Laura Glesby Photo
Jeanette Sykes, center, to political hopefuls: "Sometimes you're gonna have to stand alone."
With gentrification and adult education on their minds, Newhallville Democrats endorsed a political newcomer for alder while casting their support with the incumbent mayor and splitting on a school board seat.
Members of the Democratic Ward Committee for Ward 20 gathered in the Lincoln Bassett School cafeteria on Tuesday evening to cast those endorsement votes.
Over 30 people filled the cafeteria, where all 10 candidates up for a nomination had a chance to make their pitch to Newhallville voters. All except for the mayoral candidates, who had recently debated in the ward, faced questions from the committee.
First-time alder candidate Brittiany Mabery-Niblack clinched the committee’s support by the end of the three-hour meeting, along with incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker (who faces three challengers) and incumbent City/Town Clerk Michael Smart. Votes for a Board of Education representative were tied between incumbent Darnell Goldson and challenger Andrea Downer. After voting in secret, the committee refused to reveal how many votes each candidate received; ward committee Co-Chair Barbara Vereen said she wanted to avoid hurting the feelings of losing candidates.
New Homeowner Running For Her Kids
Brittiany Mabery-Niblack makes her pitch.
Two candidates appeared before the committee vying to be Ward 20’s next alder: Brittiany Mabery-Niblack, a new homeowner and Yale union organizer; and Addie Kimbrough, a longtime block watch and community garden steward who also ran for alder in 2021. Current Alder Devin Avshalom-Smith said he is not running again for the seat.
Mabery-Niblack spoke of her childhood spent in a variety of New Haven neighborhoods, including Newhallville around the age of 13. She attended Hillhouse and enrolled at Southern Connecticut State University; she gave birth to two kids in the midst of her studies.
“I was determined to finish college in four years,” Mabery-Niblack said. And she did, graduating with a degree in sociology in 2011. She struggled to find a steady job afterwards, she said; she worked in food service and mental health care fields before landing a job at Yale through New Haven Works.
Now Mabery-Niblack is a medical administrative assistant, a Local 34 union member, and an activist with the union-affiliated organization New Haven Rising. She moved back to Ward 20 in 2021 when she purchased a house through Yale’s home-buyer program. She’s a mom to three kids ages 15, 13, and one — whom she named as her inspiration for running for alder.
“I want my kids to be able to go outside and feel safe,” she told the committee, recalling that as a teen, “I could walk to the Q House, to the Freddy Fixer.” Other priorities of hers include job creation and walk-in access to community centers like the Q House. “The vision I see for Newhallville? I see us obtaining what was promised to us,” she said.
Jeanette Sykes asked about Mabery-Niblack’s advocacy experience in Newhallville.
“There’s not much I’ve done in Newhallville, to be honest,” Mabery-Niblack said, but her work with Local 34 and New Haven Rising is “targeting the entire New Haven. … It affects Newhallville.”
Sykes told Mabery-Niblack, “Sometimes you’re gonna have to stand alone” in making choices for the neighborhood’s benefit. “That might be a hard thing to do when half the alders are against you.”
“I don’t ever mind going against the grain,” said Mabery-Niblack.
Kim Harris asked Mabery-Niblack what she would do if she found she could no longer fulfill the role of alder in the middle of her term. “This has been a hard six months,” Harris said. “Our alder has not been here.”
Harris was alluding to Avshalom-Smith, who has attributed his absences from city and community meetings to serious medical challenges.
Mabery-Niblack said she would remain committed to the ward, citing her determination to finish college while raising young children: “I remember my ‘Why.’ ”
Rose Joyner: The neighborhood is changing.
Rose Joyner asked Mabery-Niblack about how she would ensure that current Newhallville residents and business owners are able to stay in the neighborhood. “You got all these businesses coming in here,” Joyner said. “All the Black businesses are leaving. Seems like they can’t get the financing.” She added that her grandchildren are leaving the neighborhood for a lack of affordable housing options.
Mabery-Niblack proposed “a program to teach our Black kids how to run their own businesses,” such as a financial literacy class. She added that she would “hold large landlords accountable. We shouldn’t have to pay $2,000 for crap.”
No More Flooding, Tax Hikes, Corner Stores
Addie Kimbrough makes her pitch.
Kimbrough also referenced the neighborhood’s racial and economic changes in a conversation before the meeting.
“Our residents are being pushed out, tax-wise and living-wise. Suburbians are getting tired of being in suburbia,” she said. “Gentrification is here and it’s here to stay. [Large landlords] Mandy, Ocean — they’re stockpiling apartments so they’ll be ready.”
She told the committee about the community garden she founded on Shepard Street and her successful efforts to install speed bumps on her street two years ago. She spoke of her experience serving on city and non-profit boards stewarding the Community Action Agency of New Haven, OIC, and most recently, the Livable City Initiative. She recalled volunteering for the Census Bureau and advocating for Newhallville residents’ participation.
She decried an increase in property taxes: “If we had an alder sitting at the table downtown, taxes wouldn’t be up.”
She also called attention to quality-of-life issues such as “flooding on Shelton Avenue between Reed and Huntington.”
And she spoke about revitalizing businesses in the area. “We have too many corner stores,” she said.
Kimbrough hinted at her past run for alder in what had become a vitriolic campaign season. “When I lost the alder [race] a year and a half ago, I said, ‘I’m done.’ That didn’t work.”
After losing the committee’s vote, Kimbrough said she still plans to petition her way onto the ballot. “I know how to knock on doors.”
Tuesday's committee meeting.
Reflecting on his time in office in a phone call on Wednesday, Avshalom-Smith said, “It’s been a privilege and an honor to serve. Just because I’m not running this term doesn’t mean I’m going away.”
“I’ve had health issues ongoing, which has made it challenging. It’s definitely a factor into my decision” not to run, Avshalom-Smith said. “As far as absences overall, I think it’s not recognized a lot that alders are real people too… Life is unpredictable. One who on paper seems chronically absent may be chronically dealing with a situation that we would show a lot of compassion to if they weren’t a public official.”
Adult Ed Vote Questioned
Darnell Goldson and Andrea Downer.
Meanwhile, the race for Board of Education representative — with incumbent Darnell Goldson running against challenger Andrea Downer — prompted a tied endorsement vote for both candidates from the ward committee.
In addition to citywide issues like teacher shortages and a desire for more vocational education opportunities, the candidates were asked about one neighborhood-specific issue: a decision to relocate New Haven’s adult education hub to the abandoned Bassett Street social services building, while including a multi-purpose community space in the facility.
Democratic Ward Co-Chair Vereen confronted Goldson about his initial vote against moving adult ed to the Newhallville location. “I was really disappointed that you voted against that,” she said. “Will you advocate for us” and for the project’s completion?
“That is settled,” Goldson said, saying that he’d believed that an alternate Orchard Street location would have been a better choice for adult education, but that he would fully support adult ed’s move to Newhallville now that the choice has been made.
Vereen asked Downer about her stance on the project.
“I am 100 percent with it,” Downer said. She raised concerns, however, about whether the Bassett Street site might be affected by environmental toxins. “You need a study” to determine whether that is the case, she said.
The committee votes behind closed doors.
Vereen and Oscar Havyarimana will represent the ward committee at the upcoming Democratic Town Convention, where the official Democratic Party nominees will be decided for the upcoming election.
The pair committed to voting for the candidates who received the ward committee’s endorsements, and said they would split their votes between the two Board of Education candidates to reflect the committee’s tie.
Vereen and Havyarimana did not permit the public to observe the ward committee’s vote, and did not reveal the vote tallies for each elected seat. Vereen explained later that the committee would not be revealing the breakdown of votes for each candidate so as not to “hurt anyone’s feelings,” but indicated that in the mayor’s race, “a super, super majority of the votes” went to Elicker.