Ethics Board Grapples With LCI Sales

Should the sister of a city employee be able to purchase a city-built two-family home in Fair Haven Heights? Should she qualify for city-financed down payment assistance for her mortgage?

And what about the sister of the realtor whom the city hired to market the new Fair Haven Heights housing project? Is it a conflict of interest for a relative of a city contractor to be first in line for the high-in-demand, publicly-funded homeownership opportunity?

The city’s Board of Ethics grappled with those questions at a special meeting held on Tuesday afternoon in the Corporation Counsel’s library on the fourth floor of City Hall. After debate, it scheduled a follow-up meeting on the matters. The meeting’s agenda suggested that the government Livable City Initiative (LCI) may be far ahead of other departments in informing staffers of ethics laws and the need to resolve potential conflicts.

Rare Meeting

The board, which has only two members and is staffed by Assistant Corporation Counsel Kathleen Foster, didn’t make any formal decisions Tuesday on the two Judith Terrace questions, or on a third matter related to a city employee’s husband who has submitted an application to work on a city-funded housing rehabilitation project at 10 Orchard St. (The third slot on the board is currently vacant.)

The meeting offered a rare glimpse at the workings of a public body that, though it seldom meets, is charged by the city charter with providing broad-reaching oversight over potential conflicts of interest regarding city employees and their family.

The board doesn’t go out looking for complaints, said Chair Leslie Arthur, a local antiquarian bookseller who worked for 17 years as a complex litigation paralegal. Rather, it relies on employees to reach out to the board with questions and concerns about whether or not a personal or professional relationship might be in violation of the city’s code of ethics.

“We try to reasonably assess whether any kind of benefit is being derived by this person that wouldn’t also be given to a person that is working outside the city,” she said, ​“or more consideration given to that person. We have questions surrounding that whole kind of thing.”

Because so few employees reach out on a regular basis, Arthur said, the board hasn’t met since January. And at that meeting, according to minutes posted on the city’s website, the board discussed only processes for filing complaints and concerns about a long-standing vacancy in the board’s third member spot.

The last time the board met to discuss a substantive potential ethical concern was in January 2017. It didn’t meet once in 2018. Or in 2016. Or in 2015.

The board scheduled a follow-up meeting for June 4, when the members plan to talk with the employees involved in the items discussed on Tuesday. They then plan to issue a recommendation on whether or not any of the proposed transactions present actual conflicts of interest and should be scrapped.

Question #1: City Employee’s Sister

The first two questions posed to the board Tuesday both involved Judith Terrace, where the city’s anti-blight Livable City Initative (LCI) recently completed the first phase of an affordable housing construction project. LCI Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo, who was present at Tuesday’s meeting, explained that her department recently cut the ribbon on five two-family homes built atop formerly junked empty lots in Fair Haven Heights. The buyers have to be owner-occupants, she said, though they do have the option of renting out one of the units.

The first ethical query regarding Judith Terrace was submitted by Maricel Arroyo, a home daycare provider who is looking to purchase 103 – 105 Judith Terrace. She is also looking to receive a down payment loan from LCI to complete the purchase of the home, which is set at a price of $209,000.

The potential conflict of interest is that Arroyo’s sister, Marta, is a longtime LCI employee.

“Marta is an administrative assistant who worked for many, many years, almost 12 years, on the residential licensing program,” Neal-Sanjurjo explained, ​“and is now doing administrative work for the property management and administrative services side of LCI.”

She said that all five Judith Terrace homes have already been ​“pre-sold,” and that there is a waiting list for a group of single-family homes that LCI plans to build as part of a second phase of Judith Terrace constriction.

“How exactly are people made aware of these properties?” Arthur asked. ​“For people outside city government, is it put out there somewhere?”

Neal-Sanjurjo said that, for this project, her department hired an outside realtor, the East Haven-based Kaerus Property Group, to attract a broad range of applicants.

“We did it because we wanted it to be marketed like a regular housing development,” she said.

For the June 4 meeting, Arthur said, she would like to interview both Maricel and Marta to better understand who Marta reports to at LCI, and whether Maricel unduly benefited from her relationship to a city employee.

Question #2: City Contractor’s Sister

The other Judith Terrace-related question was filed not by a city employee, but by a Yale staffer named Jasmine Gonzalez. She too is looking to purchase a LCI-built two-family home in Fair Haven Heights, this one at 110 – 112 Judith Terrace.

Gonzalez’s sister is Michelle Mateo, the Kaurus Property Group realtor whom LCI hired to market the properties.

“Since Jasmine doesn’t work for the city,” Foster said, ​“I don’t exactly know that she’s in your jurisdiction.”

“We don’t have any jurisdiction over this at all,” Arthur agreed.

“A lady who doesn’t work for New Haven is related to another lady who doesn’t work for New Haven who has a contract with New Haven to represent the city in selling the property,” Foster confirmed.

Question #3: City Employee Husband

The last question that Foster presented to the board on Tuesday came from Keith Krolak, a local architect who is the husband of city Economic Development Officer Kathleen Krolak.

He has submitted an application in response to a request for proposal (RFP) that LCI put together for a planned renovation / adaptive reuse project at 10 Orchard St.

Foster said the question here is not just whether Keith Krolak should apply for the contract, but whether or not he should be awarded it. ​“Does Kathleen Krolak have anything to do with the award?” Foster asked.

“Absolutely not,” Neal-Sanjurjo replied. Either LCI staff or an outside contractor would make that decision, she said.

Arthur said she would like to interview both Keith and Kathleen Krolak at the June 4 meeting to discuss whether there’s any conflict of interest there, even though the city employee is not involved in the awarding of the bid.

At the end of the meeting, the board also resolved to discuss at the next meeting how best to encourage the city to spread awareness of the existence of the Board of Ethics to every city department. They also said they will draft a description of the body and its purview to be included on the city website, so that employees and city residents don’t have to go digging through the New Haven Code of Ordinances in order to learn that there is a body that serves as a municipal ethical ombudsman.