Thomas MacMillan Photo
DeStefano formally announces retirement at the Russian Lady.
News flash: John DeStefano is not retiring as New Haven’s mayor to “spend more time” with his family. He’s stepping down to take on a new professional challenge — and because the time is right for the city.
DeStefano delivered that message during an interview in his office Tuesday afternoon. He delivered it again two hours later during a formal announcement at the Russian Lady bar on Temple Street that he will not seek reelection this year.
He said he plans to keep focusing on school reform and community policing, among other challenges, through the end of his current term.
Hundreds jammed the Russian Lady for DeStefano’s announcement.
“This isn’t good-bye,” DeStefano declared. “I’m not going anywhere yet.”
He made a point of not mimicking the scripted line most politicians resort to when leaving office or dropping out of a campaign — that they want more time with their family.
“I [have always] spent time with my family,” he said, with his wife, with his two sons as they grew up, with his sisters and their families at summer vacations on Cape Cod. He has always put a priority on that. He will continue to.
At 57, he still wants to work. And he feels he has the “vigor” and good health to launch a meaningful new career, he said.
He didn’t specify what his next job will be. But in the interview he sounded like he has a clear idea what it is. “I have some thoughts about what I will do. That’s a story for another day,” he said. “My goal is to stay in New Haven.”
“I never felt defeated in this job — never,” a relaxed DeStefano said in between bites of a late-lunch salad.
“The time was right” to retire and embark on another career after 30 years in city government, DeStefano said. He has served as mayor for 20 years, longer than anyone else in history.
Two years ago, DeStefano said, he didn’t want to leave the job while violence was back on the rise, a school reform drive was just getting underway, and a potentially grueling property revaluation and budget process loomed. Now community policing has taken root again. The city weathered revaluation without the deep divisions and protests of decades past, he noted. School reform has posted some gains.
The education team: Sue Weisselberg, former Promise chief Emily Byrne, Promise’s Adriana Arreola.
He spoke most passionately Tuesday about that reform drive.
He called school reform the most “extraordinary” as well as the most “fragile” part of his legacy. The city has made significant progress in two years in working out new rules with teachers, lifting students’ academic achievement, upping graduation rates and college acceptances, he said. That can keep happening, but only “if we keep our eyes on the ball” every day. He failed to do that with community policing over the years, so the city lost its focus until Chief Dean Esserman came to town and revived the program over the past year, he said. The same can happen with school reform, he warned. He urged voters this year to demand that the next mayor show the same commitment to “school change” and reject efforts to start electing school board members as part of charter reform.
Proudest Moments
Paul Bass Photo
Predecessor John Daniels awaits DeStefano’s portrait to join him on City Hall’s 2nd floor.
The Nov. 9, 2010, launching of New Haven Promise—the Yale and Community Foundation-supported program to help public school kids get into college, pay for it, and succeed there — was one of his two proudest moments in office, DeStefano said. (Click on the play arrow to watch him discuss those moments, as well as his low moments.)
U.S. Rep. DeLauro, Tuesday’s emcee: She & mayor ” are townies, and damn proud of it!”
His other proudest moment: In 2007, when his administration launched an immigrant-friendly resident ID card to help people, including undocumented families, become more a part of New Haven.
He remembered sitting “in this room looking out this window. City Hall was not open yet. I was here at 6 a.m. And the line at City Hall from the front door was down to Elm Street and down Elm Street to Orange Street. They were New Haven residents coming in to sign up for an Elm City resident card. It was inspiring. It was people, hardworking people saying they were part of this community.”
His biggest regret? Not convincing Connecticut — as a mayor, as a gubernatorial candidate, as a member of task forces — to embrace property tax reform.
Click here to watch DeStefano reflect on another moment in office he’ll never forget: When a drug dealer shot into an Orchard Street apartment and killed a baby named Danielle Monique Taft. DeStefano had been in office a little more than a month at that time.
Looking ahead, DeStefano said he plans to serve out the remainder of his term, which ends on Dec. 31. Click on the play arrow to watch him discuss his intention not to govern like a lame duck.
“A Different Place”
Sundiata Keitazulu, a Newhallvillle plumber who has filed to run for mayor, with DeStefano after the speech.
In his address at the Russian Lady, DeStefano described New Haven’s landscape when he took office in 1994: The crumbling abandoned Malley’s building next to just-closed Macy’s next to the bankrupt Park Plaza Hotel next to the soon-to-close Chapel Square Mall. Two blocs away SNET was about to abandon its 300 George St. headquarters. Elsewhere in town the Q Terrace and Elm haven projects were dangerous, decrepit homes.
“It was a different place,” he said.
Yale prez Rick Levin, whose 20-year tenure coincided with DeStefano’s, at Tuesday’s event.
Today Gateway Community College inhabits the old Macy’s and Malley’s blocks; the Park Plaza has become the Omni, Chapel Square the 900 Chapel apartments and offices, 300 George a thriving tech and biomedical center next to its soon-to open 100 College St. sibling. A rejuvenated housing authority has rebuilt Q Terrace and Elm haven (now Monterey Place) into attractive mixed-income neighborhoods. State Street has a train station. Long Wharf has IKEA. Science Park has lots of tenants, including a headquarters for the growing HigherOne financial services company.
And New Haveners feel welcome at Yale.
“We have changed the face of our city,” DeStefano proclaimed.
Present at the creation & the last lap: Longtime DeStefano supporter and former city official Joe DeMatteo.
Ummmm...regarding this quote from the mayor...
"The city weathered revaluation without the deep divisions and protests of decades past"
It just seems like there wasn't a prblem because just a handful of neighborhoods had to swallow the majority of the reval costs...of course thats unlike the last time, when everyone got a freeze.