Thomas Breen photo
City Plan Commissioners Leslie Radcliffe, Adam Marchand, and Jonathan Wharton.
The City Plan Commission voted to affirm the importance of reexamining the city’s lead laws — but stayed away from offering any advice on the merits of the specific revisions that have so far been proposed.
Commissioners took that vote Wednesday night at the tail end of a five hour, 45-minute meeting regular monthly meeting on the second floor of City Hall.
The commissioners voted 4 to 1 in favor of providing the Board of Alders with general takes on the Health Department’s recently submitted amendment to the city’s lead paint ordinance.
“The commission finds it in the best interest of the city for the Board of Alders to reexamine the New Haven lead paint ordinance,” Westville Alder and City Plan Commissioner Adam Marchand read into the record Wednesday night as he framed the motion.
Marchand and fellow commissioners Jonathan Wharton, Ernest Pagan, and Elias Estabrook all voted in support. Commission Vice-Chair Leslie Radcliffe cast the sole dissenting vote.
Wednesday night’s meeting.
City health officials have argued that the law, which was crafted independent of any input from a mayorallly appointed Lead Paint Advisory Committee, clarifies the definition of an actionable blood lead level as matching the current federal reference level, boosts the number of city lead inspectors, penalizes landlords who do not abate properties of lead hazards in a timely way.
Legal aid attorneys, who have filed a class action lawsuit against the city for failing to enforce local legal requirements for lead hazard inspections and abatements, have criticized the proposed law for gutting existing mandates and giving too much discretion to the local health director as to when to conduct a complete lead hazard inspection.
Wednesday night’s motion and vote represented an aberration from the commission’s typical course of business.
The commission, which is charged with thinking through how any proposed policy or development or other change to the city’s physical, built environment squares with New Haven’s Vision 2025 comprehensive plan, doesn’t often find itself confronted with explicit public health-related proposals.
“Is it because lead paint is a feature of the built environment and issues of health and the well-being of the population” are core concerns of the comprehensive plan? Marchand asked his fellow commissioners and city staff. He asked aloud about what kind of perspective the commission should bring as it crafted its response to the proposed law, which the Health Department has submitted to the Board of Alders as a communication.
City Plan Director Aïcha Woods and Radcliffe clarified that the City Plan Commission gets an opportunity to weigh in on any proposed ordinance amendment before the Board of Alders holds a public committee hearing and subsequent full board vote on the matter.
Radcliffe.
“Where I am right now with this proposed amendment,” Radcliffe said, “is that: Any amendment to enhance or further improve the ordinance is beneficial, but without having a basic comprehension of the current ordinance or practices, I cannot at this time make an informed recommendation. I would need to spend some time on the current ordinance and on how it reads.”
“In order for me to make a recommendation,” she continued, “I would need to have a better understanding of where is it that we currently stand and where is it we need to go.”
Marchand noted that the commission take one of three actions: it could delay a vote until next month, and call in Acting Health Director Roslyn Hamilton to explain the ordinance in detail; it could vote to recommend that the alders pass the ordinance as submitted; or it could submit a different recommendation, one in support of having a strong lead paint law, but one that doesn’t take a stand on the specific law in question.
The alders, he said, are charged with conducting in-depth research into the current ordinance, the details of the proposed changes, and how they might affect the population the law is designed to protect. “We can just affirm this is important” and leave it at that, he said.
Which is exactly what a majority of the commissioners decided to do. Wharton noted that he, like Radcliffe, has reservations about weighing in on a subject like child lead paint poisoning that he is far from an expert in.
But I don’t want this law to get stuck in the “cogs of bureaucracy” either, he said.
He also noted that this particular law has become a political flashpoint in a hotly contested mayoral election campaign between incumbent Mayor Toni Harp and challenger Justin Elicker.
Estabrook said that, based on the staff report’s summary of the proposed law, he was comfortable providing a more neutral recommendation asking the Board of Alders to reexamine the lead paint ordinance, without specifically commenting on the law in question. Pagan said that he was comfortable moving the law as proposed.
All agreed that the alders likely would not hold up its own committee-level hearing on the proposed law next month if the City Plan Commission decided to delay submitting its advice.
Public Housing Exclusion Criticized
Also on Wednesday, legal aid attorneys filed their latest brief in their ongoing class action lawsuit, Nyriel Smith v. City of New Haven.
Shelley White, the director litigation for New Haven Legal Assistance Association (NHLAA), penned a motion calling on Superior Court Judge John Cordani to include children under 6 years old with elevated blood lead levels above five micrograms per deciliter in the class of children allowed to sue the city over its lax enforcement of lead paint laws.
Earlier this month, in the city’s latest lead-related judicial loss, Cordani certified a class of upwards of 300 lead-poisoned children, but had excluded those living in public housing.
“Plaintiffs respectfully request that the Court reconsider its exclusion of ‘children living in properties owned by the New Haven Housing Authority’ from the class definition approved by the Court,” White wrote. “In its August 12 Memorandum of Decision, the Court said that such children should be excluded from the class because ‘federal statutes and regulations may be preemptive.’ In act, there is no preemption, and the class must include children in federally-subsidized housing to ensure they are provided the same protections as children living in non-subsidized housing.”
Click here to read White’s full motion.
Cordani issued an order on Wednesday giving the city until Sept. 6 to file a reply to legal aid’s latest motion.
Previous lead coverage:
• City Loses Again On Lead
• Judge Denies City’s Motion To Dismiss Lead Suit
• City, Legal Aid Clash In Court On Lead
• New Lead Proposal “Eviscerates” Mandate
• Lead Cleanup Pricetag: $91M?
• Lead Panel’s Advice Rejected
• Lead Paint Chief Retires
• Lead Paint Fight Rejoined
• Harp Switches Gears On Lead
• Motion Accuses City Of Contempt
• City Loses Again On Lead
• Briefs Debate “Lead Poisoning”
• New Haven: Another Flint?
• Harp Administration Admits Relaxing Lead Standard To Save $$
• Class-Action Suit Slams City On Lead
• City, Legal Aid Clash On Lead Paint
• Legal Aid To City: Get Moving On Lead Paint Law
• 100+ Tenants Caught In Lead Limbo
• 2 Agencies, 2 Tacks On Lead Paint
• Chapel Apartments Get 3rd Lead Order
• Lead Sends Family Packing
• Health Officials Grilled On Lead Plans
• Judge Threatens To Find City In Contempt
• Same Mandy House Cited Twice For Lead Paint
• Lead $ Search Advances
• 3 Landlords Hit With New Lead Orders
• Another Judge Rips City On Lead
• Judge To City: Get Moving On Lead
• Health Department Seeks Another $4.1M For Lead Abatement
• City-OK’d Lead Fixes Fail Independent Inspection
• Judge: City Dragged Feet On Lead
• 2nd Kid Poisoned After City Ordered Repairs
• Judge: City Must Pay
• City Sued Over Handling Of Lead Poisonings
• City’s Lead Inspection Goes On Trial
• Eviction Withdrawn On Technicality
• 2nd Child Poisoned; Where’s The City?
• Carpenter With Poisoned Kid Tries A Fix
• High Lead Levels Stall Eviction
• 460 Kids Poisoned By Lead In 2 Years
• Bid-Rigging Claimed In Lead Cleanup
• Judge Orders Total Lead Paint Clean-Up
• Legal Aid Takes City To Task On Lead