Thomas Breen file photo
Kiana Flores, at a 2019 climate rally outside City Hall.
As a Co-Op high school student, Kiana Flores helped convince the Board of Alders to pass a climate emergency resolution.
As a Yale college student, she’ll soon have a chance to put such eco-friendly policy priorities into practice — after she runs unopposed to become the next alder representing downtown’s Ward 1.
Flores, 19, is the Democratic candidate for the Ward 1 seat on the Board of Alders.
That downtown-based district consists primarily, but not exclusively, of Yale’s main campus and many of its undergraduate residences.
The seat has been occupied for the last two years by fellow Democrat Alex Guzhnay, who has decided not to run for reelection. That leaves Flores as the sole Ward 1 alder candidate running in the Nov. 7 general election.
If elected, Flores — who was born and raised in the Chatham Square section of Fair Haven, and who is currently a third-year undergraduate and political science student at Yale — will become the fourth Ward 1 alder in a row to be a Yale undergraduate who grew up in New Haven.
Before running for alder, Flores served as a co-chair of the Ward 1 Democratic Ward Committee.
After Guzhnay, she’ll also become the second Ward 1 alder in a row to have their New Haven roots in the predominantly Hispanic immigrant neighborhood of Fair Haven. Guzhnay’s parents hail from Ecuador; Flores’ parents and family are immigrants from Honduras.
Growing up in Fair Haven, Flores told the Independent, she and her peers didn’t always think that being from their neighborhood “was something to be proud of.”
But now, “looking back on it” from the vantage of being at Yale, “to be able to understand so many people” from so many different backgrounds who nevertheless share such similar stories of migration has reinforced for her how Fair Haven is a neighborhood grounded in “community efforts.” That embrace of linguistic, ethnic, national diversity and community collaboration are values she hopes to bring to the Board of Alders.
The redistricted bounds of Ward 1.
“I think there’s something really important about acknowledging where you come from” and using that experience to inform what you hope to accomplish, she said.
For one, she said, she’s been thinking a lot about how her family benefited directly from city government’s pioneering efforts to support undocumented immigrants in the mid-2000s, when she was a young child. The Elm City ID Card enabled her family members and their neighbors to open bank accounts and have access to the public library regardless of their immigration status.
Flores said she recently took a New Haven politics-focused class at Yale taught by former Mayor John DeStefano. As part of that class, the students watched a video recording of immigrants lined up to become the first recipients of that Elm City ID Card. In that line, she said, she recognized her uncle, Marvin Guevara. That flash of recognition — of her family member, in this document of a history of city government advocacy for Fair Haven immigrants — deepened her understanding of how city policy can and should affect the lives of its residents.
Flores also seeks to bring with her to the Board of Alders her years of advocacy in the New Haven Climate Movement. She was one of the teenage activists who rallied outside City Hall and testified before the Board of Alders in 2019 and pressed the local legislature to pass a climate emergency resolution laying out policy goals and a timeline for cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions. She’s made similar calls over the years for the Board of Ed to make the school district more climate friendly, and to push city government to invest more federal pandemic-relief funds into climate projects.
If elected alder, Flores said, she plans to continue that climate-focused push — albeit from inside the halls of local legislative power.
Some climate-friendly priorities she plans to advocate for include more bike lanes, more city support for “retrofitting homes to be more sustainable and efficient, making sure new construction isn’t using fossil fuels,” and requiring a certain percentage of “construction fees goes to climate work’ like more climate-friendly murals, community meetings, and solar panel installations. She said she also plans to push for changes to the city’s zoning code to allow for denser residential development as both a housing affordability and climate justice measure.
“Ward 1 is super unique” in the city in that most of its constituents are Yale students, she added. “I certainly think Yale and New Haven are inextricably linked. … I think it’s important that the person in this role has an understanding of New Haven and is also aware of the relationship between Yale and New Haven.”
Another goal of hers is to “use the resources of Yale students” to partner with students who want to work on “social issues in New Haven,” but may not know how. Being Ward 1 alder presents a “unique opportunity to mesh the two [Yale and New Haven] together and be able to get both perspectives and have that experience of being part of both worlds” lead to the creation of a better city.