Piscitelli’s Permanent Posting Progresses

A 20-year city government veteran promised to push for ​“truly inclusive” deals that extend beyond short-term local construction hires, as lawmakers advanced a request to turn his title from ​“acting” to permanent city economic development administrator.

Michael Piscitelli made that promise Monday night during his confirmation hearing before the Aldermanic Affairs Committee in the Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of City Hall.

Piscitelli currently serves as the city’s acting economic development administrator, a position he has been in since December 2018 when then-Mayor Toni Harp tapped the development deputy to replace Matthew Nemerson.

Current Mayor Justin Elicker decided to hold onto Piscitelli appointing him to serve as the permanent head of the branch of city government that oversees the Economic Development Administration, the City Plan Department, the Department of Transportation, Traffic & Parking (TT&P), the Commission on Equal Opportunities (CEO), the Office of Building Inspection & Enforcement, the Arts, Culture, & Tourism Division, and the Livable City Initiative.

That appointment requires approval of the Board of Alders.

The committee alders took no action on Piscitelli’s appointment Monday night so that the full Board of Alders can discharge the item from committee and expedite its vote on the matter at a full meeting next week.

The committee alders took the same technical non-actions (but in fact expedited actions) on the other two Elicker-appointed City Hall coordinators interviewed Monday night, Acting Community Services Administrator Mehul Dalal and Acting Chief Administrative Officer Scott Jackson, so that those officials can also receive a full aldermanic vote within the state statute-defined timeline for municipal appointments.

The alders asked Piscitelli about his vision and goals for the departments that oversee everything from attracting developers to New Haven to housing and building and zoning code enforcement. But first committee alders praised the Fair Haven Heights resident for his decades of public service in the Elm City.

A trained regional planner and past president of the American Planning Association’s Connecticut Chapter, Piscitelli worked in the City Plan Department from 2000 to 2007 and in TT&P from 2007 to 2010 before moving over to the economic development department.

“Thank you for standing the test of time,” Edgewood Alder and Committee Vice-Chair Evette Hamilton said. ​“I’m glad to see our mayor was smart enough to keep you on. Thank you for your support and your hard work in this city.”

“Whatever position he was in before, he always worked miracles to ensure that” constituents felt heard and that the task at hand got taken care of, Fair Haven Heights Alder and Committee Chair Rosa Ferraro Santana said. ​“I’m very pleased with his success.”

“Community Benefits Agreements” Contested

Hill Alder Ron Hurt had more to say to Piscitelli than just words of praise when he took his turn at the mic.

He jumped straight to the point.

“Community benefits agreements with major projects coming to our city that will affect our neighborhoods of need,” Hurt said. ​“We get a lot of projects. We get developments coming through. And in the past, they just come with no regard to the constituents.”

That needs to change, he said. He asked Piscitelli what he would do differently if confirmed to the top economic development position to ensure that local residents directly benefit from the current building boom.Investors, developers, and nonprofits alike seem eager to pour millions of dollars into new housing, offices, lab space, and healthcare facilities.

Piscitelli said the best way forward lies in part in adjusting the city’s understanding of what, exactly, ​“community benefits agreements” mean and are meant to accomplish.

He called on residents, alders, and city officials alike to move away from a strictly ​“transactional” definition of such agreements, in which residents trade support for a project in exchange for a specific set of asks, such as financial contributions towards some worthy public cause.

The city must instead focus on ensuring that developments are ​“truly inclusive,” with community members feeling involved with a stake in a project well before it gets off the ground and long after construction is done.

Piscitelli pointed to the bioscience career pathway that the city built out with Southern Connecticut State University and financial support from Alexion in the wake of the construction of 100 College St. That program benefits 60 to 100 New Haven students every year, providing an educational pipeline directly to one of the fastest growing sectors in the city’s economy, he said.

“I’m hoping we can get to a place where the lens is a lot broader and the project feels a part of the community, and not separate,” he said.

Hurt doubled down on his concerns with the inadequacy of community benefits agreements to date. ​“It seems like there’s no investment into our communities for years,” he said. ​“How do we include our constituents when for years there’s been a lot of hopelessness?”

He said many constituents he talks to simply assume that large institutions like Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital can and will build wherever they want, and that locals have little say and little to gain from those projects.

Piscitelli replied that the way that the city negotiates with developers has fundamentally changed in recent years, with a view towards promoting long-term prosperity for the community and the builders alike.

“For many years we only had agreements related construction workforce and small contractors,” he said. Those agreements mandated that 25 percent of person-hours on a given construction project had to go to New Haven residents.

“We didn’t really have a good latch to permanent jobs,” he said.

While those local construction mandates are still in place, he said, the city now includes requirements in development agreements that builders work closely with the local job training and placement organization New Haven Works.

That partnership ensures that people who ultimately work in the finished buildings, and not just on the construction of the buildings, are from New Haven.

Piscitelli added that a priority of his if confirmed as economic development administrator would be to create a ​“better hand off” for small business entrepreneurs who graduate from the city’s Small Business Academy or from local incubators like Collab and need help actually opening their businesses in New Haven.

“Once they finish the bootcamp, we need to do a much better job of connecting them to grow their business, to business-to-business sales,” Piscitelli said.

He said that many of the local food entrepreneurs who sold their wares at a recent Wooster Square farmer’s market produced goods as high quality as anything currently on a grocery store’s shelf.

“Those are businesses that are in the Hill today,” he said. ​“We need a better hand off. You’ll see that emerging in the benefits agreements going forward.”

Downtown/Yale Alder Eli Sabin asked Piscitelli to take a step back from community development agreements in particular and to think about what the city can and should be doing to encourage the creation of good-paying local jobs at a more macro level. He said that roughly 30 percent of city residents are underemployed and that roughly 41 percent are rent-burdened, meaning they pay more than a third of their income on rent every month.

Piscitelli said that the city’s goal is not necessarily to create specific jobs, but rather to ​“create an environment that can grow jobs.”

One way to do that is through such planning projects as the Long Wharf Responsible Growth Plan, which lay out an intentional, community-vetted set of principles and development considerations designed to encourage public and private investment.

Another strategy is by focusing on specific job sectors so that New Haven becomes a hotspot for up-and-coming employment fields like bioscience, neuroscience, and quantum computing. Growth in those areas of the economy in turn creates a boost for a range of other areas of employment, he said, such as in the housing, hospitality, and food service industries.

“That’s where we try to focus our work,” he said about promoting certain sectors of the economy, ​“rather than just chasing the next restaurant.”

Practical. Persuasive. Persistent

A host of past and present colleagues turned out Monday to praise Piscitelli’s work, and to encourage the alders to support his nomination.

“I’ve known him for 15 years or so, and he is a person of extremely high integrity,” said Susan Godshall (pictured above), a former City Hall staffer who also worked for the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce.

“He’s not flashy,” she said. ​“But I don’t think the city needs flashy. I think we need someone who’s practical, who’s persuasive, and who’s persistent.”

New Haven Works Executive Director Melissa Mason said the Piscitelli has been a close ally of her organization ever since its founding in 2013. He has helped connect New Haven Works with a range of potential employers, she said, including most recently the regional water authority.

“He and his staff have been a true link to projects,” she said.

“His heart is so much in the right place in terms of what is right for the city,” said Fire Chief John Alston (pictured).

“You like to meet people who don’t just point out problems. You like to meet people who leave a meeting with solutions.” He said Piscitelli is just such a person.