City Hall Tells Newhallville Its Plans For That $1M

More street outreach workers in schools. More jobs for Newhallville teens. More coordination among groups, including city government, trying to do good in the neighborhood. And an ongoing evaluation of whether any of it is working to reduce crime and youth violence.

That’s what some 150 neighbors who packed the auditorium of the King/Robinson Magnet School heard from Mayor Toni Harp, city and education officials, the head of local outreach organization and members of the faith community during a public forum on the Newhallville Safe Neighborhood Initiative Wednesday night.

The forum was held less than a week before the Board of Alders will decide whether to accept a $1 million federal ​“Byrne” grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to address crime and youth violence specifically in Newhallville. The feds announced in October that New Haven had won the competitive grant. (Read all about that here.)

The Harp administration applied for the money to help the police, street outreach workers, schools, youth and health-care workers, anti-blight officials, small businesses, and grassroots activists (like a new ​“resiliency team” and ​“Community Matters” team as well as the community management team) collaborate on ways to stem violence in one of the city’s poorest and most violence-plagued neighborhoods. (Click here to read the city’s full application describing the plan.)

Some community members, including alders, have raised questions about how the city plans to spend all that new money.

Harp, who prioritized addressing the issue of gun and youth violence in Newhallville when she ran for mayor, told the crowd Wednesday night that the grant money will help address root causes of what makes people feel unsafe in the community. Newhallville had the city’s most violent crime in recent years, though the past year has seen a marked decline in shootings.

The mayor spoke of meeting a mother of five who told her that in an effort to keep her children safe, she makes it a point to get them out of Newhallville as often as possible. Harp said no one should have to live like that. ​“That is why we applied for this grant,” she said.

“This is a great opportunity for the community to work with the city to build your values in to what happens here,” she said. ​“This is a building block to move forward.”

Breaking Down Silos

Jason Bartlett, director of the city’s Youth Services Department, sought to impress on the crowd how rare it is for the federal government to give a grant specifically to a neighborhood to address a specific issue like crime and youth violence.

“A million is not going to solve a bunch of problems by itself,” he said. ​“But it can bring us all together … so that we are on the same program and have the same strategy and are talking to each other.”

Skeptical neighbors got to hear from Barbara Tinney, executive director of New Haven Family Alliance, and her team of street outreach workers who she said put their lives in danger daily to stop youth violence by intervening in potentially violent situations and by engaging victims and perpetrators of violence and their families. Oftentimes these people, who are paid to work nights and weekends, volunteer time during the school day to be present for a child who is having a problem. Tinney said the Byrne grant could help expand that time in school to paid time for existing workers specifically in Newhallville.

Neighbors also heard from Gwendolyn Busch Williams, program manager for the city’s Youth At Work program. She said that her program was able to employ 617 people ages 14 – 21 last summer; about 11 percent of those people were from Newhallville. The program provides employment experience that is designed to help young people build professional skills, but she said the reality is that the program often has more demand than it can meet.

She said the Byrne grant would allow the development of a Newhallville Youth Employment Program, in which the city would provide an hour of training in workplace etiquette, policies and guidelines and payroll. Participants then would work for local businesses and be paid a minimum hourly wage of $9.15 for up to 25 hours a week. The program would have a five-week summer component and a 20-week school-year component.

Assistant Chief of Police Anthony Campbell (at left in photo) and Newhallville top cop Lt. Herb Sharp (right) spoke about community policing and the need to build relationships to improve overall quality of life in the neighborhood.

“We need more meetings like this, not just when grants come,” Campbell said. ​“We know we’re not going to arrest our way out of this situation.”

The Rev. Boise Kimber, senior pastor of First Calvary Baptist Church, said it is vital that the city get back to community policing and build those relationships, because ​“I spoke in Ferguson, and we don’t want that here.” But he also told the audience that realistically ​“this grant can’t be for every organization.” He said he hopes that some of it will be used to to address those re-entering society post incarceration.

Jasmine Brown, a case manager for the Newhallville-based Believe In Me Empowerment Corp., said that the organization provides services to youth and families in the neighborhood but is often overlooked when it comes to grant funding. She said she spoke up to make sure people understand the valuable services that the organization provides and how it plays a role in stopping gun violence and crime.

The presenters Wednesday night addressed some of the issues that Newhallville alders raised when they had an opportunity to grill Bartlett at a public hearing in December. Still some residents, like Natasha Rivera-LaButhie, left the two-hour meeting frustrated. She had hoped for more of a dialogue among community members, many of those who spoke and the officials in the room, she said. But by the time she was recognized to speak, a lot of those people had already gone home.

“People had a lot of questions tonight, and I don’t feel like those questions were answered,” she said.

Bartlett said he understood the frustration. He called the meeting a first in a lot of meetings and ​“fun, social, networking events” that could be held as the city plans how it will meet the parameters of the grant.

Bartlett, who is serving as the point person for the city on the grant, said if the Board of Alders accepts the grant, the first priority would be hiring a project manager who would bring all of the neighborhood’s various groups together. He said Wednesday’s meeting ​“got a lot of different folks in the room that don’t often talk. That’s a success and I am happy about that.”

Previous coverage of the Newhallville Safe Neighborhood Initiative:
Feds Send $1M To Make Newhallville Safer
We’ll Take The Million, But …
Plans For Newhallville Grant Rile Neighbors