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.

The post Environmental policy hearing urges new city priorities: pesticides, artificial turf, electrification 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.

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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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Organizers of the New Haven Ceasefire Coalition, which includes representatives from local chapters of Jewish Voices for Peace, Democratic Socialists of America and other socialist organizations, organized a series of testimonies from supporters of a resolution proposed to the Board of Alders in November that calls for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. The protesters gathered at City Hall around 5:30 p.m., and the testimonies concluded at 8:45 p.m. — well after the regular Board of Alders meeting, which began at 7 p.m., had ended.

When a few organizers entered City Hall after the meeting to deliver written copies of the testimonies to Board President Tyisha Walker-Myers, she told them that she recently moved the resolution to the Committee of the Whole, where Alders will hear testimony and decide whether the Board should vote on the resolution. Walker-Myers had not previously announced the move.

“The City of New Haven has not even been able to assign this resolution to a committee, so the community members, the people of the city, aren’t given a public hearing,” organizer Francesca Maria said at the beginning of the protest. “At the same time, other cities like Bridgeport, Windsor, Hartford, Hamden, were able to assign the resolution to a committee to get a public hearing, in some cases even to vote on it, in a matter of weeks.”

New Haven residents have engaged for months in protests urging a ceasefire in the war in Gaza. In response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel — during which Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 250 people as hostages — Israel launched a full-scale military offensive in Gaza. To date, Israel has reportedly killed over 30,000 people, though experts believe thousands more to be dead under the rubble.

After a resolution was proposed to the Board of Alders advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza, many pro-Palestine protests have focused on encouraging the Board to move the resolution to committee — as other municipal governments in Connecticut have done — so that citizens may testify to support or oppose it.

Pro-ceasefire activists hold “public hearing”

Ahead of Monday’s Board of Alders meeting, the ceasefire coalition advertised a “people’s public hearing” to take place at City Hall an hour prior to the Board’s bi-weekly meeting.

“The Board of Alders has ignored the people’s cries for a Ceasefire Resolution despite multiple meetings, a barrage of phone calls, emails and intense pressure,” the Coalition wrote in a graphic shared by New Haven’s Jewish Voices for Peace chapter on Instagram. “If the BOA won’t give us a hearing, we’ll give ourselves one.”

Organizers, who wore orange and green construction jackets, arrived at City Hall at 5:30 p.m. to put out flags, banners and signs. The organizers also set up a table where several of its affiliate groups including Socialist Alternative, which does not have a chapter in Connecticut, stacked fliers. A crowd of over 100 supporters quickly gathered, surrounding the steps of City Hall. 

The protestsers began a series of chants, including “Alders, alders, you can’t hide, you’re committing genocide” and “Not another penny, not another dime, no more money for Israel’s crimes.” Shortly after 6 p.m., attendees began testifying into a megaphone at the top of the City Hall steps.

Nigel Harris, a CT DSA member who has been active in pro-resolution protests, told the News that over 60 people had signed up to speak, and even more had sent written testimonies to be included in a folder that organizers hand-delivered to Walker-Myers. Some of the planned speakers did not come to the protest, and a ceasefire coalition announced at the conclusion of the testimonies that over 50 people, representing two-thirds of New Haven’s 30 wards, had spoken throughout the evening.

The testimonies included accounts of family members in Gaza, personal experiences of learning about the conflict and expression of doubt in the government’s willingness to take action in support of Palestine. 

Several speakers from socialist groups pointed to election results in Michigan to demonstrate President Joe Biden’s waning support, which they attributed to his policy on Israel. Some speakers also quoted statements from Aaron Bushnell, a U.S. airman who died protesting the war. 

Many, including a New Haven Public Schools teacher, emphasized their connection to the city and expressed their beliefs that New Haven tax dollars could be used for local services instead of “investing in Israel.”

“As educators, we must call for peace even when it feels untenable,” the teacher said. “What if we refuse to let our prosperity be tied to the destruction of others? What if we decided to use our labor power and our people power to demand divestment from war in Israel and beyond?”

The Board of Alders held an internal caucus at 5:45 p.m., so several alders trickled into the building as the protesters were setting up. No alders attended the protest hearing, and several speakers commented on their absence.

Ceasefire resolution moved to committee

Prior to the Board of Alders meeting, Walker-Myers told reporters that she had moved the ceasefire resolution to the Committee of the Whole last week. The Committee of the Whole is chaired by Alder Jeanette Morrison, as the President-Pro-Tempore, and all alders “serve” on the committee. Morrison told the News that ordinances are moved to the Committee of the Whole when Walker-Myers decides the whole Board of Alders should hear deliberations on them.

At the end of the protest hearing, lead organizers told the dwindled crowd that the resolution had been moved to committee. The protesters cheered.

“We’re very excited, but, again, the job’s not done,” Harris told the News. 

The Committee of the Whole last met in June 2023, when it convened three times to discuss the 2023 charter revision proposal. Prior to last year, the committee had not met since 2013, when it deliberated on that year’s charter revision. Morrison said that the committee always meets to discuss charter revisions, but that it has met on other occasions as well.

Morrison told the News that she does not yet know when the committee will meet to discuss the ceasefire resolution. She mentioned that Ramadan, Easter and Passover will be taken into consideration in setting the dates. Morrison anticipates that the committee will only need to meet once.

“The committee process is to allow people to come and say whatever it is they want to say,” Morrison said. “As the chair, my job is just to move the process along, to provide the opportunity to everyone who wants to speak on the topic.”

At the committee meeting, an alder can make a motion to advance the resolution, so that the full Board can vote on it in their meeting. 

Alders support exception to residency requirement for incumbent officials

During their meeting, which ran for under an hour, alders advanced an ordinance allowing incumbent “coordinators” — top city officials — to seek an exemption from the usual requirement that they live in New Haven or relocate to the city within six months of accepting their positions. The proposal, introduced by Mayor Justin Elicker, was approved unanimously by the Board’s Legislative Committee in early February.

The proposal would affect the city’s four allotted coordinator-level positions: chief administrative officer, community services administrator, economic development administrator and a fourth position that the city is allowed to create but does not currently have.

The New Haven Independent previously reported that the three current coordinators all live in New Haven, but CAO Regina Rush-Kittle is seeking permission to live outside the city. Rush-Kittle did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

At the meeting, Alder Anna Festa said she was “torn” about the ordinance.

“It made sense, it’s clear, but I feel strongly that any leadership positions for this city should reside in this city,” she said, expressing doubt that a qualified candidate for a city position cannot be found from New Haven’s 139,000 residents.

In response, Alder Richard Furlow clarified that the ordinance would only affect incumbents, not new candidates seeking jobs. He believes that the ordinance will help city coordinators who can no longer live in New Haven if they run into “hardship.”

Four alders — Festa, Rosa Santana, Thomas Ficklin Jr. and Honda Smith — voted against the ordinance. With all other votes in favor, the ordinance advanced.

“We have a lot of wonderful people that live in the city of New Haven, that pay taxes, and so on,” Smith told the News after the meeting. “You mean to tell me there’s not one that you can appoint to become a CAO that’s a taxpayer? That’s why I voted no.”

Alders will vote to pass the ordinance at the next Board meeting in two weeks.

City Hall is located at 165 Church St.

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Kemp, who currently works for Clifford Beers Community Care Center, a trauma-informed mental health care clinic, will replace the current director, Carlos Sosa-Lombardo, who in 2022 became the first person to hold the position. Kemp is currently Clifford Beers’ vice president of community support services and engagement, and has also worked as the clinic’s director of community and family engagement. In a statement, Kemp wrote that she is passionate about addressing the “social determinants” of health and offering healing and viable solutions to individuals who have endured traumatic experiences.

“I am deeply honored to assume the role of director of the Department of Community Resilience,” Kemp wrote. “This appointment holds personal significance for me, marking a culmination of my commitment to serving the residents of New Haven across various capacities throughout my career.”

The Department of Community Resilience oversees over 70 services and programs to address issues relating to homelessness, reentry after incarceration, drug use, gun violence and other crisis situations, according to Sosa-Lombardo. The department operates the Office of Housing and Homeless Services, the Office of Community Mental Health Initiatives and the Office of Violence Prevention and Special Projects and supports the Elm City COMPASS crisis response team and community advisory board. Sosa-Lombardo shared that the director’s primary role is to oversee all of these initiatives and operations.

Sosa-Lombardo identified the city’s lack of affordable and deeply affordable housing supply as the greatest challenge the department currently faces. He noted that in the past year, the department forged a partnership with the New Haven Economic Development Administration to strategically deploy resources to help increase the number of deeply affordable housing options in the city. However, he believes the challenge will persist due to the complexity of building affordable housing.

“The lack of affordable housing supply, more importantly, deeply affordable housing, makes it very difficult to address other barriers that people may face on top of being unhoused or unstably housed, such as mental illness, substance use, employment and primary care,” Sosa-Lombardo wrote.

As of August 2023, 52 percent of New Haven renters are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing, according to a study conducted by DataHaven.

Throughout Sosa-Lombardo’s tenure as director, the department spearheaded projects such as Elm City COMPASS, the purchase of the Days Inn Hotel and its conversion into a homeless shelter and the upcoming REST Center — Connecticut’s first 24-hour Crisis Stabilization Center, which is slated to open “between this spring and summer,” according to Sosa-Lombardo.

Sosa-Lombardo mentioned that he has previously engaged with Kemp through her work at Clifford Beers, and that he believes she brings the proper skills necessary to succeed in the role of director.

“I’m confident that the staff members leading the work in the frontlines and the new director will continue building upon the great work we have performed so far,” he wrote.

Sosa-Lombardo told the News that he is leaving the role to move to New York state to be closer to family. He is “looking forward” to staying in the public sector.

In her statement, Kemp stated her intent to focus on community-driven organizational development and grassroots community mobilization, and emphasized the importance of creating opportunities for “changemakers” to find and dismantle inequitable systems that affect the city’s residents.

“I am acutely aware of the myriad challenges our city faces, from the national housing crisis and food insecurity to community violence and economic instability, all of which contribute to poor health and education outcomes,” Kemp wrote. “Yet, I am emboldened by these challenges, seeing them as opportunities for collective action and collaboration.”

The city’s communications director Lenny Speiller told the News that Kemp will begin the role on March 11.

The Department of Community Resilience was founded in September 2021.

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Rick Fontana grew up three doors down from a West Haven firehouse. 

The son of a firefighter for the town’s Allingtown fire district, Fontana was raised “in awe” of his father’s job and developed a lifelong passion for firefighting and emergency services.

“My dad was running out the door to a fire and my mother would have to be holding me back,” he said.

Fontana’s upbringing, along with his infatuation with the 1970s television medical drama series “Emergency!”, encouraged him to join the civil service straight out of high school. After three decades working as a paramedic and firefighter, Fontana joined New Haven’s emergency management department in 2008 as a deputy director of emergency management, a role that was upgraded to emergency operations director in 2017. Fontana stepped down from the role in January and was sworn into the position of emergency management director in West Haven two weeks ago.

With 16 years of management experience and decades of civil service under his belt, Fontana has witnessed almost every conceivable emergency. As a West Haven firefighter, he participated in Ground Zero rescue operations two days after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City. He planned New Haven’s response to pandemics — from the avian flu to smallpox to COVID-19. Once he heard Hurricane Sandy was making headway up the East Coast, he cut short a vacation in Sarasota, Florida to rush back to New Haven and provide support. During Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico in 2018, he helped the city take in almost 1,400 evacuees. That summer, when over 100 people suffered overdoses on the New Haven Green in the span of three days, he oversaw emergency medical efforts. The job, in Fontana’s words, was “24/7, 365.”

“There’s never a normal day,” Fontana said. “Everything takes the backseat when there’s something serious going on, and it could be anything from a car into a building, an issue in the port. It could be a storm-related issue. It could be a structure fire, where you’re running around, sometimes you’re multi-coordinating different things.”

Fontana was certified as a paramedic in 1980, part of the third class of certified paramedics in Connecticut. He worked as a firefighter for Sikorsky Aircraft until 1990, then for the West Haven Fire Department until 2008. Along the way, he completed an undergraduate Fire Science Administration degree and a master’s degree in National Security and Public Safety from the University of New Haven, or UNH, where he is now an adjunct faculty member.

Created in the wake of 9/11, UNH’s national security program was the first of its kind in the country, Fontana said. After graduating from the program with his master’s degree in 2004, he was “propelled” into emergency management and civil defense on the state and local level, working his way up the ladder to New Haven.

“I always had a passion for emergency management, and it’s almost a natural progression when you’re in fire,” Fontana said. 

In Connecticut, where each municipality is required to appoint an emergency management director, the pipeline from the fire department to emergency operations thrives. Many towns, including East Haven, Hartford, Milford, Fairfield and Hamden employ their fire chiefs as emergency management directors, a practice that Fontana opposes. In a devastating fire-related situation, for instance, a fire chief would be engaged with the fire, instead of paying attention to all aspects of the emergency, like relocating and caring for people, Fontana pointed out.

Fontana was appointed as New Haven’s deputy director of emergency management in 2008. In 2017, he intended to leave his job in New Haven to become West Haven’s fire chief. When then-New Haven Mayor Toni Harp offered him a promotion, which included a pay raise, an assistant and the official title of emergency management director, Fontana decided to stay.

“It was the right decision,” he said. “I’m passionate about what I do in my work and, you know, some of the best relationships I’ve had in my life were made in New Haven.”

New Haven’s emergency operations center — or EOC — where Fontana holds court, is located one floor under a municipal building at 200 Orange St. Built in 1981, the emergency management department’s basement headquarters were the last nuclear emergency operations center built in the country, according to Fontana. 

Thick Cold War-era concrete walls encase the EOC’s four rows of five computers each with overhead labels assigning the swivel chairs to various city officials. The mayor and his chief of staff sit in the front row, Fontana said, with easy access to fire and police department officials right behind them. Also in the front row, in the left-hand corner, is a seat ambiguously labeled “Board of Alders,” for the legislative body’s representative to the emergency management department — currently Morris Cove Alder Sal DeCola.

DeCola told the News that he began going to meetings at the EOC 12 years ago, when the Board’s designated chair was consigned to the back row.

“Rick and I have worked together for 12 years,” DeCola said. “We worked out quite well together. He did his job, he made a lot of improvements from where he started there with the equipment and everything else and it’s going to be tough to replace him.” 

DeCola last worked with Fontana in October, when he attended the EOC’s pre-winter storm preparation meeting, which Fontana held annually, along with a pre-hurricane preparation meeting in the summer, he said.

Fontana still works in New Haven, consulting and helping out Chief Administrative Officer Regina Rush-Kittle, whose office oversees the Emergency Management department and who currently serves as the city’s director of emergency management.

Rush-Kittle, who assumed her current position in 2022, confirmed that Fontana has been helping out the office as a consultant since he formally stepped down. She told the News that she does not know how long he will be helping, and that she is also not sure when a replacement will be named.

Fontana called his experience in New Haven an “honor,” and emphasized the strength of his team.

“I tell people all the time when I’m responding to a fire at three o’clock in the morning, and people are out of their homes it’s the worst day that they may have ever had in their life,” he said. “Helping them, it’s pretty cool. It’s a good feeling, but I don’t do it myself.”

However, working in emergency services also comes with devastating loss.

Fontana recalled going to the hospital with New Haven Fire Chief John Alston in May 2021, when firefighter Ricardo Torres Jr. died in a fire. For Fontana, there is no worse day than being in the hospital for a firefighter.

“I coached [Torres Jr.] when he was a young hockey player,” Fontana said. “I knew his mom, his grandma and grandpa. Tough day. Those days, you say to  yourself, ‘why the hell am I in this?’”

On Feb. 8, Fontana was sworn in as West Haven’s emergency management director, a position to which he was appointed by Mayor Dorinda Borer, who he has known for over 20 years. Borer was elected in 2023.

Fontana said that he thinks the mayor appointed him to take the department to a “different level.”

“With my experience in New Haven, and with my experiences being a retired firefighter in West Haven, I know every corner of the city, there’s not a street name that I don’t know in West Haven,” he said.

The position is not entirely new for Fontana. After 9/11 he was appointed to be West Haven’s director of homeland security, a position that later merged with the same emergency management director position he assumed two weeks ago.

Fontana said that he believes his new job will be “a little bit easier,” given that West Haven’s emergency departments receive far fewer calls than New Haven’s, and that they cover a smaller population in a smaller area. He said that his first step as director is to draft an emergency operation plan for the city. Although his position is part-time, leaving him more time to spend in Sarasota, he has lofty aspirations for what comes next.

“My goal is to get the emergency operation center redone,” he said. “I can expand it if I need to but I want it to be comfortable, people are going to spend time there. I want it to look like this.”

Fontana gestured around his bunker-like New Haven office, where maps and whiteboards displaying snow removal routes from a winter storm two weeks ago still flanked the walls.

“Give me a year and a half,” he said.

West Haven is located at 355 Main St. in West Haven.

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At a Finance Committee meeting on Monday, alders and city officials discussed an ordinance that would create an emergency management director position. State law mandates the position in each Connecticut municipality, and New Haven assigns the role to the Chief Administrative Officer — or CAO — a position currently held by Regina Rush-Kittle, a former state deputy commissioner for emergency management, who spoke at the meeting. 

Although the CAO bears the title of Director of Emergency Management, the day-to-day duties of the job were filled by a deputy director, Emergency Operations Director Rick Fontana, until Fontana stepped down in January. In lieu of hiring a new deputy director or requiring the CAO to work two jobs, Rush-Kittle and City Budget Director Michael Gormany urged the committee to create an appointed executive director position from the mayoral salary budget.

“It’s not really possible to be CAO and emergency management director,” Rush-Kittle said to the committee. “We really need to have a position where we can have someone appointed by the mayor as our charter and state says. I felt that if we’re going to do this, this is the right time to do this.”

Connecticut General Statutes Section 28-7(b) requires that each city or township in the state must have an emergency management director and an advisory council for civil preparedness. According to the statute, the emergency management director is responsible for the “organization, administration and operation” of the advisory council. Although the state government will not be involved in hiring New Haven’s director, the statute also specifies that the state’s chief executive officer may remove any local emergency management director for violations of policy or severe mistakes.

Because of this condition, the position will not be a union job, although Fontana’s position was. 

“They are appointed by the mayor, and can be removed at the leisure of the mayor and also the state emergency management director,” Rush-Kittle said. “It’s not really a compatible position to have someone in a union.” 

Fontana announced his plans to retire last month after directing the city’s emergency operations for sixteen years. Last week, he was sworn in as Director of Emergency Management in West Haven. Fontana previously worked in West Haven as a firefighter and paramedic. Rush-Kittle mentioned that Fontana is still helping her with some emergency management tasks during the transition period.

Rush-Kittle and Gormany told the committee that Fontana’s retirement presents an opportunity to transition the position to one that would attract better candidates.

“If we didn’t do this, didn’t make an executive management position, it would go through the civil service process,” Rush-Kittle said.

She noted that the process takes into consideration factors like residency and veteran status, which could alter the pool of candidates.

At the meeting, Ward 3 Alder Ron Hurt and Ward 10 Alder Anna Festa questioned the presenters about adding a New Haven residency requirement to the position. Although Rush-Kittle and Gormany did not directly oppose the idea, Rush-Kittle explained that residency requirements could push out qualified candidates unable to commit to living in New Haven for extended periods of time.

Hurt, Festa and Ward 30 Alder Honda Smith continued to push for a residency requirement. At the conclusion of the meeting, they urged their colleagues to keep the idea in mind as the ordinance moved forward.

“It just baffles my mind that out of 139,000 residents and a department already in place that we can’t find someone to fill it,” Festa said.

New Haven is not alone in having combined the emergency management director position with a different city official role. East Haven, Hartford, Milford, Fairfield and Hamden all employ their city fire chiefs as emergency management directors. Meanwhile, Bridgeport and West Haven have established separate positions. According to Joseph Soto, who served as West Haven’s emergency management director before Fontana, the position in West Haven is part-time and stipended.

Fontana did not respond to the News’ request for comment on whether the position is still part-time.

At the meeting, alders questioned the presenters about the proposed salary. The ordinance presented by Rush-Kittle and Gormany asks for funds “estimated not to exceed an amount of $140,000” to be transferred from the expenditure reserve to the mayor’s salary account for the maximum annual salary of the position. However, they said that the position will be posted with a salary of $128,000, and mentioned that the salary may even drop closer to that of the current deputy director Fontana. According to GovSalaries, Fontana’s salary in 2022 was $106,338.

When discussing the motion at the end of the meeting, Ward 13 Alder Rosa Ferraro-Santana proposed an amendment to the motion which would lower the maximum salary from $140,000 to a figure closer to $128,000. Festa responded that the resolution should retain a higher budget with more “wiggle room.” Ward 23 Alder Tyisha Walker-Meyers agreed with Festa.

“140 is a ceiling. The amount of money we offer for a position isn’t enough,” Walker-Meyers said. “I hope it gets filled that fast, but in my experience, it takes a bit to get the positions filled.”

Ferraro-Santana’s amendment unanimously failed.

According to GovSalaries, Bridgeport’s Director of Emergency Management and Homeland Security Scott Appleby earned $149,775 in 2022. 

Soto told the News that a salary of $128,000 sounded more than reasonable.

At the conclusion of the meeting, the eight alders in attendance unanimously voted for the ordinance to be brought to the full Board of Alders, where it will be discussed and voted on in a month. 

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