nothin Alders OK $1M Grant For Reentry | New Haven Independent

Alders OK $1M Grant For Reentry

Paul Bass Photo

Reentry chief Clifton Graves.

A plan that aims to cut recidivism rates of the city’s convicted felons in half by 2020 is moving forward.

The Board of Alders Monday night approved the city’s acceptance a $1 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Justice that will be used to launch the city’s Fresh Start Reentry Initiative. The initiative is designed to help prisoners from New Haven reenter society and become productive citizens instead of returning to crime. An estimated 25 prisoners a week return to New Haven, but without supports, many of them return to crime.

The $1 million grant will allow city officials and partner agencies to work with inmates with New Haven addresses up to 12 months before they leave prison. Some 40 different community agencies have signed up to help in that effort. Each prisoner will be linked up to a single mentor from one of three agencies Three of them — Easter Seals Goodwill, Community Action Agency, and Project MORE — to develop a plan for dealing with life outside the walls, whether that means getting substance abuse counseling, job training, job-search help, housing, or some combination of both. (Read more about the initiative here and here.)

Alders also approved a resolution allowing Mayor Toni Harp to execute a memorandum of understanding with the Workforce Alliance so that the city can accept an 18-month grant of $103,755 that will pay for a new position within the Community Services Administration that will work in what will be the Job Center Pilot Program. The program will be located in the New Haven Correctional Center and will help prepare inmates with job skills training and employment readiness,” as part of the Fresh Start Reentry Initiative.

In other business, the Board of Alders approved a residential parking zone for the residents of Westerleigh Road from 64 to 140 Westerleigh, between Fairfield Street and Whalley Avenue, and on Federic Street between Westerleigh and Beverly roads. Neighbors fought for more than four months to stop Mandy Management from not only building three apartments in a formerly all commercial building at the intersection of Westerleigh Road and Whalley Avenue, but also to stop the developer from building without making provisions for parking. They lost that battle, but won the right to keep those apartment dwellers from taking up parking on the street. (Read more about that here and here.)

David Salinas

Alders positioned themselves to consider approving the city’s proposed acquisition and then sale the former CT Transit bus depot at 470 James St. to a partnership planning to build a $20 million technology incubator center called DISTRICT.” The main partners — David Salinas of Digital Surgeons and Eric O’Brien of Crossfit gym — said they have the money to build, but a key sticking point remains whether the state will completely fund an environmental clean-up, a question that is up in the air pending results of a study. The city and the developers also had to hash out a long-term parking disagreement, which they did. Read about the details of that agreement and about the plan in this previous article, which describes the land disposition agreement that officials submitted for the alders’ consideration Monday night. Depending on how quickly alders move through the committee process, the deal could be considered as early as the board’s last meeting of the year.

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