This is what a transition sounds like:
Periodic strummed guitar chords.
Banter and Q&A with the mayor-elect.
Live audio from a community transition forum.
Edited interviews with a write-in opponent now looking to participate in community brainstorming for a better city, with an Ice The Beef organizer, with other people from throughout the city with passionate suggestions.
Those are some of the sounds found in a podcast called “What is a Transition Team?,” the first effort by Mayor-Elect Justin Elicker to make good on a promise to communicate often and in new ways with the people of New Haven.
Elicker, who won office in the Nov. 5 election, is currently working with a transition team to collect ideas from the public, interviewing job-seekers, holding meetings with city department heads, en route to taking office on Jan. 1.
The team released the podcast, which you can listen to above, on Monday night.
Paul Bass Photo
Transition HQ at 200 Orange St.
In the podcast, produced with the help of Casey Pickett, Elicker discusses how the team is holding meetings citywide to get input about how to tackle pressing issues ranging from affordable house to climate change. It’s asking: “What can we do in 100 days? What can we do in a first term?” And what steps can it take to set the stage for longer-term action?
Elicker stressed his desire to “acknowledge over and over again that I do not have all the answers: and therefore is eager to hear from as many people as possible, including in upcoming public meetings.
“I’m a white guy. I bring some experience to the table,” Elicker says in the podcast. “But this city is incredibly diverse. I cannot understand what so many people of different lived experience are experiencing today and what kind of actions City Hall can take to address the challenges maybe people face in the city.”
And “people feel they’re not listened to. City Hall can do so much more to just listen.”
He urges listeners to attend the transition team’s next two public meetings: a second community brainstorming session at High School in the Community on Dec. 8 at 2 p.m., and an “open coffee” at the Dunkin Donuts at 291 Ferry St. on Dec. 13 from 8:30 – 10 a.m. (RSVP here for the latter event.)
Dammit, I was hoping the revolution would make me look five pounds thinner. I thought that was what I was voting for. It's fun to see Paul channeling 3/5's.