The Buck Starts At The Shack
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| Feb 20, 2024 1:27 pm |Make your money work for you. Don’t work harder, work smarter. You can’t out-invest bad spending habits.
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| Feb 20, 2024 1:27 pm |Make your money work for you. Don’t work harder, work smarter. You can’t out-invest bad spending habits.
A long-delayed elderly housing development will now open its doors to families of all ages – if it ever does end up actually opening its doors.
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| Jan 15, 2024 11:54 am |Nobody stole any vehicles in West Hills, West Rock, Westville, or Amity during the first week of 2024.
Rev. Boise Kimber’s plan to open a new boys-focused charter school has received a $2 million state boost — to help try to buy and renovate a vacant former public school building on Valley Street.
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| Sep 5, 2023 11:58 am |Aspiring Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) Andreanna Adkins, Iijonnia White, and Kimah Davis kneeled down to aid a plastic-dummy “gun shot victim” on Elm Street — inside a West Hills community center, as part of their training to save a real life down the line.
If it was up to West Rock/West Hills Alder Honda Smith, her ward would put two now-vacant former public school buildings — including the recently shuttered ex-Clarence Rogers School on Wilmot Road — back to use by creating a black box theater for family-friendly programming, a rental space, a second community center, and an all-boys charter school.
Continue reading ‘What To Do With 2 Closed School Buildings?’
The Board of Alders approved two tax breaks for two different affordable housing projects across town — including at a former Hill co-op, which will see 32 apartments knocked down and 64 built up as part of a first phase of redevelopment.
Continue reading ‘Ex-Hill Co-op, McConaughy Tax Breaks OK'd’
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| Apr 24, 2023 8:45 am |Omar Kh and Ben Ajruli had already gone back and forth and back and forth for 29 rounds at a Hilltop Road tax foreclosure auction when Kh leaned towards his bidding opponent and said seven words that tipped the sale in his favor.
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| Mar 23, 2023 9:01 am |The Valley Street Townhouses have almost all come down, and are ready to rise.
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| Jan 18, 2023 3:17 pm |The latest chapter in the quest to tackle deadly American gun violence began Wednesday with a mix of optimism and cold realism, in a New Haven garden created in that spirit.
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| Jan 12, 2023 1:48 pm |Lizzy Donius was driving near Valley Street on Dec. 19 with a car full of 16-year-olds, including her own son, when a volley of police vehicles, sirens blaring, raced past.
Later, she learned the cruisers were headed to a nearby scene where another local 16-year-old, Joshua Vazquez, had just been shot and killed while riding his bicycle.
“That’s our community,” Donius recalled, choking back tears.
Continue reading ‘West Side Q: What Makes For A Safer Neighborhood?’
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| Jan 7, 2023 1:18 pm |A 41-year-old West Haven man named Charles Miller was shot and killed on Pond Lily Avenue on the far west side of town Friday night, becoming the city’s second homicide victim of the year — and the third in the past week.
Honda Smith made a promise to herself and to her West Hills neighbors that, after retiring from three decades of working for the city, she would find a way to keep serving her neighborhood.
As a reborn westside community center thrives under her watch and neighbors keep busy and fed, that promise has been well kept.
(Updated) Police have “good leads” and video in their investigation into the shooting death of 16-year-old Joshua Vazquez and are working with his former schools to try to prevent a retaliatory attack.
Continue reading ‘Progress Reported In Teen-Murder Investigation’
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| Nov 28, 2022 3:11 pm |Sabrina Gibbs and her two daughters Xora and Nova got a slice of their new neighborhood — and a slice or two of pumpkin pie — at a reborn West Hills community center’s inaugural “Our Table” Thanksgiving dinner.
Continue reading ‘Shack Sets "Our Table" For Thanksgiving Feast’
A fire engulfed and destroyed a World War II-era single-family house on the far west side of town in March, leaving the building in such a dangerous state of disarray that the city hired a contractor to demolish it one month later.
This week, the Board of Alders closed the loop on at least one chapter of that now-houseless West Hills property’s history, when local legislators voted unanimously to approve spending $62,585 to cover the cost of tearing down the building.
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| Aug 23, 2022 9:44 am |Tamia Massey usually spends more than $200 getting her two daughters’ hair braided at the start of every back-to-school season.
This year was different — thanks to one of a host of community-led events focused on helping families cut costs as students prepare to return to the classroom.
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| Aug 8, 2022 2:37 pm |Dozens of New Haveners peeled off of yellow school buses and down a pathway toward the Botanical Garden of Healing, nestled in the shadow of West Rock on Valley Street. They were grandmothers, grad students, kindergarteners, actual gardeners, high school friend groups, and everyone in between, who braved the thick August heat for a tour of New Haven’s ever-growing roster of community greenspace sites, including this new one on Valley.
Continue reading ‘Bus Tour Highlights Community Greenspaces Citywide’
Anna Baker accompanied her grandmother Nan Bartow to walk for the first time across a new West River pedestrian bridge.
“This brick represents my son,” Pamela Jaynez said Friday as she and other moms whose lives were changed by gun violence guided their U.S. Congresswoman down a path of remembrance — and campaign issue-framing.
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| May 25, 2022 5:32 pm |A heap of discarded orange peels, eggshells, peanuts, and vegetables of every hue came one step closer to becoming reusable compost — by way of long shovels, animal poop, dead leaves, a group of committed community members, and an influx of federal funding for Common Ground High School’s urban farm.
The metaphorical “Village” worked hard to raise Anthony Strother back up. So it stung extra hard when a shooter cut him back down for good.
Continue reading ‘After Teen's Murder, A Village Presses On’
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| May 17, 2022 8:48 am |A new music studio, a washer and dryer, a pottery kiln, and more programming for west side youth and seniors alike are one big step closer to coming to a reborn Valley Street community center — now that the alders have formally accepted a $550,000 state grant for “The Shack.”
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| May 12, 2022 4:00 pm |“Rico was a hero.”
With those words, New Haven Fire Department Capt. Kendall Richardson remembered his former Dixwell station colleague Ricardo Torres Jr., at a ceremony held on the one-year anniversary of a Valley Street fire that took Torres’s life.
Continue reading ‘1 Year Later, Fallen Firefighter Remembered’
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| Apr 18, 2022 9:02 am |Easter came early to “The Shack” Community Center, as 100 neighbors from West Hills and beyond came together Saturday for a cookout.
Continue reading ‘The Shack Brings West Hills Together For Easter’