Paul Bass Photo
Perez at Dec. 13 signing of the Coliseum site deal.
They swept into office amid fears that “labor” would hijack government from taxpayers and business people. As their first term draws to a close, powerbrokers have exhaled — and a new balance of power has come to City Hall.
“They” are members of a labor-backed majority of New Haven’s legislature, the Board of Aldermen.
Two years ago they made history. They brought 20 new faces to the 30-person board — the largest turnover in decades, including an infusion of new female members — through a joint campaign organized by Yale’s unions at a time when labor’s political power has diminished elsewhere in the country. They vowed to make the board less of a mayoral “rubber stamp,” more of an independent check on power as well as a co-pilot of the government’s agenda. They promised to bring new voices from their neighborhoods into the political process.
They produced for the first time a document that spelled out exactly what they hoped to accomplish in helping New Haveners get more jobs, keep them safe, and find constructive stuff for their kids to do.
And they set out to prove that a union-backed legislature could help govern a city in the broader public interest.
As their first term comes to a close, the board’s leader, President Jorge Perez, took a look back at that agenda, point by point. He declared in an interview this week that the board has kept its word — even as it has plenty of work to do in the next two years to advance its priority issues. (Click here and here for previous stories about some of the board’s rookies’ experiences.)
“I’m excited to be part of a board that has an agenda,” said Perez, who has spent 26 years as an alderman. He served as board president for six years, lost the position in 2006, then returned to the leadership role with the election of the new labor-backed majority. He said he can’t remember another time so many new people took office, with such a focused plan to play the role of a truly empowered branch of government.
“The board realized it had more ability to influence policy. It chose to do that. I believe the board will continue to do that,” Perez said. In a straw poll this week his colleagues voted to keep him as board president in the new term that starts Jan. 1; no other contender has emerged. (The official vote takes place at the first board meeting.) Also, unlike two years ago, this fall’s election saw little turnover on the board; the next board will have only six new members (and a possible seventh if Hill Alderwoman Jackie James gets a job, as expected, with the new Harp administration or otherwise succeeds in a planned state Senate run). The new majority remains in place for the 2014 – 5 term, two years more experienced in governing. And now they will work with a mayor, Toni Harp, whom they recruited and helped elect.
The majority of the aldermen won their seats with the backing of New Haven’s most politically influential union, Yale’s UNITE HERE Locals 34 and 35. That led some to predict that they would pursue a narrow agenda.
Mayor John DeStefano—whose slate those aldermen defeated in 2011, effectively running against him—said he had that fear. The new majority proved him wrong, he said in an interview Tuesday.
“I think they did great,” said DeStefano, who retires Jan. 1 after 20 years in office. For 18 of those years, until this final term, his administration controlled the majority of the aldermanic board.
Diana Li Photo
Festa: Unimpressed.
DeStefano said he disagreed with some specific decisions the new majority made. He disagreed with a decision to pass on a federal planning grant for a new downtown trolley. He disagreed with a decision to amend the city charter to give the aldermen veto power over some top mayoral appointees.
But the board never pursued the “narrow, close-minded agenda” he feared it would, DeStefano said. “They proved not to be that at all. They said, ‘We’re a separate branch of government. We’re going to ask tough questions that need to be asked.’ They’re a force to be reckoned with. We have. They have to be taken seriously.”
“I have to admit I wasn’t optimistic going in,” Chamber of Commerce President Anthony Rescigno remarked in an interview Thursday. “I was pleasantly surprised. Overall, I’m optimistic that they’ll be a good group.”
Not everyone is sold. East Rock activist Anna Festa ended up running for a board seat in part to add an independent voice — and won. She will join a small group of non-labor-backed alders on the new board. The others include downtown Alderman Doug Hausladen and incoming Prospect Hill Alderman Michael Stratton.
Festa criticized the aldermen for selling two downtown streets to Yale for $3 million; she called it an example of a conflict of interest. “When you’re union and you’re negotiating deals, I’m not so sure the residents were in their best interests. It lacks some integrity in my opinion,” she said. A pro-union activist made a similar argument in this story; other union supporters pointed out that some of the coalition’s aldermen voted for the Yale deal while others voted against.
“They claim that they’ve done a lot for the city and had the best Board of Aldermen compared to other years. My taxes still went up. We still don’t have a bigger grand list,” Festa said. “I don’t think they’ve made that much of an improvement.
Agenda Not Hidden
Paul Bass Photo
Rescigno at a jobs pipeline working lunch.
Two years into the new team’s reign, the board’s actions continue to spark passionate debate over what constitutes a “labor” agenda.
Critics continue to charge that the board acts to protect the narrow interests of a labor union at the expense of keeping taxes down or building up the city. They call the board’s most visible achievement, the creation of a new center to help people find jobs, called New Haven Works, a funnel for money from developers or business leaders to a labor-run entity.
The board’s supporters point to an accomplishment like New Haven Works — which they developed largely in a Chamber of Commerce conference room alongside leaders of Yale, the Chamber, Yale-New Haven Hospital, UI, City Hall — as an example of how their agenda promotes goals that an entire city can share.
In the end, questions about how to run a city in the 21st century may not always fit neatly into 20th century categories of left or right, or “pro-” and “anti-business.” Nor may the term “labor agenda.”
Whichever side people were on, the new board never hid its agenda. The new aldermen decided to put it in writing as soon as they took office: In February 2012 they produced a one-page “vision statement” and legislative agenda that spelled out priorities and some policy goals. All 30 aldermen, including those not on the labor-backed team, endorsed the agenda.
Both that statement—read it here—and the board’s actions have largely ignored one of the city’s overriding issues: public education. The board did succeed in putting a question on November’s ballot to change the charter to create a partially elected Board of Education; the measure passed. Otherwise, City Hall’s appointees to the Board of Ed, not the aldermen, have steered the city’s ambitious school-reform drive, which features public policy questions (how or if to “grade” schools and teachers and administrators; merit pay; the use of charters) debated widely in other cities.
Community Policing
Thomas MacMillan Photo
Aldermen Brian Wingate and Doug Hausladen question top cops at a public safety hearing.
One priority of the new board majority’s agenda from the start: making New Haven safer by reconnecting neighborhoods with cops again, by reviving the community-based policing approach that the city pioneered in the 1990s, then abandoned.
Or as the agenda put it: “Address crime and violence through strict mechanisms of accountability, support effective community policing strategies, and promote complete streets initiatives.”
Even before the aldermen took office, Mayor DeStefano said he “heard” the message from their victories and therefore brought in a new chief, Dean Esserman, to remake the department in a community-policing model. He revived walking beats in all neighborhoods, invited the community to an ever-growing weekly “Compstat” data-sharing strategy session, started reviving block watches and cold-case and shooting task forces. The number of shootings has dropped consistently across town over the past two years.
Perez said that in addition to successfully pushing for new leadership and a new direction in the police department, board members have followed up by with regular briefings from top cops at aldermanic committee hearings as well as with individual contacts between aldermen and their neighborhood district managers. He said much progress remains to be made, especially with getting more officers on foot patrols.
A key to making community policing work is filling the force’s depleted ranks, Perez said. “We get beat up for raising taxes to do that,” he said. “We should get credit” for voting to pay for those new officers. The board has also supported the department’s efforts to fill top ranks.
The board also took a stand against spending money for the department to hire a second public information/outreach officer to focus on social media. The chief said he needed the position to continue connecting the cops more to the public, through modern technology. “The way it was sold to us was a ‘Tweeter’” position, Perez said. “We want people on the street. Not inside” headquarters.
Jobs Pipeline
Thomas MacMillan Photo
Perez with Chamber prez Rescigno and West River Alderwoman Tyisha Walker at the New Haven Works opening.
The new aldermen made jobs a priority because New Haven has such high unemployment (officially hovering between 12 and 13 percent) and underemployment. Meanwhile, the thriving “ed and meds” economy is churning out new jobs. New Haven’s unemployment rate roughly doubled over the past 20 years, while more than 2,000 new jobs were created.
The board promised in its published agenda to “expand access to good jobs in the public and private sector to all New Haven residents, with
specific focus on under-resourced neighborhoods, through the creation and implementation of a jobs pipeline.”
Right away it created a working group to plan how to do that. It held hearings demonstrating public dissatisfaction with existing regional programs aimed at helping find people jobs or train them for for jobs. Soon the Chamber of Commerce was hosting officials from all top major business, including Yale and Yale-New Haven Hospital, in regular meetings with Perez and other aldermen as well as UNITE HERE to create a new agency.
The result: New Haven Works, a new not-for-profit focusing just on New Haveners (not suburbanites), opened its doors on Whitney Avenue in June. Yale, UNITE HERE, and the state government ponied up enough money for a $1.2 million budget.
Chamber President Rescigno said he found the labor-backed members of the group constructive. Business leaders objected to some initial suggestions, he said — that participating employers commit to giving New Haven Works 10 days to find someone before ever filling an opening, for instance. “I said,‘That’s not realistic. The guy in the roofing business, he needs a roofer this morning.” They said, ‘OK, let’s scratch that. That made some sense.’ I saw decent give and take. I think they’re acting in a lot of ways in the best interest of the city.”
Rescigno sits on the board of New Haven Works. He also serves as treasurer.
“They certainly haven’t left out business. I have as much input as anybody,” he said. “TIme’s going to tell if they put enough people to work to justify the cost. That’s going to take some time.”
So far the agency has found work for 110 people. Yale, in its own negotiations with UNITE HERE, also agreed to give priority to New Haven people for open jobs.
That’s a start, Perez said.
“Is that enough?” he said of the 110 placements to date. “No. Ask the person who didn’t get a job. The alternative was to do nothing.”
Yale, in its own negotiations with UNITE HERE, also agreed to give priority to New Haven people for open jobs. Much work remains to convince other major employers to make full use of New Haven Works. A pending deal on to develop property on Legion Avenue across from Career High School includes a $50,000 contribution to New Haven Works. Look for such contributions, and hiring-priority commitments from developers looking to do business with the city, to become a staple of future deals.
Young People
Thomas MacMillan Photo
Dixwell’s Jeanette Morrison, who took the lead on the Q House, will rise to the deputy majority leader’s post in her 2nd term.
The third pillar of the aldermanic agenda: “Improve and increase the entire spectrum and quality of services and opportunities through
a comprehensive youth agenda for the city.”
No new youth centers opened over the past two years. No pots of money arrived to open new ones.
But lots of planning took place. That has to come first, Perez said. “We’ve been talking about this for at least the 26 years I’ve been on the board.”
The most progress was made on deciding the future of the Dixwell Community “Q” House. Since the center closed a decade ago, it has become a symbol of perceived lack of constructive options for young people in town. The aldermen obtained $40,000 from the state to come up with a plan in concert with Dixwell neighbors. This fall saw the completion of a detailed plan calling for razing the structure, rebuilding it, and moving the busy Stetson Branch Library into the building. An aldermanic panel last week endorsed the idea and learned its price tag: $13.4 million. Next comes lobbying the state for help with that bill.
The aldermen have a study going of future options for the nearby empty armory building on Goffe Street. That one’s not as far along.
Meanwhile, on Dec. 18 an aldermanic committee received a study that inventories all existing facilities that serve young people in New Haven and details what work needs to be done to improve them. (Read more about that meeting here.)
The committee spent two years on a plan to lay the groundwork for a second plan, to fix up youth centers.
Nick DeFiesta Photo
The report enables the board to “get a full look at the landscape of services we have now and start building a more long-term plan of how we can fill in gaps, so we can build a New Haven where all the young people have access to what they need to thrive and be successful,” said Yale Alderwoman Sara Eidelson. Eidelson (pictured), a first-termer who works for UNITE HERE Local 34, chairs the Youth Services Committee; a subcommittee chaired by another labor-backed first-termer, Tyisha Walker, commissioned the study.
Perez said it makes sense to get lots of data before making choices about where to build and rebuild or not to build or rebuild. new The document will provide a map in 2014 for what money to seek to, say, build a new gym at the Farnam Neighborhood House or expand the Boys & Girls Club, he said; or whether to, say, seek to rebuild the decaying old Barbell Club in Trowbridge Square or strengthen other nearby outlets instead. People don’t realize New Haven has 140 different agencies working with young people, he said. Another effort sparked by the aldermanic team involves updating a five-year-old interactive “map” of all programs to which parents can send their kids. Untied Way is spearheading that project along with City Hall’s youth bureau.
Perez noted that the aldermen did deliver a direct boost to youth programming: It obtained $750,000 in state money to grants to local not-for-profits to try out new ideas to prevent youth violence. Click here for a list of the grants the aldermen ended up distributing.
Taxes
Thomas MacMillan Photo
Hill Alderwoman Colon with LWLP developer Max Riem.
The new aldermen didn’t promise to cut taxes. They did promise to raise them only as a last resort, and to work long-term for a revenue system that doesn’t rely as heavily on burdened homeowners.
In their first year, the aldermen didn’t raise taxes — thanks in part to a citywide property revaluation that lowered most people’s taxes (outside of East Rock). The city budget grew by 1 percent that year; aldermen started early in the year pushing city officials for monthly progress reports when a deficit loomed. This past May 29, amid declining state aid, the aldermen passed a new fiscal year budget that raised taxes 7.7 percent; they cut the administration’s original proposed budget by more than $6 million to get even there. The new board and new mayor face growing financial problems, from a depleted rainy day fund to declining bond-agency ratings.
Perez argued that the aldermen succeeded in advancing the best long-term solution: building up the tax base. The DeStefano administration struck deals on numerous development deals in its final year, including the largest proposed downtown project in history, the $395 million plan to build atop the former Coliseum.
As expected, aldermen did get involved in negotiations over those deals, early. And they made the kind of demands that critics predicted could sink development: for local hiring and for affordable housing.
In the end, they didn’t stop projects, Perez noted. Developer Carter Winstanley agreed not just to give preference to local workers and contractors, but to advance contractors money to help with cash flow, as part of the new 13-story 100 College Street tower he’s building for Alexion Pharmaceuticals. The Coliseum-site deal included affordable housing, local hiring, and design changes (the addition of some three-bedroom apartments) asked for by aldermen. Hill Alderwoman Dolores Colon pressed those concerns from the start; she and ended up praising the amended final product. “These people listen,” she said of the developer.
Criticisms from neighbors organized by labor-backed East Rock Alderwoman Jessica Holmes did help sink a proposal to build new apartments at the old Star Supply factory. But the developer has since returned with what neighbors consider a better plan, which has a good shot at passing.
The DeStefano administration took the lead on development plans. They negotiated the deals. But “it’s fair to give credit” to the aldermen to improving the plans, and ultimately giving them needed approvals, Perez argued. The Chamber’s Rescigno, for one, credited the aldermen for “quickly approving” projects like the Coliseum deal.
Civil Service
Thomas MacMillan Photo
Labor-backed Aldermen Michael Smart chairs a charter-revision session.
The board’s agenda made one final specific promise: passing “a resolution requesting the Civil Service Board to increase the points awarded to qualifying New Haven residents from 5 to 10 points.” The aldermen included that change on this fall’s charter reform ballot referendum. And voters approved it.
Union issues didn’t come up often before the board — but when they did, the aldermen at times failed to play the “labor agenda” card predicted by critics. They supported new contracts with municipal unions that included pension and health givebacks. They supported a custodians’ contract that included controversial outsourcing. One big change: Police pensions (for all but the more veteran current cops) will from now on be based on an officer’s final base salary — not on that salary plus the last years’ worth of overtime.
Perez made a point of singling out that fact in responding to the criticism that the aldermanic majority would serve merely as a tool of “the unions.”
“Do we believe that their members should live in a safe, clean neighborhood? Yes. And their children should go to the best schools? Yes. If that makes us cronies, sure,” Perez said. “We are willing to walk a delicate balance. We are for promoting opportunities for New Haven residents. But we also try to control expenses and be fair.”
Perez is in the process of arranging January meetings with his colleagues to craft a second-term agenda by early February. Then, two years from now, New Haven will have another document by which to judge whether New Haven’s emboldened legislative branch of government has kept its promise — and what a “labor agenda” really looks like.
Cora Lewis contributed reporting.
Previous stories examining the new labor majority’s first term in office::
• For Wonkish Rookies, City Hall Wasn’t Hollywood
• “Labor” Agenda Takes Shape In 1st Year
• Outside City Hall, A New Way Of Doing Business
• Rookies Learn: All Politics Is Hyperlocal
"They produced for the first time a document that spelled out exactly what they hoped to accomplish"
Really? Previous Aldermen have produced far more specific plans on every issue imaginable. The BOA statement was a bunch of empty platitudes, none of which have been accomplished. Crime is still up, youth jobs are way down, and calling New Haven Works a solution to finding jobs for the city's 10,000 unemployed people shows a deep deficit of critical thinking skills. 110 job placements is utterly insignificant compared to the normal new hire/employment turnover among our area's 250,000 jobs. The meetings about "jobs youth and safety" are excellent opportunities for press conferences though, and they make Yale and the Chamber look good.