Newhall Homeowners Still Seeking ARPA $

A Newhall meeting saw neighbors and Hamden town officials engaged in debate over what community members really need, in the latest installment in a group of residents’ fight to allocate one-time federal funds to addressing their crumbling home foundations. 

The meeting, held last Wednesday, provided a space for members of the Hamden Newhall Neighborhood Association (HNNA) to push town officials to use $6.4 million in federal American Recovery Plan (ARPA) funds to repair their homes, which are crumbling due to their standing on once-contaminated soil, rather than to build a community campus on the site of a former school — a campus that neighbors say is not a priority.

The Feb. 5 meeting, on a night that portended snow, included 40 community members, Mayor Lauren Garrett and members of the legislative council, as well as representatives of the engineering consulting firm Haley & Aldrich.

The meeting also remembered Keith M. Butler, who was a beloved member of the community and had been attending legislative meetings for the past 20 years — the last in early December—trying, often pleading, with the council to address the damage wrought by the town’s remediation of contaminated soil on the properties in his neighborhood.

“He was one of us,” said HNNA President Tina Jennings-Harriott, in a packed room at Breakthrough Church on Shelton Avenue, referring to the Newhall residents’ decades-long fight for funding to repair the crumbling homes caused by years of New Haven manufacturers dumping industrial waste and contaminated soil — and a cleanup effort that didn’t leave the job finished.

“If something doesn’t change, folks like us who take pride in our homes, who clean up in our neighborhood, who care about our neighbors, we won’t be here,” Jennings-Harriott said. ​“This has gone on long enough. No more passing this on to future generations to beg for what’s right.”

HNNA members argued that there is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the town to make things right with Newhall property owners: $6.4 million in federal ARPA funds allocated to a community campus on the site of the former Michael J. Whalen Middle School in Newhall. 

The HNNA’s request, which was issued at the December legislative meeting, is to address the more critical need of repairing their homes rather than committing those funds to a new building. 

The town designated $3.5 million in ARPA funds for Newhall foundations in October; after $1.8 million for Haley & Aldrich assessments, $1.7 million remain, an amount that residents contend is woefully inadequate.

According to Legislative Councilwoman Rhonda Caldwell, the town can still legally use the ARPA funds to fix the foundations. 

At the December meeting, the council voted to table any decision of the allocation of the $6.4 million earmarked for the community center until Haley & Aldrich completed their assessments of the 300 affected properties, putting the funds in eligible municipal expenses, a general town fund. That means, considering that no work has begun and there is an out clause in the contracts, Caldwell said, ​“it’s up for grabs.”

The HNNA said the town has over and over again failed to seek out the community engagement that ARPA requires for the receiving and spending of the funds. ​“If they had done any outreach, if they had just asked us, they would know nobody wants a community center,” said Tonya Campbell, HNNA vice president, who said the group has door-knocked throughout the neighborhood.

(Mayor Garrett’s chief of staff, Sean Grace, has said the opposite, stating to the New Haven Register that ​“the community is overall in support of this project.”)

Garrett declared her commitment to both the community center and the foundation repair projects at the Feb. 5 meeting. ​“We’re pushing everything,” she said. ​“We have a lot of work that’s happening in Newhall, from foundations to the community center to drainage to traffic calming. All of that stuff is being designed and happening right now.”

Her solution to funding the repairs, as set forth in a Feb. 4 ​“Report on the Environment and Structural Issues in the Newhall Neighborhood,” is, instead of the ARPA funds, to use state bonding. Her reasoning is that before commencing repairs, ​“it would be better to do as many assessments as we can of those affected properties, and that will take time,” she said at the meeting. 

Jennings-Harriott took issue with the mayor’s proposal to wait until most assessments are complete before disposition of the funds. (As of Jan. 31, Haley & Aldrich reported completion of 60 assessments out of the 300 properties, with 30 more on the schedule. A pie chart exhibited at the meeting showed 50 percent of those properties with issues of water intrusion, 25 percent with structural issues, and 25 percent with wear and tear and thus ineligible.)

“At some point we have to stop the assessments,” Jennings-Harriott said. ​“We’ve got to start somewhere. Those of us with water intrusion issues, they are not going to get magically better with time, they’re going to get worse.” For a myriad of reasons — absentee landlords, houses demolished and still on the list, unoccupied properties — ​“we’re never going to get close to 100 percent, so we need to be realistic about that.” 

For Jennings-Harriott, the issue isn’t about opposition to the community center. ​“It’s about priority,” she said. ​“This is a humanity issue. How can a community campus take precedence over people who are suffering right now, who are paying taxes, who are working hard just to get by?” 

Regarding the mayor’s proposal to fund the repairs through the Bond Commission, Councilwoman Caldwell outlined the four-step process — one that, as she explained, is long, involved, and vulnerable to setbacks at any stage, as well as dependent on variables in the current economic climate unrelated to any project.

“We have the money right now in the ARPA funds,” she reiterated. ​“All the council needs to do is call a vote to move the funds from the eligible municipal expenses to the foundations-restricted account.” She maintained the community campus should instead be funded through the bonding commission.

Town officials preached caution. ​“You can’t go both fast and accurate, and to make sure this is done really well, it’s going to take longer than you want,” said Garrett. 

“I would hate for us to put a Band-Aid on something because it feels good,” legislative member Tasha Hunt agreed. 

“As you begin to uncover one thing, it could be ten more things,” said Jacqueline James, the newly appointed economic and community development director.

“This is how we got to where we are now, decades later,” Jennings-Harriott replied. ​“We don’t know enough to know if we have all the money. We can’t do anything until we can do everything. That’s not the solution either.”

There was, nonetheless, seeming progress. Haley & Aldrich agreed to furnish residents with a report advising them of their property’s eligibility for relief for water intrusion or structural issues within 30 days of the assessment. There was also agreement on an April 15 deadline for remaining residents to respond to Haley & Aldrich’s request for assessments, and a May 1 start date to commence repairs with the remaining $1.7 million in ARPA funds designated for Newhall foundations. 

After thanking the mayor and legislative council members for coming out on a frigid night, Jennings-Harriott gave a neighbor the final word.

“With all this so drawn out,” he asked, as attendees lined up to sign a condolence card for Keith M. Butler, ​“what good will a community center be without a community?”

“It has to end with us,” HNNA’s Campbell said, nodding. ​“It has to.”