This Loo Was Left Behind — With Cement

The Harp administration released photos of this cement-filled toilet and other damage as it further explained its position in an ongoing dispute over the trashing of a city-spawned job-training center at the center of a corruption inquiry.

The school is the Construction Workforce Initiative 2 (CWI2) training center at 316 Dixwell Ave.

The city owns the property and used to rent it to a not-for-profit simultaneously run by a city official, Commission on Equal Opportunities (CEO) Executive Director Nichole Jefferson. On March 18 the city placed Jefferson on administrative leave pending the outcome of a still-ongoing investigation into how her not-for-profit CWI2 handled public money. That night, as reported in this story, Jefferson and associates used two U‑Hauls and a third truck to clear out the center’s contents, which she said she had a right to do because her agency had paid for them. She also denied any wrongdoing, arguing that city officials are pursuing a political vendetta against her.

The controversy heated up after city officials visited the site on July 2 to assess the property in hopes of using it in part to house the staff hired to administer a new $1 million federal ​“Byrne” grant to reduce violence in Newhallville. The officials discovered that they won’t be able to do that soon: They said they came upon a building that had been stripped of all furnishings, with fixtures ripped form the walls, with drains plugged with cement — a complete shambles.

The questions became: Who did it? And why?

Jefferson last week told the Independent that she and her staff did not do the damage. She said she thought the Harp administration maybe did it to make her look bad. ​“I presume they did everything,” she said. ​“The city has been truly terrible to me and discriminated against me. This administration —it’s a sad day that they would hurt an organization that helps residents.”

Jefferson also said that her staff continued keeping an alarm system at the building and arrived on scene twice when the alarm went off — once on April 24, when city officials tried but failed to get inside the building; and then on July 2, when they broke a lock and went inside.

In a release issued late Tuesday night, Acting city Corporation Counsel John Rose and Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson noted that CWI2 maintained the alarm system and had the only access to the building: ​“The City did not install the alarm and anyone entering the building – as happened on July 2 – would have triggered an alarm and alerted both police and the family of Nic[h]ole Jefferson, as evidenced by her daughter coming to the location and taking pictures when the City gained access to the building.”

The release also rebutted another claim Jefferson made in the interview — that the city had no right to enter the premises and should have warned CWI2 before arriving. CWI2’s lease ran out in June 2014. But Jefferson said it for a while had a month-to-month lease after that, and that the city has never served the organization with eviction papers.

“The City, as owner, had the right and the obligation to enter the building to inspect it and to prepare it for new uses, as well as the opportunity to do so given that the previous use had clearly ended,” Rose’s and Nemerson’s latest release responded. It offered this reason for the lease not being renewed: ​“In the months before [June 2014] Nic[h]ole Jefferson, who was Executive Director of the City’s Equal Opportunity Commission (CEO) and was also acting as Secretary of the CWI2 board, refused to sign a one-year license agreement renewal tendered by the City of New Haven. The renewal license required that CWI2 provide proof of its good standing with the IRS” [Internal Revenue Service].

“As has been well documented by photographs and a news story, on the day – March 18, 2015— that Ms. Jefferson was placed on administrative leave by the City from her full-time position as Executive Director of the CEO, she, in the company of others, and via three (3) trucks, entered the CWI2 Dixwell Avenue premises and removed property in the middle of the night, thereby abandoning the building and any right she or CWI2 had as a licensee.”

Jefferson could not be reached Wednesday to respond to the comment about a refusal to resign a renewal.

Meanwhile, the city Tuesday night released the photos in this story, of damage at the property. Last week it had refused to release the photos. Newhallville Alder Alfreda Edwards, who accompanied officials on the July 2 inspection, told the Independent that one toilet (the one plugged with cement) had been left standing, while others were gone.

“The FBI and local law enforcement were apprised of the damage done to the premises. The investigation is ongoing,” the Rose-Nemerson statement concluded.

CWI2’s financial records have been a subject of the broader investigation into the agency.

When Jefferson’s crew cleared out the premises the night of March 18, she said only objects that the agency owned were being removed. She said no financial records were being removed. On Wednesday, Matthew Nemerson was asked if officials had seen any records in the building. ​“There were no records found on the premises,” he responded.