Two mayoral candidates urged seniors to vote for them — but not too many times.
The two candidates, Kermit Carolina and Justin Elicker, came out for mayoral term limits during a debate Thursday afternoon at the Park Ridge elderly housing complex on Austin Street in the West Hills neighborhood.
Their two opponents in the Sept. 10 Democratic mayoral primary, Toni Harp and Henry Fernandez, came out just as passionately against term limits during the debate.
Some 100 seniors crowded into the Park Ridge community room for the debate, which was organized by Audrey Tyson, co-chair of the Ward 29 Democratic Ward Committee.
Seniors submitted questions for the candidates. One of the questions concerned term limits.
Elicker (pictured schmoozing with Park Ridge’s Ruby Allen) told the crowd New Haven’s mayor should serve no longer than the president of the United States: eight years.
“If it’s good enough for the president of the United States, it should be good enough for New Haven,” Elicker declared. “Politicians that are in office for too long acquire incredible amounts of power, and that helps them get reelected and reelected. Politicians that have been in office too long have stale ideas, use the same old ideas to solve these problems that we desperately need new energy and new ideas.”
Carolina came out for limiting mayors to two terms. (He said later that he would like the terms to last four years, not two, in that case.)
“I don’t believe that any mayor should stay in office any longer than that,” Carolina said, “because at that point corruption begins to creep in, as we’ve seen in the last administration. We need to put a stop to that.”
The city’s Charter Revision Commission considered putting term limits in a ballot referendum this November, inspired in part by the fact that incumbent Mayor John DeStefano has stayed in office for ten two-year terms.
Then commission members learned that the city would first need state enabling legislation before it could institute term limits. They decided in the end to leave the matter off the ballot.
At Thursday’s debate, Harp (pictured greeting senior Dorothy Cooper) argued that New Haven already has term limits. They’re called elections.
“You can only be mayor in New Haven for two years. Every two years you have to go back to the people and reelect you, so that we do have term limits,” Harp argued.
“If you’re going to elect somebody for 20 years — that is a decision that is made two years at a term. It’s really up to the people to make that decision.”
“I actually believe, as Sen. Harp does,” Fernandez told the crowd, “the people of the city of New Haven get to choose their mayor and their alderman every two years. So if you decide you like one of us you can vote for us. And it’s quite possible you were wrong. You made a mistake. In two years you can vote us out of office. That’s a pretty darn good system. I’m willing to stick with that. I’m willing to trust the people of New Haven that we are smart enough to know who to elect and who to get rid of.”
Also at the debate:
• In response to a question about the difficulty of finding access to dental care, Harp vowed to work with the dean of Yale’s medical school to set up a dental school there — so that students working there could make more care available.
• All the candidates supported the idea of having more senior centers in town. Carolina and Elicker stressed that they couldn’t promise to open more, though, until they get a better look at the city’s tight finances. All the candidates suggested tapping senior volunteers and space at places like Bella Vista to cut the costs of opening more centers. The number of city senior centers has shrunk to three.
• One question focused on how most public-school students are black or Latino in New Haven while most of the teachers are white. How would you change that? the candidates were asked. Harp suggested recruiting more teachers from historically black colleges. Fernandez said the city already does that; he suggested focusing more on retaining teachers already in the system. Elicker suggested steering more city high school students to Southern Connecticut State University’s teacher preparation program. Carolina — who is the principal of Hillhouse High School — welcomed the idea of having more teachers of color but said the bigger priority is to focus on the quality of teachers, period. “Our children,” he said, “know where your heart is.”