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New Haven’s public-financing agency may soon have an easier time getting a quorum.
That’s because Mayor Toni Harp has nominated someone to fill one of the three vacancies on the board of the agency, the Democracy Fund: Former Westville Alder Sergio Rodriguez.
Harp submitted Rodriguez’s name on Jan. 29 to the Board of Alders, which must approve the nomination.
“I am confident given Mr. Rodriguez’s credentials and commitment to our city, that he will serve the citizens of New Haven in a most conscientious and productive manner,” Harp wrote to the alders.
Rodriguez ran a spirited, though ultimately unsuccessful, campaign for city clerk in 2013. He then got a job as an “education staff assistant” with the state Board of Education.
The Democracy Fund, a seven-member board that runs the city’s municipal public-finance system for mayoral elections, needs four people to reach quorum. With exactly four current members (three spots remain vacant), the body can’t meet if a single person doesn’t show up – which is what usually happens. It has mustered exactly one meeting since October. (Read about it here.)
This is good. Mr. Rodriguez is a very civic-minded person.