New Haven Independent

Curry showed up at Edgewood School with a stack of response letters from Mayor John DeStefano dating back to 2000. She was one of dozens of citizens who turned out for “Mayor’s Night Out,” DeStefano’s bi-monthly chance to hear the everyday concerns of everyday people.

The mayor sat on the stage in the Edgewood School gymnasium, hearing from citizens one by one. Meanwhile, rows of tables in the gym were staffed by representatives of city departments from parks to public works, ready to solve problems on the spot.

Unfortunately for Sharon Klotzberger and her daughter Cheryl Klotzberger, one department head was missing: the city’s tax collector.

The Tale Of The Truck

Sharon had a fistful of wrinkled documents to go through with the mayor. Her son passed away last October, after giving his truck to her. Last May she looked out her window and saw the truck being booted. The city told her that her son had several years of unpaid taxes on the vehicle.

“But he was able to register two cars,” she told the mayor. He can’t have owed taxes, she insisted; otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to register more vehicles.

Sharon said that she had gotten the truck back but didn’t think that it was right that she should have paid to do so. “My son’s not here to defend himself,” she said.

“And I’ve got this artificial knee,” she said, pulling up her shorts to show the mayor the long scar on her left knee. She said that she needs the truck to get to work. Sharon works for Pez Candy in Orange.

“Is there anyone here from the tax office?” DeStefano asked mayoral policy aide Emily Byrne. She informed him that there was not.

Sharon said she’d talked to the tax people and that they hadn’t helped her. “That’s why we’re here.”

“I’ll talk to the tax collector tomorrow,” DeStefano said. “They’ll make a time to talk to you.”

Sharon and Cheryl walked away from their meeting with the mayor with a carbon copy record of their complaint, the tax collector’s phone number and the mayor’s phone number.

Outside in the hallway, Cheryl elaborated further on the spiral of problems that come when your car is booted. “You can’t get to work, so you can’t make money,” she said, “and they’re charging you more money each day for storage.”

You need $1,000 on the spot to get the car out of the boot, she said. “Could you come up with $1,000 today?”

Cheryl said that they’ll be looking for a refund from the city. “Of course! That would only be fair,” she said. “That would only be fair.”

Dear Pen Pal

Back in the gymnasium, Muriel Curry was in line with her stack of correspondence, waiting to talk to the mayor. She said that she has been complaining about the broken sidewalk in front of her house for eight years. The letters she held, going back to 2000, were from the mayor’s office acknowledging her complaints.

Curry said that she had just been talking to a city staffer who was amazed by her old letters. “He told me half the people that wrote ‘em are dead!” said Curry. “I told him ‘So’s my sidewalk!’”

When she reached the front of the line, the mayor glanced at her letters and personally escorted her over to the Department of Public Works table.

The mayor heard a lot of complaints during his night out. He also received a couple of kudos. Edgewood School head custodian Rafael Crespo stepped forward to tell the mayor about his successful interaction with the city tax office.

A series of errors had led to Crespo paying property taxes for the wrong property. He went to the tax office and had a different experience from Sharon Klotzberger’s. The tax office took care of Crespo immediately, made sure the right taxes were paid. He was reimbursed for the difference.

“Everybody helped me out,” Crespo informed the mayor.