nothin The Council Chamber Beckoned | New Haven Independent

The Council Chamber Beckoned

Sam Gurwitt Photos

Hamden has been heated: Kerry Ellington and Police Commission Chair Mike Iezzi at a commission meeting that turned into a protest.

I was supposed to spend a few months watching elected officials fight every other Monday night. Spring would come, and I would run off to the circus, quite literally.

That was the plan, anyway.

When I started in January of 2019 as the Independent’s first full-time Hamden reporter, I thought it would be a short-term gig. I would stay a couple of months, learn how to do community reporting, then move on to other ambitions in other places.

But first, I had Legislative Council meetings to sit through.

At the end of each one (usually around 11 p.m., sometimes as late as 1 a.m.), Council President Mick McGarry would deliver the same line with a haggard smile when I approached him for a comment: Sam, I’m telling you, do you really have nothing better to do with your evenings?”

One of my favorite photos of McGarry. Haggard, late at night.

It was a greeting typical of McGarry, for whom pleasantries usually include a healthy sprinkling of dry wit.

No, no, Mick, this is exactly how I like to spend my evenings,” I would usually reply sarcastically. Sometimes I would add: You know, you too, Mick, I’m sure there’s nowhere else you’d rather be.”

There were a lot of places I would rather have been than the council chamber. My legs would become numb pressed for hours against the chair on the right-hand side of the room where I always sat, reporter’s notebook on one knee, camera dangling just above my lap. I watched in dismayed silence as meetings devolved into shouting matches. Discussions on minor procedural items could take hours. We were often there until 11 p.m. Sometimes it was midnight. Sometimes 1 a.m. It quickly cured me of any inkling I’d ever had that I would want to run for elected office myself.

Justin Farmer and Eric Annes at one of those late-night council meetings. This photo was taken after midnight.

After my first few months of those meetings, I did leave as planned, in June. I spent the summer in Quebec City performing a clown and juggling street show with a friend. (I am trained as a professional clown.) Every night at around six we would pack our equipment into a hiking backpack and bike up the steep hill to the old city, where we set out our amp and hand-painted sign on a cobblestone street packed with tourists. We would perform four back-to-back shows to the throngs as the drips of ice cream they were too slow to catch dribbled down their fingers.

Maybe McGarry didn’t have street performing in mind when he asked me if I had anything better to do with my evenings, but those nights certainly did fall into the category of more exciting than a council meeting.” I can’t say I would ever look out at a crowd of laughing faces, and think I would rather be in the legislative council chamber listening to an interminable discussion about bulk trash pickup.

But, a short time later, I was back again. The council chamber had beckoned. So had the role of journalist.

There was more to those meetings than political impasse, frayed nerves, and numb legs. Amidst the shouting, there were decisions that affected people’s lives, and despite the rancor, there was something inspiring in watching local government in action. There was an exciting role for a reporter, and a whole lot to learn.

Reporting on Hamden has not meant covering just meetings. Much of it took place in the streets, like this one of Hamden High senior Darius Cummings in the middle of Dixwell Avenue during a June protest.

Early on, I wrote an article about a financial transfer that took funds allocated for the town’s pension and used them to pay utility bills and fire department overtime. Afterwards, one of the council members came up to me and told me it was an unfair article. It had always been like this, they said, and this kind of transfer was nothing new, but now everyone was up in arms because I was there making a big deal out of it.

On that particular article, they had a point — it was not well balanced. I came down too hard on the administration and didn’t really get the mayor’s perspective. But let me be clear: I did make a big deal out of the situation, and I stand by that choice, because financial transfers and town pensions are a big deal.

Debates about the minutiae of town government had a way of consuming me. After those hours of listening to officials and residents wage battle with each other over bar graphs and endless public finance acronyms, I would still get a little thrill replaying the debate in my head. If anyone would listen, I would start to rant about debt payment schedules. It took about 30 seconds for their eyes to glaze over, and I would have to pull myself back to earth, reminding myself that to most people, the fate of the world does not hinge on Hamden’s debt service.

National politics in the foreground, local in the background. Marty Dunleavy on a Biden canvassing trek to New Hampshire in January.

Those debates affect only 60,000 people on 33 square miles sandwiched between West Rock Ridge and the Quinnipiac River. But I found it exhilarating to watch as the future of a town is hammered into being by a high school English teacher, a professor, and a college student whose main similarity is that they care what happens to their neighbors and their streets. Even when it gets ugly, there is something beautiful in that.

It’s easy, even dangerous, to forget that politics is born out of neighbors disagreeing about how to spend their tax money, and not vice versa. Hyperlocal arguments over town pensions and financial transfers are not just a big deal because they affect tax bills. They’re the kernels around which our whole system of participatory democracy forms.

Unless conditions change in the next few weeks (I almost dare not put this in writing because as we know, that’s entirely possible), I will be moving to Germany in January on a Fulbright grant to write about East German mass housing. When I left the first time to clown in Canada, I thought it would just take two more stories and I could tie up loose ends. I was naïve. After two years, there are a thousand stories I would still like to write. I am grateful that I got to tell the ones I told.

Hamden had its share of tragedies in the last year. In July, Tim Fields mourned the death of Kaymar Tanner, 22, who was shot near this spot the night before.

The next year will be critical for Hamden. The state may step in and take over the town’s finances. Unless a miracle swoops down from the heavens in the form of a $6 million grant, the council will have to decide how to patch a multi-million-dollar hole in its current budget. Failure to do so would plunge the town into much deeper financial distress than it is already in. I’m sorry to say it, but your taxes are going to increase. There will be a mayor’s race. In all likelihood, it will be contentious, messy, and possibly nasty. I hope not the latter. The town will continue its charter revision and bring it to a referendum, which could have major consequences for the future of Hamden government. Two elementary schools may close. The school district will start to think about redistricting. A new soup kitchen may open in the southern end of town, and the Keefe Center will continue to work wonders with a miniscule budget and a handful of incredible staff. The list goes on.

It’s a great time to be a journalist in Hamden, and it’s harder to leave the Independent now than it ever would have been before. Hamden is reckoning with its identity and with its shifting politics, and that will only continue.

A note to my sources: thank you for trusting me, and thank you for letting me know when I messed up.

Sometimes the photo told the story: Jermain Blake, April, 2019 outside the Hamden Stop & Shop.

In the life of a town, every plot point could be the beginning, middle, or end of a narrative. The stories I followed will spawn others. Some will be happy. Others will not. I only hope that people will be watching.

So, when Mick McGarry, wearing his late-night haggard smile, asks the next person if they really have nothing better to do with their evenings than sit in the council chamber, they will smile back and reply: No, no, Mick, this is exactly where I want to be.” Despite the veil of sarcasm, they will mean every word.

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