Board Prez Tyisha Walker-Myers: Vaccinated, back in the chair.
Thomas Breen photo
That’s not Zoom: Alders in City Hall Monday night.
New Haven’s Board of Alders returned to in-person public meetings for the first time since the outbreak of a life-threatening pandemic — then voted to protect lives of pedestrians on “Death Boulevard” and to push D.C. lawmakers to save lives with universal health insurance.
Local legislators took those votes Monday night during the latest regular monthly full Board of Alders meeting which — for the first time in 16 months —was held in the Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of City Hall.
Health and life-saving measures were, fittingly, on the agenda.
The alders voted unanimously in support of disposing a 381-square-foot parcel at 200 Derby Ave. to the state Department of Transportation for $1,500. That land sale will allow the DOT to proceed with a suite of long-in-the-works pedestrian-safety infrastructure improvements to the intersections of Rt. 1 (Orange Avenue and Columbus Avenue) and Rt. 10 (Ella T. Grasso Boulevard) near the West Haven border.
They also unanimously approved a resolution calling on U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy to support Washington U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s Medicare for All Act of 2021.
They did this not via raised Zoom hands and overlapping online dialogue, but instead via an in-person gathering at their pre-pandemic meeting place at 165 Church St.
The last time the full Board of Alders gathered for a fully in-person public meeting at City Hall was on March 3, 2020. Less than two weeks later, Covid-19 made landfall, with the first diagnosed case in the city occurring on March 14.
For the alders’ next regularly scheduled get-together on March 16 of that year, local legislators held a hybrid meeting. The alders themselves met in person at City Hall, while members of the public could attend only by watching a live video stream via Facebook or Zoom.
By April 3, the board had gone entirely remote.
For the next nearly year and a half, all of the city legislature’s committee and full board meetings took place online via Zoom and YouTube Live.
Until Monday, that is, when roughly 25 alders, a half-dozen city staffers, and four members of the public attended the roughly 45-minute meeting.
Masks on and socially distanced, with hand sanitizer and a “Handshake-Free Zone” sign on a table near the room’s entrance, the alders cautiously embraced resuming business as almost-pre-pandemic usual. For now.
In next door Hamden, meanwhile, local legislators are continuing to hold their meetings online. Committee hearings of the Board of Alders will be left up to the committee chairs in August as to whether they will be held online or in person. Those committee meetings are all slated to resume in-person beginning in September.
“Continue to use a mask. Continue to use hand sanitizer. And continue to keep spreading the word” about the Covid-19 vaccines, New Haven Board of Alders President and West River Alder Tyisha Walker-Myers said at the conclusion of Monday’s meeting.
“You have a lot of people that’s just afraid to take the vaccine. So keep spreading the word. I know it’s a personal choice, but I think the more people that are trusted in the community, the more people who are talking about their experiences” getting vaccinated, the more likely that holdouts will decide to get their shots as well. That’s key to stopping the spread of the more infectious Delta variant of the novel coronavirus, which is currently causing a spike in cases across the city, state, and country.
We don’t want another Covid-induced shutdown, Walker-Myers said. “Until then, we will continue to have full board meetings right here in this chamber.”
“Death Blvd” Land Transfer OK’d
Deadly Columbus-Orange intersection: Help on the way.
One of the votes the alders took Monday night involving disposing of a small publicly-owned portion of land on “Death Boulevard” to the state.
Four of the city’s 11 pedestrian and cyclist deaths last year occurred on a single 0.4‑mile stretch that includes that busy Hill/West River intersection, making it by far the deadliest stretch in the city for pedestrians and a long-time hotspot of concern for neighbors, safe streets advocates, and city transportation officials.
Dwight Alder and Community Development Committee Vice-Chair Frank Douglass explained that the land transfer will allow the state to install and maintain new pedestrian ramps, pedestrian push buttons, and pedestrian crossing signals where none currently exist at the intersection.
Downtown Alder Abby Roth urged her colleagues to support the land transfer. She called on the state to install the pedestrian safety upgrades before 2023 — which is when the state DOT currently expects the infrastructure improvements to be completed and in place.
“It’s alarming to think about this dangerous situation remaining for a year and a half more, putting more lives at risk,” Roth said.
Medicare For All Endorsed
Westville Alder Darryl Brackeen Jr.
The alders also unanimously backed a resolution introduced by Westville Alder Darryl Brackeen, Jr. that calls on the city’s federal delegation to support the Medicare for All Act introduced by U.S. Rep. Jayapal.
The pandemic has been a moment of reckoning for our nation in which the “weaknesses and inequities in our healthcare system have been laid bare for all to see,” Brackeen said. The path toward recovery from the pandemic, meanwhile, has been forged through “robust, accessible and free public health services like testing and vaccinations.”
Single-payer health insurance would make medical care available to every person in the United States without premiums, copays, deductibles or other out-of-pocket costs. Instead, the program would be funded entirely by all taxpayers.
Medicare for All supporters Andrew Giering, Sarah Saiano, Holly Hackett and James Bhandary-Alexander celebrate Monday’s vote.
“This resolution helps to add to the growing chorus of voices who clamor for meaningful reform,” Westville Alder Adam Marchand said in support of the resolution.
East Rock Alder Charles Decker pointed to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation report that found that roughly a quarter of unvaccinated people are uninsured. “It’s not a culture war question” as to why many are still unvaccinated, he said. “It’s either people don’t understand it’s free, or they don’t have a medical provider they know and trust.” Medicare for All would address those issues by making care free at the point of services.
“Back To Some Kind Of Normalcy”
Board Prez Tyisha Walker-Myers: Vaccinated, back in the chair.
After the meeting, when asked why she decided to bring her colleagues back to the chambers in person on Monday, Walker-Myers said, “We have the option to do Zoom, which is fine, but I thought it was important to bring alders back into the space,” particularly as the city school system is resuming in-person classes full time this fall.
“I think we need to try to get back to some kind of normalcy,” she said. “Until something else changes, we’ll be in the board.”
Heeding her own call from earlier in the night for trusted community leaders to speak publicly about the importance of getting vaccinated and about their own reasons for getting inoculated against Covid-19, Walker-Myers said, “I lost three aunts three weeks apart at the height of Covid when it first started, so it wasn’t a question for me” to get vaccinated as soon as the vaccines were made available.
“I lost family members. My immune system is compromised. My children have compromised immune systems. I wanted to do everything in my power to keep my family safe.”
Getting vaccinated against Covid was, and remains, the best way to do just that.