since the district lines were redrawn to group both neighborhoods together in 2012.
Herrera said that she and her other Ward 9 Democratic co-chair, Sarah Locke, made call after call urging engaged residents in the ward to run. No one was interested — raising questions about the challenges of finding people willing to spend innumerable night hours in government meetings, with only a small stipend for compensation.
New Haven Democratic Town Committee Chair Vin Mauro told the Independent in a separate interview that finding a candidate for Ward 9 alder was particularly difficult this year because the seat had opened in the middle of the term.
“I understand why people wouldn’t want to run and then run again a year later,” said Mauro.
Herrera kept thinking about an “empty chair” behind the Ward 9 plaque in the Board of Alders’ chamber. “What about us? Who’s listening, who’s speaking up for us?” she thought to herself before deciding to volunteer for the position.
Contributed by Claudia Herrera
Tree planting near Castle Street.
Herrera, third from the left in the top row, with neighborhood and URI volunteers.
While Herrera considers herself more of a behind-the-scenes community activist, this won’t be her first leadership role in her neighborhood. She’s lived in her Castle Street home in Fair Haven for 20 years, and over the last decade, she founded a block watch that’s helped transform her neighborhood.
She and two neighbors started the block watch with a focus on two or three blocks, she said. They called it “Adopt-A-Corner.” They organized community clean-ups and aimed to “make sure the police pay attention” to neighbors’ concerns. They partnered with the Urban Resources Initiative to plant trees all along Castle Street, including a cherry blossom that Herrera feels particularly proud of.
As the saplings took root in that northwestern corner of Fair Haven, Herrera noticed a change in her neighbors. “All of a sudden, everybody was speaking to each other,” she recalled. The stronger sense of connection among neighbors was “a huge improvement.”
“Don’t be afraid to say hello to your neighborhood,” Herrera said. “Don’t close your eyes if you see something wrong.”
By day, Herrera works as a dental assistant at an oral surgery office in East Rock’s Orange Street. Her daily commute confronts her with neighborhood inequities. “It’s not OK that one area has a lot and another is neglected so bad,” she said. “Every family deserves to raise their family in an area where there’s not trash anywhere, there’s not people vandalizing the area.”
As alder, Herrera said she would focus on “quality-of-life” issues, “supporting small businesses,” and “environmental wellness.” She also wants to create long term relationships between police and neighborhood residents, expressing frustration that she’s seen many Fair Haven-based cops come and go from the neighborhood as they’re transferred from position to position.
All the while, she said she hopes her tenure at the aldermanic table will build in “an invitation to the community” to consider taking her place.