All four head coordinators said that their search for additional Yale funds has been unsuccessful. They said that conversations with Dwight Hall administrators and Associate Dean of Student Affairs Hannah Peck have yielded no additional sources of Yale funding, with administrators suggesting the organization begin applying to local grants or fundraising externally. 

The lack of options leaves the head coordinators at a crossroads: compete with New Haven nonprofits for grant money or create “slide decks” to appeal to future donors. For the head coordinators, who managed a tight budget last semester, neither option seems like a viable long-term strategy. 

“Our biggest fear, with all these obstacles and loopholes we’ve had to go through this past year, and the genuine stress of oh my god, are 250 people not going to be able to have dinner because we can’t find money? We don’t want that stress for the future to continue,” Enkhjin Gansukh ’25, one of the head coordinators, said.

Gansukh also said she feared that future head coordinators may “give up” due to the financial stress of the role, jeopardizing the longevity of YCK and the services it provides to the community.

Odessa Goldberg ’25, another head coordinator, said that costs have increased in recent years due to the added expense of take-out boxes and utensils, rising food prices and higher demand for meals. When Goldberg began volunteering at the YCK two winters ago, Yale students served around 50 New Haveners, she said. Now, she said, the number of people in one night has tripled. 

“I greatly admire the work of the students running YCK,” Peck wrote in an email to the News. “With the growth of their services and expenses, they are in a difficult position—to support their core mission, they are needing to develop a new funding model. I and my colleagues are available to help as they take on this new challenge.”

Steve Werlin, executive director of the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen in New Haven, said this speaks to rising food insecurity in the area, which has also resulted in a higher number and frequency of people seeking DESK services. He described YCK’s work as “critical” in the effort to provide free meals to New Haven residents, many of whom are unhoused. 

YCK, which has 27 coordinators running shifts and 963 students receiving volunteer sign-ups, falls under the umbrella organization of Yale Hunger and Homeless Action Project. According to the YCK head coordinators, YHHAP receives between less than $1,000 and $3,500 in funding once or twice a semester from the Yale College Council’s Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee. As a Dwight Hall Member Group, YHHAP also receives up to $1,500 per semester in funding from the Dwight Hall Campus and Community Fund. 

Gansukh said that while YCK uses the majority of YHHAP’s budget, the umbrella organization also funds 12 other student organizations. 

Goldberg noted that these two sources of funding fall short of YCK’s ideal budget of $5,200 a semester. She also said the funding is inconsistent across semesters, making it difficult to preserve quality offerings to residents. 

“What we’re frustrated by is that [the funding] is inconsistent,” Goldberg said. “We don’t want that inconsistency to be offloaded to our guests and the quality of the food they can receive. So whether it is that the Dwight Hall cap is higher, or there is an exception made for YCK, or it’s through the YCC, or there is a non-variable amount that YCK receives every semester, or it is through the administration, we argue that the YCK provides a real service to the University, not just our guests, in terms of preserving Yale’s relationship with the residents of New Haven and community partners.”

Goldberg additionally noted that YCK reduces Yale’s food waste, citing YCK’s use of leftovers from Yale’s dining halls.   

With $5,200 a semester — or $300 per weekend of operations — YCK would not only be able to continue to provide nutritious meals with fruit and sweet and savory snacks but also other goods that YCK guests have expressed a need for, such as space blankets, Goldberg said. 

Mark Fopeano, director of programming and evaluation at Dwight Hall, wrote to the News that it is unlikely that a single funding source at Yale will be able to fund and guarantee $5,200 a semester on a long-term basis. He also said that it is rare that a student organization or Dwight Hall Member Group would have that amount of expenses unless they have previously secured funding, such as an endowment, or “unique relationships” with several offices or departments. 

However, Fopeano said that Dwight Hall reconsiders their funding policies every year in an attempt to better serve Yale students and New Haven partners. Dwight Hall can also provide advice and strategic support to student organizations thinking about their organizational structure, long-term sustainability and financial model, Fopeano wrote. 

“We support any student organization that is building strong relationships in the community and providing pathways for other Yale students to do so,” Fopeano wrote. “Change usually doesn’t happen overnight, so I hope that YCK continues partnering with our office and others!”

Goldberg questioned the University’s lack of available funds to fund YCK, citing the $40.7 billion endowment, and expressed concerns that applying to grants would take away funds from New Haven nonprofits. Hugo Wang ’25 said he believes there are avenues to increase caps on Dwight Hall and YCC funding and that it is a “question of priority” whether Yale chooses to expand funding options for service organizations. 

Wang said that even if YCK takes administrators’ advice to continue cutting costs, the long-term sustainability of YCK is ultimately still dependent on additional funding. 

“More broadly, there is a question here that we want the administration to think about, and hopefully answer, which is how do they fund organizations that have a big impact on the local community but in order to achieve that would need funding that goes beyond the traditional limits on available funding for student clubs and organizations?” Wang said. 

The head coordinators said that last semester, YCK cut costs by shopping at Costco instead of Stop ’n Shop and started relying on snacks and water from DESK. In the past weeks, they also met with Yale Hospitality to pursue the option of ordering bread and containers through Hospitality.

Although Goldberg described YCK’s budget situation as “urgent” last semester, the group received two grants from local foundations this semester, temporarily easing the coordinators’ financial worries. Fopeano wrote to the News that Dwight Hall assisted YCK in grant applications by serving as a lead applicant. 

However, Goldberg said that grant applications and fundraising efforts are a time-consuming and stressful responsibility for head coordinators on top of the four-person job of coordinating logistics for YCK. 

She said that YCK head coordinators have held off on formally creating a grant and fundraising arm of the YCK in hopes that future head coordinators can rely on some form of steady funding. 

Taking on grants and fundraising would fundamentally change the role of head coordinators, which has historically been to “keep the kitchen running,” according to Goldberg. 

“Because YCK has been around for 20 years, we’re cited as a food resource [by New Haven organizations],” Gansukh said. “When people come to us on Fridays and Saturdays hoping for a full nutritional meal, we have to provide that service … We have a duty to a lot of our guests we’ve established a relationship with and … we hope that relationship won’t be compromised because of this funding issue.”

YCK hands out their meals outside 323 Temple St.

The post Yale Community Kitchen faces funding shortage, concerns over long-term viability  appeared first on Yale Daily News.

At the meeting, the committee held a public hearing to discuss lawn pesticides and artificial turf and heard an update from the New Haven Climate Movement about the city’s progress in implementing the New Haven Community Electrification Resolution, which was passed three years ago and requires the city to develop and adhere to a schedule for replacing several infrastructure systems with electric alternatives. Laura Cahn, the chair of the city’s Environmental Advisory Committee, presented on pesticides and urged the city to rethink its system of licensing officials that use pesticides. New Haven Climate Movement representative Krishna Davis ’25 and Steve Winter, New Haven’s Office of Climate and Sustainability director, testified about electrification.

“The planet is gasping for air, and we are holding a plastic bag around it,” Cahn said, describing the urgency of her environmental work.

Cahn suggests goats, leaf blower regulations to curb pesticide use

Although the Board of Alders previously passed a resolution implementing a “voluntary ban” on lawn chemicals, Cahn testified that many residents still use pesticides on their lawns. Because Connecticut state law prohibits municipalities from actually banning pesticides, the Board’s resolution was largely symbolic.

Cahn pointed to Tweed New Haven Airport as a large user of pesticides because the Federal Aviation Association requires the airport to keep its sidelines clear. Cahn suggested using goats as an alternative to chemicals to keep out invasive plants. The city has previously used goats to clear invasive plant growth in Edgewood Park in 2018 — which Cahn also claims was her idea.

“They did such a good job eating the invasive species, they sent them home early,” Cahn said. “They are a huge visitor draw because they’re lovely goats — you just have to be careful not to let them out where they can eat your flowers.”

Cahn cautioned about the potential for leaf blowers to spread pesticide toxins, especially when pesticides are used near schools or residential areas.

She said that pesticides are commonly used on utility infrastructure like railroads and electric lines, and on golf courses and athletic fields. 

“Golf was invented in Scotland,” Cahn said. “Obviously they didn’t use pesticides in Scotland on their golf courses and so the fact that we’ve adopted their sport and tried to make it work in our territory by using these artificial means is very, very concerning,” Cahn said.

She also claimed that several of the employees she has seen applying pesticides are not licensed by the state to do so. If a company is licensed, Cahn claimed, not every employee will be individually certified.

In that vein, Cahn advocated for the city to make a registry of every licensed lawn care and landscaping company, to keep track of their use of pesticides and make sure that they don’t magnify the risk of the chemicals by using leaf blowers.

“New Haven does not know who is doing these things in our city,” Cahn said. 

Cahn also warned the committee about the danger of artificial turf, which requires pesticides for its maintenance. Artificial turf is used for athletic fields throughout the city.

After Cahn concluded her presentation, Alder Kianna Flores ’25 asked about education campaigns to raise awareness of the danger of pesticides and their continued use. In response, Cahn said that she has not come up with an effective way to educate people, because she believes people do not want to fully comprehend something that is so bad for them.

“I don’t think it’s by accident that nobody knows about this,” Cahn said. “I’m pretty sure it is a dedicated advertising campaign, just like cigarettes, just like alcohol, to get you to do something toxic to yourself.” 

Cahn then provided an update on the EAC’s current work, which includes monitoring initiatives such as a private recycling facility on the water, bird-safe building legislation, Tweed’s expansion, greenspace in public housing developments, garbage from Long Wharf food trucks and the possibility of a statewide ban on nip bottles that contain small quantities of alcohol.

Update from New Haven Climate Movement, electrification goals

Following Cahn’s presentation, Krishna Davis ’25 spoke on behalf of the New Haven Climate Movement’s Electric Future Committee about the city’s progress towards meeting the electrification goals it laid out in its 2021 electrification resolution. 

“We cannot meet our 2030 climate goals without persistent efforts of the city aligned with the commitments made in the electrification resolution in 2021,” Davis said. 

Although he recognized the city’s efforts to electrify some buildings, Davis called for the city to incentivize developers of new buildings in New Haven to only use electric sources of energy and report their carbon emissions to both the city and the public throughout the entire development process. 

According to Davis, the Electric Future Committee has found that only three of nearly 50 new construction projects in New Haven in the last 10 years have been completely electric.

Davis also said that other cities with climate goals similar to New Haven like Ithaca, New York which he said have taken more serious action to increase electrification.

“New Haven should follow Ithaca’s lead and cities like Ithaca, and make electrification a serious policy priority,” he said.

In response to Davis’ requests, Alder Festa reminded the audience that a new electric refuse truck should be arriving in New Haven soon. This new garbage truck will be arriving thanks to a grant that Steve Winter, director of the Office of Climate and Sustainability, applied for. He has since applied for another grant in hopes of securing a second refuse vehicle for New Haven. 

Following Davis’ presentation, Winter discussed the progress the city has made since passing the electrification resolution nearly three years ago.

For one, the city has worked to electrify its light fleet, purchasing seven Chevrolet Volts for city officials to use. According to Winter, New Haven will receive a $7,500 check directly from the federal government for each Volt they purchased. He also said that for every heavy-duty vehicle the city purchases, such as refuse vehicles, the federal government would write New Haven a check for 30 percent of the cost, with a cap of $40,000 per vehicle. 

The Office of Climate and Sustainability has also been working with The City Plan Department to write zoning language that incentivizes developments to be constructed completely electrically. He discussed a point system that will grant developers density bonuses for their projects.

“You can get five points if it’s all-electric, five points if it’s mass timber, and if you’ve got something that has solar, timber and all-electric, as well, you can get 12 points,” he said, regarding the point system. “And the 12 points are important thresholds where you get a density bonus.”

Winter also discussed his progress in outfitting buildings with heat pumps to replace gas heating systems. So far, the Office of Climate and Sustainability has worked on retrofitting community centers, youth recreation centers and senior centers with heat pumps. 

Alder Festa is the chair of the CSEP committee.

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If approved, the proposal will split the Livable City Initiative. The newly created Office of Housing and Community Development will take responsibility for the creation of new housing in the city, while LCI will solely focus on housing inspections. The mayor also hopes to add eight new housing-related positions. 

City activists have critiqued LCI due to delayed inspection and unresolved complaints, often leaving tenants waiting months without receiving support from the city.

“It’s clear every day that housing is one of the biggest challenges that we’re facing as a city,” Elicker told the News. “While we’ve made a lot of progress, we have a lot more work to do, in particular, in two areas. One is increasing the number of affordable units in the city, and two is … improving our ability to inspect existing housing stock to ensure that it is safe.”

In total, these two housing programs will get more than $1.4 million in additional funding compared to the last fiscal year. Elicker’s proposed budget also allocates an additional $300,000 to support unhoused people. 

The proposed Office of Housing and Community Development

Included in the city budget is Elicker’s proposal to create a new Office of Housing and Community Development, which will partner with local organizations to build new housing and administer grants for future housing projects. If approved, the office will be a part of the city’s Economic Development Administration Division.

Currently, the Livable City Initiative is responsible for this work. 

Staff at the LCI who worked on housing development will be transferred to the new office, and an additional position — deputy director of Economic Development Administration — will be created to oversee it, according to Elicker. 

“It’s more appropriate for this work to be done within the Economic Development Administration,” Elicker said. “Economic development is the place [to which] developers first go when they’re wanting to start projects.”

Michael Piscitelli, the head of the city’s Economic Development Administration Department, explained that the new office will distribute funding for ongoing housing projects. According to Piscitelli, there are currently 3,500 new housing units in the city’s development pipeline — about 40 percent of which are affordable. 

Some of these projects are led by the city, such as a new series of townhouses on Grand Avenue, while other units are being built by external housing developers. The new office will support the projects by monitoring construction and providing technical assistance on grant applications.

In addition to supporting housing construction, the office will be in charge of administering grants for construction projects approved by the Board of Alders. Some of these grants include funding from the federal Office of Housing and Urban Development, which annually administers between $3 and $4 million in funds to the city of New Haven. Additionally, the office will draw on funds from the 2021 American Rescue Plan.

Piscitelli noted the need for affordable housing across the state of Connecticut. He said that the city has built 1,900 new affordable housing units in recent years but that the overall gap in affordable housing in Connecticut is upwards of 90,000 units. The new office will help improve housing policy, looking to increase the number of affordable units in the city, Piscitelli said.

Changes and improvements to LCI

The budget proposal will also add seven new staff positions with the Livable City Initiative, the agency that, under the proposed plan, will focus only on enforcing housing code and public space requirements throughout the city.

“I think [it’s] very important for LCI to focus on the core mission, what it was originally created for, which is ensuring our existing housing stock is of high standards,” Elicker said. 

Five of the proposed staff are housing inspectors, who, if approved by alders, will join the current team of 13 inspectors. 

According to Elicker, the attorney employed at LCI will join the Office of Housing and Community Development. The mayor thus proposed adding an attorney who will continue to work with LCI on housing compliance and inspections. LCI will also receive a new administrative assistant.

According to Piscitelli, these new positions will expand LCI’s capacity to engage in on-site inspections of rental units and section eight units on behalf of the city’s housing authority. 

LCI’s work entails a multi-step process of inspecting units, issuing orders based on code enforcement inspection and ensuring that landlords comply with these orders. Piscitelli said that staff expansion would increase efficiency within the agency, allowing LCI to make better use of government resources and increase the timeliness of their work. 

“We’ll be expecting a high level of process improvements such that we’re good on the timelines and we address the issues and make sure that our outcomes are good for the tenant who may live in the unit,” Piscitelli said.

Karen DuBois-Walton, the executive director of New Haven’s Housing Authority, noted the significance of improving LCI’s efficiency. 

“The city must increase its capacity to meet the requirements of the landlord licensing program,” DuBois-Walton wrote in an email to the News. “City resources can be most effective [by diving responsibilities].”

Alder Adam Marchand, a chair of the Board of Alders finance committee, which plays a major role in the budget adoption process, commended Elicker for paying attention to housing in his budget proposal. 

The finance committee will have its first budget public hearing on March 14.

The post Proposed budget rethinks city housing programs appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The center will provide short-tcerm interventions for people who are experiencing a crisis and need stabilization, serving as an alternative destination to hospitalizations or jail. The center will be staffed 24/7, 365 days per year, with a multidisciplinary team of psychiatrists, nurses, licensed clinicians and peers with lived experience, according to outgoing Department of Community Resilience Director Carlos Sosa-Lombardo. The center can accommodate up to ten patients at a time, Celeste Cremin-Endes, the Connecticut State Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services’ Chief of State-Operated Services told the News. 

The city has not yet announced the center, and Lenny Speiller, the city’s communications director, declined to give further details on the center’s opening until they are finalized.

Continuum of Care’s Vice President of Acute and Forensic Services John Labieniec, who will be spearheading the project with Program Director of Emergency Response Services Wanda Jofre, told the News that the center will be located in the Beaver Hills neighborhood and that the team hopes construction will be done by early April so that the center can begin operations later that month.

“Our community is struggling with a homeless crisis and with the rise in mental health needs during an emergency we need more alternatives other than ‘Yale or jail,’” Labieniec wrote to the News, referring to the Yale New Haven Hospital.

Labieniec said that the project began when Continuum received a grant to explore 24-hour community-based “therapeutic” stabilization centers around the country as alternative treatment centers to emergency rooms for individuals struggling with behavioral health issues.

Labieniec and Jofre, both licensed social workers, received grants from the state and New Haven, and are partnering with the Connecticut Mental Health Center, the City’s Department of Community Resilience, the Elm City COMPASS mobile crisis team and New Haven police. Labieniec specifically thanked Sosa-Lombardo for his involvement in the project, calling him “instrumental” in making the vision for a crisis stabilization center a reality.

Cremin-Endes explained that Continuum’s state contract was awarded through a Request for Proposal — or RFP — process, where the state solicited bids from organizations looking to take on a project similar to the REST Center. The highest-scoring bid is then given the opportunity to negotiate a contract.

She said that the state’s grant is intended to cover the cost of the center’s operations, while the grant from the city funds the center’s physical construction.

Jorge X. Camacho LAW ’10, a criminal justice and policing law scholar, noted the significance of the REST Center’s 24/7 care model. He said that despite hotlines like 2-1-1 — which connects callers to New Haven’s Coordinated Access Network — being available 24/7, the services to which operators can connect patients are often unavailable. 

Labieniec said that the REST center will follow a “living room model” — providing services in a non-institutional, home-like environment. 

According to Sosa-Lombardo, the center will accommodate individuals who may arrive by ambulance, police transport or from a crisis team like COMPASS. The crisis team, also founded as a partnership between the city and Continuum of Care, offloads specific cases, like mental health crises, from the city’s emergency service departments.

“The model is meant to partner with police and mobile crisis [teams] and serve as that alternative,” wrote Labieniec. “The idea is no one is turned away.”

Camacho said that the community-centered approach to intervention brings the sophisticated treatment that would normally only be available in acute care settings to the location where patients live, making the treatment process, for mental health issues or drug abuse, less isolating than typical forms of intervention.

He also emphasized a trend of increasing enthusiasm by police officials to collaborate with these types of crisis intervention methods.

“[Intervention] does not pose an existential threat to police officers, or policing in itself, but it can be seen as a really useful and beneficial supplement to the efforts of police officers to effectuate public safety,” Camacho said.

Crisis Stabilization Units — or CSUs — have risen in popularity throughout the country. The Wellmore Behavioral Health non-profit treatment provider in Waterbury currently operates a 24-hour Urgent Crisis Center for children. Three other pediatric CSUs currently operate in the state — at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, the Village for Families and Children in Hartford and the Child and Family Agency of Southeastern Connecticut in New London — but each of the centers has placed a limit on daily capacity. When the REST Center begins operations, it will be the only such service for adults in Connecticut.

Continuum of Care was founded in 1966.

The post New 24-hour crisis intervention center planned for New Haven appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The ceasefire resolution was proposed to the board on Nov. 28 by a coalition of advocates. After months of pro-Palestine protests, including a 25-minute interruption to Mayor Justin Elicker’s State of the City Address and a nearly three-hour-long “public hearing” on the steps of City Hall on Monday, Board President Tyisha Walker-Myers moved the resolution to the Committee of the Whole.  The committee is led by Alder Jeanette Morrison, and all 30 alders serve on it. On Wednesday night, the Board’s Legislative Director Al Lucas announced that the Committee of the Whole will meet remotely to discuss the resolution in May.

Morrison, who helped set the meeting date, said that the meeting is scheduled so late in the year to accommodate Ramadan, Easter and Passover — the last of which ends on April 30 this year.

“For this particular topic, we wanted to make sure that we were respectful of all religious beliefs,” she said.

New Haven residents have engaged in pro-Palestine protests since October, several of which have focused on encouraging the Board of Alders to consider legislation opposing Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, through which Israel has reportedly killed over 30,000 people, though experts believe thousands more to be dead under the rubble. Israel undertook the offensive in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, in which Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 250 people as hostages.

The current ceasefire resolution emphasizes the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and a rise in Islamophobia, antisemitism and anti-Palestinian sentiments and violence. It calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the release of all hostages, the unrestricted entry of humanitarian assistance into Gaza, an end to the siege and blockade of Gaza and respect for international law by all parties.

Similar resolutions have been proposed to local governments in Connecticut towns such as Hartford, Bridgeport, Windsor and Hamden, where the Town Council heard four hours of public testimony urging the council to either support or oppose the legislation. Only Bridgeport and Windsor have voted to pass a ceasefire resolution.

Francesca Maria, an organizer with the New Haven Ceasefire Coalition who asked the News to refer to her using her middle name, said that the coalition will be spreading the word about the committee hearing and helping people prepare and sign up to give public testimony at the committee meeting.

“Everything we’ve done in Hamden and Hartford and Bridgeport and all the other cities where ceasefire resolutions are being considered,” Maria explained.

At the Hamden Town Council hearing, several residents affiliated with the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, the Yale Forum for Jewish Faculty and Friends and other religious and community groups testified in opposition to the ceasefire resolution.

According to an email obtained by the News, Gayle Slossberg, the chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation, reached out to the federation’s email list on Thursday morning informing people of how to submit testimony opposing the resolution.

“While we all mourn the loss of life and want peace in the region, these ceasefire resolutions are not about promoting peace. They only seek to delegitimize the State of Israel,” Slossberg wrote.

She wrote that the Federation will organize meetings and provide more information about testifying in the lead-up to the hearing.

Ina Silverman ’80 SPH ’83, a former alder and current co-chair of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation, said that she plans to testify at the hearing, but expressed doubt at its effect on an actual ceasefire, calling the hearing a “waste of alders’ time.”

“It is ironic this ceasefire resolution comes before the Board of Alders at the same time Israel has agreed to very difficult ceasefire conditions, while Hamas rejects a ceasefire and continues causing tremendous suffering to its own people and the 134 hostages it still refuses to release,” Silverman wrote to the News. “Maybe Hamas is waiting to hear what New Haven thinks first.”

Ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas broke down earlier this week, with both sides blaming the other for the failure to reach a deal.

The Jewish Federation and the Yale Forum for Jewish Faculty and Friends did not respond to further requests for comment.

Morrison, who is a social worker, explained that she decided to hold the meeting remotely in order to keep everyone safe, which she determined was necessary given the heightened emotions surrounding the ceasefire resolution that she has seen. Silverman expressed support for the virtual format, also citing safety concerns.

“I think it increases inaccessibility for people who are not comfortable with that technology,” Maria said. “At the same time, there have been public hearings on Zoom before.”

Nigel Harris, a Democratic Socialists for America member who is also active in the ceasefire coalition, believes that the Zoom format “disenfranchises” people who don’t have access to the technology needed to attend the meeting.

Morrison explained that she is working on creating a structure for the meeting that is “very specific in regard to the way in which this meeting will be conducted.” She is not yet sure of how many people will be permitted to give public testimony, but each testimony will be brief.

In Lucas’ email announcing the hearing, he instructed people signing up to give public testimony to clearly indicate whether they would be speaking for or against the resolution. Morrison explained that an even number of people will be permitted to speak in support and opposition.

“We have to make sure that that list is very, very clear and fair,” she said.

People interested in signing up to deliver public testimony or submit written testimony are instructed to email publictestimony@newhavenct.gov.

On Thursday night, after President Joe Biden voiced his support for an immediate six-week ceasefire in his State of the Union address, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who represents New Haven, put out a statement clarifying her position.

“We must work to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza, free all the hostages held by Hamas, and enact a six-week ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict that allows for the protection and survival of innocent Palestinian civilians caught in the middle of war,” DeLauro wrote. “I am glad that President Biden is using every lever to ensure that desperately needed aid gets to innocent Palestinian civilians, including the recently announced seaport that will be established in Gaza to distribute aid.”

DeLauro’s support for a six-week ceasefire differs from the ceasefire resolution’s demand for a permanent ceasefire.

DeLauro’s statement urged long-term regional stability between Israel and the Palestinian people, which she believes will include strong U.S. leadership to bring security and peace to the Middle East and a two-state solution.

The Board of Alders’ Committee of the Whole last met in June 2023 to discuss the charter revision proposal.

Ethan Wolin contributed reporting.

The post Ceasefire resolution hearing set for May over Zoom appeared first on Yale Daily News.

A New Haven resident for over four decades, FitzGerald is a dedicated volunteer leader for Friends of Edgewood Park, a neighborhood organization linked with the Urban Resources Initiative that helps maintain the public park a block from her home. In the fall of 2022, FitzGerald and ParksFriends, a revived collective of park volunteers from around the city, began speaking with government officials about how the city could strengthen its Parks Department, a subsection of the Parks and Public Works department. One idea that emerged from these meetings was to separate the Parks Department from Public Works — a proposal included in Mayor Justin Elicker’s recently released budget.

“We had a talk with the mayor about what was important to us and basically, we were saying that particularly parks maintenance really needed support,” FitzGerald recalled from ParksFriends’ first Zoom meeting with Elicker. “I think that kind of changed the trajectory of his thinking.”

Elicker unveiled his city budget proposal for the 2024-25 fiscal year at a press conference last week. The budget will be discussed in a series of public hearings and workshops hosted by the Board of Alders’ Finance Committee throughout March, April and May before it is finalized and passed by the Board of Alders in June.

The mayor’s proposal would restructure the Parks Department with a focus on specialization and split it from the Public Works Department, with which it has been merged since 2020.

“The re-envisioned Parks Department is structured to improve community connection, cleanliness, infrastructure and field performance,” the mayor wrote in the budget. “Aligning operations both regionally and by the department, Parks will be able to focus on performance improvement from both the planning and operations lenses rather than crisis management that has dictated operations in recent years.”

A history of engagement

David Belowski, the chair of the Parks Commission who has served as a commissioner since 1993, said that the mayor’s decision to merge the Parks and Public Works departments in 2020 was motivated by a desire to “save taxpayers some money.”

Several Connecticut municipalities do have a merged Parks and Public Works Department, which could cut down on costs by having the two divisions share equipment and leadership, FitzGerald said.

“Sometimes it works, like in the town of Woodbridge, a town of 20,000 people,” Belowski said.  “Versus in the City of New Haven, it really didn’t work out.”

Belowski believes that the merged department encountered difficulties in combining employees belonging to two different union bargaining units. Parks Department employees are represented by UPSEU Local 424’s Parks and Blue Collar bargaining unit, while Public Works Department employees are represented by Local 424’s Public Works Laborers unit.

The different duties laid out by the two union contracts, Belowski said, kept the department’s responsibilities divided.

“If Public Works goes into parks to pick up trash, that’s against union rules,” Belowski said, as an example. “Parks employees are supposed to do that.”

FitzGerald did not see a drastic change in the Parks Department’s efficiency once the two departments were merged. Additionally, the merger did not help the chronic maintenance issues that the parks faced.

“Things certainly didn’t get better,” FitzGerald said. “To tell you the truth, to me, things were not good before because they’ve been underfunded for so long.”

From years of volunteering in New Haven parks, FitzGerald observed that the city has an incredible amount of greenspace, yet insufficient investment in maintaining it.

ParkScore, a park-rating index used by the Trust for Public Land to analyze a city’s park system, gave New Haven a score of 60.4 out of 100 in September 2021. ParkScore’s report notes that 96 percent of New Haven residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park — a major strength. However, New Haven’s park amenities and acreage rank “among the middle of the pack,” indicating that there is room to improve what residents enjoy once they get to the parks.

The report, which was produced one year after the merger and one year before ParksFriends’ meeting with Elicker, suggests that the biggest opportunity to improve New Haven’s park system is to increase the total investment in park and recreation facilities. It further notes that New Haven ranks among the lowest third of the country’s most populated cities in terms of spending per resident on Parks.

Both Belowski and FitzGerald described decades of gradual cuts to the Parks Department’s staff. When Belowski joined the commission, the separate Parks Department had over 110 employees. The current Parks staff amounts to 56, just over half of that number.

As concerns about maintenance grew, FitzGerald leaned into her network of Friends of Edgewood Park and volunteer groups at other New Haven parks — collectively, an email list community called ParksFriends — to begin advocating for the City to allocate more resources to parks.

“We were advocating mostly for more support for parks in last year’s budget, and secondarily, for separating Parks from Public Works,” FitzGerald recalled. “But our primary advocacy was really for more positions to maintain the parks better.”

Although FitzGerald did not personally view unmerging as a perfect solution, she described that many ParksFriends volunteers and parks commissioners were in favor of a separate department from the outset.

Budget revamps Parks, encourages specialization

The budget proposes 10 new positions to be created to run the department, and 56 positions to be transferred from existing departments — primarily the present Parks and Public Works Department. An Executive Director will be supported by two deputies — one focused on operations and the second on planning. The department will also hire an Administration and Finance manager.

When the Parks and Public Works Departments were merged in 2020, the City created the Youth and Recreation Department to house the former Parks Department’s recreation division. According to Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Rebecca Bombero, who oversees the Parks and Public Works Department and served as the director of the independent Parks Department from 2013 to 2020, the proposal for the Parks Department will not restore the old department’s full recreation division but does bring back its Outdoor Recreation component — activities that serve residents of all ages, not only youth.

For FitzGerald, the choice to keep parts of the Recreation Department with the Youth Department complicates the plan to unmerge.

“Now that’s a little sticky,” she said, of Recreation. “Who’s going where, when it becomes Parks again?”

According to the budget proposal, several recreation-related positions will be transferred from the Youth and Recreation Department to the new Parks Department, such as the outdoor adventure coordinator and rangers, whom the coordinator oversees.

The rangers will now be supported by three park district managers who will each oversee one of the city’s three Parks “districts” and act as a point-person for their district’s residents. The district manager model is similar to the city’s current organizational structure for the New Haven Police Department, which has four district managers overseeing ten districts, and the Livable Communities Initiative, which has nine neighborhood specialists. 

The existing Parks Maintenance division will be split into three specialty areas to “help build the workforce capacity and improve focus,” according to the budget. The Parks Grounds division will focus on trash, cleaning and grass maintenance and will identify infrastructure needs. The Facilities and Projects division, in charge of building maintenance, will focus on maintaining aging infrastructure. Lastly, the Athletics and Fields division, responsible for sports-related maintenance, will further specialize by creating four new roles: an assistant superintendent will oversee scheduling and planning for the Board of Education Athletics, Recreation and Leagues, a field foreperson will take the lead on field maintenance and two new field technicians will “excel in field preparations.”

The budget proposes that the new Parks Department’s total cost will be $6,923,024. An additional $291,065 will be allocated to the department in special funds, which are federal grants the city anticipates receiving but have not yet secured.

The newly separate public works agency was allocated a budget of $16,835,820. The budget proposes two new positions and 111 transferred from the current merged department.

Parks people prepare for budget process

Before unveiling the budget, the Mayor’s office held meetings with residents engaged with the Parks department beginning in December 2023, Belowski said.

“It’s really the public that really is pushing this through,” Belowski said. “It’s very nice of the mayor to listen to these meetings and what they came up with and put it into fruition.”

Belowski expects that the Board of Alders will support the proposal.

Earlier this week, two alders on the Finance Committee told the News they would need to closely examine the proposed staffing increases, though Alder Adam Marchand also praised Elicker for focusing on Parks. Last year, the Board rejected 25 of the 34 positions Elicker created, including four of the seven positions that would fall under a Parks Department.

Bombero told the News that she will help deliver the Parks presentation at upcoming budget hearings because the department does not currently have a director. She echoed Belowski’s belief that the public reaction will be favorable.

“As the inspiration for many of these changes came from the outreach and engagement process stewarded by URI, I anticipate that feedback will be positive,” she wrote.

FitzGerald also plans to attend the budget hearings, something she does every year.

Although members of ParksFriends plan to testify, the group has not yet decided whether they will present a collective objective, or have members speak individually about their own specific concerns.

“We have to get our act together and go over there and, and advocate for what’s important to us,” FitzGerald said.

The first of three public hearings on the budget will take place on Thursday, March 14.

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LaDrea Moss, the visionary behind Mindless Thoughts Clothing, shared her journey of transforming a simple idea into a thriving business. According to Moss, the name “Mindless Thoughts” was a creative inspiration from a family brainstorming session, capturing the essence of the brand’s creative and unfettered spirit.

“Back in 2010, some teens asked me to draw a logo for their clothing brand. After falling in love with the branding process, I knew I had to start my own line,” Moss said.

Prior to taking this entrepreneurial direction, Moss worked for 15 years as an American Sign Language liaison in the autism field. 

However, she described difficulties in transitioning to fashion.

“Starting off with $1,000 and selling from my car, we faced hurdles like finances and location. We faced a recent robbery, losing $20,000 worth of inventory, which hit us hard,” Moss said.

Nevertheless, she now focuses on consistency and staying ahead of fashion trends.

The style of Mindless Thoughts Clothing reflects Moss’ personal taste — comfortable, modern and always in tune with the latest media. 

“I sketch out whatever I am thinking,” she says.

As for the future, Moss is ambitious, planning to relocate to a busier area, hire more employees and even consider expanding to other states. Moss hopes that Mindless Thoughts will eventually be a name recognized beyond New Haven.

Customers like Verin Knox are a testament to the brand’s appeal. 

“I shop here once or twice a month,” Knox said. “The quality is good, the designs are simple yet impactful, and they always complement recent shoe releases.”

Employee Ciahna Battle, Moss’ sister, adds a personal touch to the story, expressing her pride in supporting the Mindless Thoughts vision. 

Battle has been a part of Mindless Thoughts since its inception and valued the opportunity to support her sister and watch the business grow.

“Working here is more than just a job; it is about being part of a family that values creativity and community,” Battle said.

Mindless Thoughts Clothing is located at 1296 State St.

The post From digital dreams to streetwear reality: the resilient rise of Mindless Thoughts Clothing appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Front desk agents at the Omni petitioned to unionize in late January. The union won by a majority in the vote to unionize on March 1. Although the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale has been unionized for decades, it was not until last Friday that front desk workers entered the union. 

Isadora Milanez ’19, an organizer for Local 217 UNITE HERE, told the News that front desk workers approached Local 217 UNITE HERE, which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO, to join their colleagues in the existing contract with Omni.

“We have a great standard of the Omni union contract, and they wanted to be a part of it,” Milanez said. “We also have upcoming contract negotiations to renew our contract between the employer and the union this year that people are feeling optimistic about.”

Milanez said that the vote was triggered by the National Labor Relations Board after front desk employees submitted union representation cards that demonstrated interest in forming a union.

Bobby May, a front desk worker at the Omni, shared his excitement following the unions’ victory.

“It was a great feeling,” May said. “The Omni is a great company to work for. But now, being part of the AFL-CIO, only makes it better.”

May said that the process to unionize was straightforward and smooth overall.

May also said that he feels a new sense of unity with his colleagues now that front desk workers have joined the union.

“I feel like we’re one. We have a pension, we have a retirement and we will have fair wages.”

The addition of front desk agents to the union is welcomed by other workers at the Omni as contract negotiations approach.

Ryenamar Ortiz, a restaurant server and shop steward at the Omni, voiced his support for the front desk workers joining the union.

“We’re happy and excited for front desk workers to join us in bargaining for our new contract,” Ortiz said, according to Milanez. “This shows unity and makes us stronger.”

The Omni did not reply to a request for comment on the unionization.

Almost the entirety of employees at the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale are now a part of the Local 217 UNITE HERE union.

The Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale is located at 155 Temple St.

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On Feb. 29, the joint Housing Committee approved legislation that would strengthen protections for renters facing eviction, prohibiting landlords from evicting their tenants without “just cause.” The bill, SB 143, would expand existing just cause protections, currently reserved for elderly and disabled tenants in buildings with five or more units, to almost all renters in the state. The fight for the bill has been spearheaded by Growing Together Connecticut, the Connecticut Tenants Union and Make the Road Connecticut, among other tenants’ rights and community organizations. 

“Many people within our urban communities [including] New Haven cannot even afford to rent, so they’re moving out of our city,” Rep. Juan Candelaria, the Deputy Speaker of the House who represents portions of Fair Haven and the Hill, told the News. “We need to control this.” 

Candelaria voiced his support for the bill, calling it “overdue.” He said that he sees SB 143 as a critical tool to address the affordable housing crisis and discriminatory housing practices in New Haven and around the state. In particular, Candelaria said he is concerned with protecting tenants from large “mega landlords” who often buy up rental properties from out-of-state. He told the News that he thinks evictions at the end of a lease without cause are far too frequent in Connecticut.

According to the Connecticut Fair Housing Center, landlords filed 2,224 no-cause eviction notices in 2023, around 11 percent of evictions statewide. In 2023, over 20,000 evictions were filed in the state, an approximately four percent increase from 2018. In New Haven alone, 1,769 evictions were filed in 2023, 240 without cause. 

Candelaria said that his office has received several messages from New Haven residents in support of the bill, which he committed to do, calling it “the right measure.”

Sen. Rob Sampson, ranking member of the Housing Committee and himself a landlord, raised several objections. He accused the Democratic caucus of discriminating against landlords, at one point equating the bill to racial and gender discrimination. 

“That’s all racism,” Sampson was quoted saying in the CT Mirror. “It’s been bad since the very first day that anyone judged anyone based on the color of their skin.” 

A related bill that would have capped annual rent increases at four percent plus inflation failed to pass the General Assembly last session after opposition from members of the Housing Committee. This session, the Senate Democratic caucus has added SB 143 to their list of legislative priorities

In conversation with the News, Candelaria pushed back on Sampson’s claims.

“If you’re going to increase rents, we’re not saying, ‘don’t increase them,’” he said. “Make sure those rents are fair and equitable so that we can manage the housing crisis in our cities. That’s all that we’re saying with this bill.” 

Tenant advocates support bill for low-income renters

Luke Melonakos-Harrison DIV ’23, Vice-President of CTU, also disagreed with Sampson’s claims, condemning the argument that landlords should face no regulation as ignoring the necessity of housing. He cited similar just cause legislation in several states and municipalities as evidence of its effectiveness and “positive impact” on housing stability and housing security.

“It’s a little bit hard to take seriously when you’re actually seeing what’s going on between tenants and landlords in real life and not in an abstract, theoretical debate,” he told the News.

Melonakos-Harrison did express concerns about the addition of a carve-out to the bill which exempts buildings with four units or less from the new regulations. The carve-out, he said, would reduce the bill’s effectiveness, confuse tenants about their eligibility, and play into the misconception that landlords of smaller buildings are less predatory. Instead, Melonakos-Harrison suggested, his organization might accept requirements based on the number of properties a landlord owns.

At the moment, CTU will continue advocating for the bill in Hartford.

“We’re focused on working with our members and our coalition partners across the state to reach out to their legislators and let them know how they feel about this bill and the importance of Just Cause,” Melonakos-Harrison said.

Teresa Quintana is the housing equity organizer for Make the Road Connecticut, an organization dedicated to providing legal assistance and support services for immigrant communities. 

Quintana said that immigrants, particularly those who are undocumented, are especially vulnerable to no-cause evictions.

“Many people in the undocumented community live that way because they trust,” she said. “They say, ‘Oh, they’re good landlords. We take care of the place,’ so they think [evictions are]  never going to happen… to them. And then it happens.”

According to Quintana, Make the Road Connecticut has collaborated with CTU and other organizations to encourage community members to testify in support of the bill.

She noted that immigrants are often reluctant to share their personal experiences with no-cause evictions, necessitating visits to their communities.

“When you’re going to tell [your] story, you’re going to feel that your soul is opening, because there’s a big, big scar,” she said, recalling her frequent words of encouragement to immigrants. “We’re going to expose how these people [are] taking advantage of you, your families.”

Melonakos-Harrison testified in support of the bill and helped organize members to do the same. He sees SB 143 as critical to preventing “gentrification” fueled by landlords evicting tenants to raise rents and preventing retaliatory eviction of “outspoken” tenants, especially tenant union supporters.

He said he is confident that the bill will help address the state’s affordable housing crisis by forcing landlords to negotiate with tenants, and limiting rent increases. SB 143 would provide tenants with “leverage” to negotiate a reasonable rent increase at the end of their lease, Melonakos-Harrison told the News.

“Lapse of time evictions are an easy tool for landlords who want to quell dissent, to kind of punish advocates and organizers and people who are even just requesting basic repairs,” Melonakos-Harrison said.

Landlords push back against proposed eviction protections

Rick Bush, a property manager and the treasurer of the Connecticut Coalition of Property Owners, testified in opposition to the bill at a public hearing on Feb. 20. 

Bush described lapse of time evictions as a “tool” for landlords, for example, if they need to remove a tenant to renovate their property.

“The idea that a tenant, once they take possession of a property, can stay in perpetuity is just completely ridiculous,” he told the News.

With the bill now moving on to the state assembly, Bush said he plans to keep lobbying against it and recruiting other members of the CCOPO to submit testimony in opposition.

CCOPO President John Souza is another landlord who testified against the bill.

Souza attributed tenants’ housing instability to the state affordable housing shortage, rather than lapse of time evictions. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that there is a shortage of over 89,000 affordable rental homes for extremely low-income renters in Connecticut.

“Until they build a lot more housing, it’s really just musical chairs for everybody,” he said.

Currently, lapse of time evictions require landlords to provide tenants with a minimum of three days between receiving their eviction notice and vacating the property. 

However, Souza pointed out that tenants can contest such evictions, prompting a court process that lasts a few months. Tenants can also petition the court for additional stay for up to six months, providing them with extra time to find new housing.   

“I’m disappointed in the small-mindedness and short-sightedness of the legislators in Connecticut,” Bush said. “[Disappointed] that they… would fail to provide adequate housing for their constituents and that their vote is going to have the unintended consequence of making [renting property] more difficult, more expensive and less attractive to tenants. It’s going to be a disaster.”

The bill passed the Housing Committee along partisan lines. Candelaria said that he is optimistic that the bill will pass the legislature this session, most likely without any Republican support, but declined to speculate on whether Governor Ned Lamont would sign the bill into law.

Five states currently have some form of just cause eviction legislation.

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The budget proposal includes increased funding for education and housing and adds 31 new full-time positions to the city staff, including five housing inspectors. If approved, the budget will also reorganize New Haven housing programs and create a separate Parks Department.  

“He got it right this time … I like it,” Tom Goldenberg, a former mayoral challenger who had previously criticized Elicker’s fiscal year 2023-24  budget proposal, told the News. 

Goldenberg said that he supported the creation of a separate parks department, new housing inspection positions at the Livable City Initiative and a tax increase that is lower than last year’s, which is “encouraging.”

“We are pleased to see the increased investment in housing quality by adding needed positions at LCI,” Karen DuBois-Walton ’89, executive director of the New Haven Housing Authority, who challenged Elicker in the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary, wrote to the News. “Everyday we see the challenges families face seeking quality housing in the private market.” 

DuBois-Walton wrote that the decision to shift LCI’s focus away from housing development and toward inspections is a smart one. She also applauded the additional $300,000 allocated for the services for the unhoused.  

Leslie Blatteau, president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, said that increased salaries, which account for a large part of the increased educational budget, allowed many teachers to stay teaching in New Haven Public Schools. She said that this has made them feel that they are “being compensated fairly.” 

Per the teachers union contract negotiated last year, the salaries of public school teachers are rising gradually over the three years following the contract. Blatteau said that the increases are especially significant for mid-career educators.

“We have to continue to make sure that as many dollars as possible are making it directly to the classroom,” Blatteau said. “That means making sure that we’re paying for highly qualified professionals to support our students and making sure that the resources are in place so that we can do our jobs.”

In Elicker’s budget proposal, an additional $5 million is allocated for the Board of Education. According to Elicker, the city is also hoping to get almost $4 million more from the state for schools. This funding goes to the city’s Board of Education, which then decides how to use it, Elicker said. 

Chris Schweitzer, the head of the New Haven Climate Movement, wrote to the News that he would love to hear more from the city about its environmental investments to reach the Climate Emergency Resolution goals.

“Later is too late for climate change action,” Schweitzer wrote. 

The Mayor’s budget proposal has to be approved by the Board of Alders, who will likely amend the proposal. 

Upon seeing the creation of over 30 new city employment positions allocated across various departments, Ward 25 Alder Adam Marchand told the News he will pay attention to the costs that are going to be used for the new workers’ salaries. 

“At this point, I don’t have a strong feeling one way or the other,” Marchand said. “I’ve done this long enough that I take my time with it. I generally form my opinions slowly over the course of the workshops when I get a better understanding from the department heads about what it is they’re proposing and why they want to do it.”

The Board of Alders will be holding three hearings and six workshops on the budget over the next six weeks to solicit community input.

Marchand commended the Mayor for allocating more funds to the Parks Department and for giving a lot of thought to the housing scarcity around New Haven. 

Ward 27 Alder and majority leader Richard Furlow echoed Marchand’s statement, saying that though he’s only looked at the highlights of the budget proposal so far, he will pay close attention to the new positions created.

“Thirty-one new positions, that’s a lot,” Furlow said. “But the budget process will be for each department to explain why they’re needed, and then we’ll decide what do we believe in.”

Last year, the Board rejected 25 out of the 34 positions Elicker created. 

Fiscal year 2024-25 will start on July 1.

Ariela Lopez contributed reporting.

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