Debate Pitch: Here’s How I’d Fix The Parks

A network of green spaces linking every public park in New Haven. A larger role for people of color and women in building the city’s physical landscape. A pedestrian walkway connecting Union Station to Downtown. A ban on new parking lots and garages in favor of playgrounds.

Those ideas for New Haven’s built environment and public greenspaces emerged in a mayoral debate that took place on Tuesday evening over Zoom.

Westville-based city fiscal watchdog Dennis Serfilippi convened the candidates for a two-and-a-half-hour online forum with questions focused largely on city finances. Democrats Shafiq Abdussabur, Liam Brennan, and Tom Goldenberg participated, along with unaffiliated candidate Wendy Hamilton; incumbent Democrat Justin Elicker did not attend. About 45 members of the public listened in on Zoom. 

Tuesday’s forum marked the second debate of this municipal election year, following one hosted by the East Shore Community Management Team in April, in the runup to September’s Democratic primary and November’s general election.

Amid calls for transparent decision-making, higher pay for teachers, and property tax overhauls, the four participating mayoral candidates offered a variety of visions for the 2,200 acres of park space across New Haven on Tuesday night.

Watch the full debate here.

Kensington Sale Slammed

The candidates were asked to address the city’s (lawsuit-contested) sale of Kensington Park, a 0.6‑acre playground in the Dwight neighborhood, for $1 to a nonprofit developer, The Community Builders (TCB), which plans to build affordable housing in the park’s stead.

Abdussabur described Kensington Park as a ​“beautiful park, a wonderful space.” He acknowledged the park’s historical reputation for being a site of drug trades and substance use, even as he recalled playing in the park as a kid. ​“Before the war on drugs, before crack cocaine, that was a park that we played in as a kid, and it’s there for a reason. It’s for kids, it’s for adults.” 

He explicitly criticized the price of the park’s sale: ​“Why are we selling anything from the city for a dollar? You can’t buy a stop sign in the city for a dollar.” (Click here to read a previous article detailing Abuddsabur’s campaign’s parks platform.)

Hamilton promised, ​“If I get elected, you will see more parks and playgrounds — and I will not allow any additional parking lots or car garages” anywhere in the city.

Brennan suggested that the debate around Kensington Park ​“has pitted the idea of affordable housing against green space. We need both.” He argued that the city has ​“a lot of excess space” that could have been used to create an alternative park for Dwight residents; though TCB will fund a new park in Newhallville along with improvements to Day Street Park, Brennan said, ​“the problem is they’re not replacing this greenspace nearby.” 

Brennan suggested that the city should identify under-utilized streets and roads and use space currently reserved for cars to create new parks and affordable housing.

He also envisioned connecting the city’s parks into ​“one contiguous greenspace,” through corridors that prioritize active transportation methods. 

Goldenberg, meanwhile, spoke of a park he recently visited in Tulsa, Oklahoma, called The Gathering Place. The park was donated to the city by the George Kaiser Family Foundation; Goldenberg praised the ​“public-private partnership” and suggested exploring a similar arrangement with Yale University.

Parks Merger "Doomed To Fail"

All four candidates criticized Mayor Elicker’s 2020 decision to split and re-combine the Parks, Recreation, & Trees department into a Youth and Recreation department as well as a Parks and Public Works department, building off of a critique leveled by citywide parks advocates throughout the year so far.

“I don’t like it,” said Hamilton simply, adding that ​“we need more staff” working on both parks and public works issues.

Goldenberg said that after speaking with ​“current and former” parks and public works employees, he’s convinced that the merger of the two departments was ​“doomed to fail.” ​“Everyone is upset about it and he hasn’t backtracked,” Goldenberg said of Elicker.

He promised that if elected, he would separate the departments within the the first 90 days of his mayoral term — while incorporating ​“public spaces” under the purview of a newly-distinct Parks department. ​“Public spaces are more than just the parks,” Goldenberg said, noting that the city is ​“using streets in innovative ways that we’ve seen in some neighborhoods.”

Abdussabur argued that Parks and Public Works combines staff from ​“two separate trades.” He elaborated, ​“The whole purpose of having a Parks Department is so they can focus on the green space.” Abdussabur said his grandfather was a sanitation worker in the city, working with public works employees who ​“clean the streets, they remove the snow.”

Brennan called the merger ​“a very well-meaning policy,” but one that hasn’t worked because ​“our parks are in disrepair.” He continued, ​“I applaud the effort of trying to do this, but when you make a mistake, we also have to be willing to admit to those mistakes and correct them. We tried something that didn’t work. Now it’s time to turn the page on that process and do something different.”

After the debate, Elicker responded to these critiques. ​“The important thing is that the work gets done … We certainly always have more work to do on parks maintenance. What the specific structure is is not as important as the work that’s getting done,” he told the Independent.

Elicker highlighted new parks caretaker positions and seasonal staffing funds added to the latest city budget, as well as millions of dollars of federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) aid and state funding to improve the city’s existing parks while expanding and reviving Long Wharf Park.

Rethinking Reval

Over the course of more than two hours, Serfilippi asked the candidates about their stances on the city budget, ARPA spending, taxes, and pensions, among other finance-related components of city government.

When the question of property taxes came up, Brennan raised a ​“huge problem with the under-assessed properties downtown” — the large, often luxury apartment buildings that investors buy for significantly more than what the tax assessor’s office has stated they are worth. In December, the Independent found that the buildings involved in last year’s ten largest real estate deals sold for $166 million more than what the city had appraised them as being worth.

Brennan’s campaign staff estimated that the city lost at least $20 million in taxes last year due to under-valued properties — money he said could have gone toward lowering taxes or providing additional city services. 

“This puts a greater burden on the taxpayers,” he said. ​“I think it is incumbent to bring in a staff that is capable of properly assessing these buildings.”

Brennan also argued that ​“the city owns a lot of property — excess street space, highways taking up space” that could be sold and repurposed for taxable uses. 

Goldenberg, meanwhile, raised how the city’s most recent property revaluation has affected various neighborhoods differently. He had calculated how various neighborhoods saw increased property values — and therefore increased property taxes. 

“When you look neighborhood by neighborhood, it’s just staggering,” Goldenberg said. He highlighted his calculations for an average property value increase in the Hill (up 42 percent in Ward 5), Fair Haven (up 41 percent in Ward 16), and Newhallville (up 40 percent in Ward 20). 

“You do this and it’s going to push people out of their houses. You do this and it’s going to push rent up,” he said. ​“The reval was done in a very harmful way. It underassessed the larger apartment buildings and put more burden on the single family and smaller multi-family homeowners.”

Goldenberg promised to freeze property taxes if elected.

After the debate, Elicker responded, ​“The reval process is highly regulated and to insinuate that the city intentionally manipulated the values of one neighborhood over another is absolutely false.” With respect to Goldenberg’s tax freeze promise, he added, ​“it’s easy to promise no tax increase for someone that has not been in the position to provide services that residents also demand.” 

Elicker touted increased contributions to the city’s finances from the state’s PILOT program as well as Yale University, which he said helped mitigate property tax increases.

Abdussabur, meanwhile, said during Tuesday’s debate that in addition to connecting with people struggling to pay their bills, ​“I’ve also talked to people who are wealthy in our community. Their concern is, I have money, but just because I have money, I don’t want to burn it all on taxes. … People’s money is people’s money.” 

He expressed concern about future generations not being able to afford taxes in New Haven. ​“Our people are worried sitting here in New Haven, aging by themselves, because their children can’t afford to live in the city.” He said he would be open to offering tax relief to elderly New Haveners.

Hamilton said she had called the Federal Bureau of Investigations on the Board of Alders Finance Committee for their decision-making on the city budget and promised, ​“I will declare Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy on my first day in office.“

She also vowed to get Yale to contribute more money to the city. ​“Yale will pay if I pull all their building permits, stop all city services, ticket all their vehicles every day, and use other sanctions I have in mind,” she said.

Mayor: "Not A Productive Use Of Time"

At multiple moments, Goldenberg slammed Elicker’s absence at the meeting. ​“To not have the mayor here to address concerns is unacceptable,” he said at one point. ​“It speaks louder than words the fact that the mayor is not here,” he repeated later.

Elicker explained his absence in an interview on Wednesday, noting that there are other plans for ​“debates by legitimate organized groups.” He argued, ​“to attend every debate by a random individual resident is not a productive use of time.”

Elicker noted that during this year’s budget process, ​“I hosted three budget town hall meetings and worked to be at everywhere I possibly can around the city. If anyone doubts my accessibility, they haven’t been paying attention over these past three and a half years.”