New Haven Independent

Silverman (pictured) was poring over a list at a city budget hearing before the aldermanic Finance Committee this week. In a list of 20 membership fees the city pays, one popped out at her: $15,000 to the Gospel Fest.

The Gospel Fest is a day-long summer concert of religious music drawing huge crowds to the city’s Dixwell neighborhood. It’s put on by the Christian Community Commission.

“The mission of the Christian Community Commission is to increase a greater spiritual awareness within the neighborhoods, build unity amongst area churches and to create an alternative way to draw young families to Christ,” read a report from City Controller Mark Pietrosimone detailing the organizations’ mission statements.

Silverman repeated the line “to draw young families to Christ” and questioned if it was in conflict with the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Silverman has championed this issue before, heading up a working group that probed whether holding “divine guidance” at the beginning of aldermanic meetings was a violation of separation of church and state. (The group decided aldermen could continue using the divine guidance session for religious or non-religious messages.)

For a different reason, Downtown Alderwoman Bitsie Clark also said the membership fees needed to be justified: Pietrosimone had produced a list of the groups’ missions, but not what the specific funds were for.

Pietrosimone replied that he thought Gospel Fest was more of a “community event” and “job fair” than a religious ceremony. He promised to return to the Finance Committee with a more detailed account of what the money would be used for.