Paul Bass Photo
Professor Dyson watches from the alder pews.
New Haven’s lawmakers spoke with one voice Tuesday night in OK’ing a five-year lease for a Fair Haven urban farm, a $350,000 grant for a plumbing-supply company to expand on Grand Avenue, and receipt of $700,000 to help kids in trouble.
Raejana Mattaway watched the rapid debate-free decision-making — and concluded she might enjoy making the move one day from Shake Shack to the halls of government.
Mattaway (pictured at right) has begun taking an American government course at Gateway Community College this semester. The professor, former New Haven State Rep. and Alder Bill Dyson, brought Mattaway and her classmates to City Hall to experience government in action.
The lesson took no longer than a typical class. Over 40 minutes, Dyson’s class watched New Haven’s alders, with nary a dissenting vote or speech, decide among other actions to:
• Approve a five-year, $1 lease with New Haven Farms to grow food and run programs at 613 Ferry St. with neighbors and patients battling diabetes, obesity, or high cholesterol. The not-for-profit had already begun operating the farm under a temporary lease; this makes the arrangement official. In addition to growing food and taking it home, farm participants learn recipes for healthful meals. (Click here to read more about New Haven Farms.)
• Approve a lease with a not-for-profit called Canal Dock Boathouse to run the new boathouse in the harbor. (Click here to read more about that.)
• Approve a board committee report recommending changes in how the Board of Education’s bus drivers deal with medical emergencies. Newhallville Alder Alfreda Edwards convinced her colleagues to hold hearings and produce the report after the death of an 8‑year-old in March on her way home from school. (Read about that here.) The alders’ recommendations included that the Board of Ed and First Student company “develop a specific protocol for medical emergencies which may include use of a dedicated radio frequency or code for medical emergency calls, and that consideration be given to hiring of additional hiring more dispatch staff and dedicating a radio frequency for communications about emergencies on buses.”
• Grant Bender Plumbing Supplies $350,000 to expand its operations in the former Grand Light building at 580 Grand Ave. in the Mill River District.
• Accept $703,125 from the state Judicial Branch in the form of a youth violence prevention grant. The city has been applying for and receiving that money for four years, as part of a promise by alders who won office in 2011 to do more for kids, said Yale Alder Sarah Eidelson. The plan is to distribute $450,000 of the money once again to support not-for-profits’ youth violence prevention programs; $203,125 for Youth Stat (read about that here); and $50,000 for “youth employment.”
• OK leases for two police substations at the Bella Vista senior housing complex and on Whalley Avenue (details here).
• Greenlight City Librarian Martha Brogan to apply for a $1 million state library construction grant for a new Stetson branch as part of a rebuilt Dixwell Community “Q” House.
• Accept up to $300,000 from the federal Department of Homeland Security for video equipment at the port, “boat maintenance and an update to the marine operations plan”; and $653,000 from the state Office of Early Childhood for case management and care coordination for pregnant women and access to clinic-based prenatal care.
Majority Leader Alhponse Paolillo Jr., standing, reads off items for approval.
All that lawmaking made an impression on Dyson’s students, who hadn’t before seen government at work.
Mattaway, who’s 21, said she’s been trying to figure out if she wants to pursue a career in government. She currently works as a supervisor at the Westport Shake Shack while also attending classes at Gateway. She said watching the alders at work encouraged her to pursue public service: “It seemed everybody came together for a common goal.”
Giovanni Roman (pictured) was blown away. The 34-year-old New Havener, who did two tours of Iraq as a Marine, is pursuing a human services career at Gateway. He had heard about the Board of Alders, but knew nothing about it.
“I don’t know anybody who knows about this,” he said. “I didn’t know you could walk right in here.”
He was most interested to hear about the boathouse and the farm. “I have five children,” he said. “I never heard of a place you could go farming to get healthy foods.” His son at the Sound School would like the boathouse, he added. He said he wished the alders had given the public more information about how to get involved in these projects.
“It’s not as if anybody’s hiding the information,” Professor Dyson told the students, making a larger civic point, as they debriefed following the meeting. “You have to know where to get it.” Their semester has just begun.
Any controversy takes place in the Committee meetings.
A few of them should be on the students' tour list.