Antunes Curbs Late Grant Apps

Bishop Woods Alder Gerald Antunes showed top officials at his former department that he still knows how to be a tough cop.

The retired police officer told Police Chief Dean Esserman and Assistant Chief Anthony Campbell at a public caucus of the Board of Alders held Wednesday before its regular meeting that it would be his last time supporting unanimous consent for the acceptance of a grant that a department had won and needed quick approval to accept.

And he doesn’t care if that means that the police department — or any other city department for that matter — loses out on free money.

The police department drew the ire of Antunes and other alders over a $50,000 grant from the Connecticut Department of Transportation (DOT) to pay for a citywide speed enforcement program starting July 4 through Sept 5. The department has already applied for the grant and the DOT approved the city’s application, making New Haven ​“eligible for reimbursement of up to 75 percent of police overtime and fringe costs for speed enforcement activities,” according to a letter from Esserman.

Campbell said in fact the department was already spending money for speed enforcement with hopes that they can recoup some of their expenses with grant funds. Applying for the grant happened in the last 30 days and with the quick turnaround required, the department assumed that alders — knowing that the grant goes to step up enforcement activities — would understand the overtime issues and support accepting the grant.

Alders said that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this is supposed to work.

“This puts us in a rough situation,” Antunes said. ​“We don’t have the opportunity to have a public hearing. The public is entitled to a hearing. This circumvents the whole process. And it doesn’t make us look good when we have to say, ​‘You can’t do it.’ It makes us the bad guys when the bad guys are really sitting at 1 Union Ave.”

Antunes said he told the board last month when a similar grant application for the police department showed up on a consent agenda that he didn’t want it to happen again. He said the department called his bluff. And he was not happy about it, though his colleagues persuaded him not to object and not to have the grant removed from the consent agenda — this time.

If Antunes had objected, as he said he will in the future, the grant would have had to go through the full board process of a public hearing and two readings which would have rendered it useless to the police.

Annex Alder Alphonse Paolillo Jr. offered a compromise that allowed the police department to accept the grant, but officials will have to come back to the Public Safety Committee, which Antunes chairs, for a public hearing.

“It’s frustrating when they don’t take it serious,” Paolillo said.

“They’re going to have to take it serious because this is going to be the last one,” Board President Tyisha Walker said.

“I hope you understand, we’re not going down this road again,” Walker said directly to Campbell and Esserman.

“It’s crystal clear,” Campbell said.

Antunes said while the police department bore the brunt of his and other alders’ frustrations, it isn’t the only department that pushes grants through by asking alders for unanimous consent.

“Too many times department heads come claiming or requesting unanimous consent,” he said. ​“In some cases, the process just hasn’t been followed through by the departments and they’re looking to us to take up the slack.”

Antunes said going forward, he will vote against any unanimous consent item for a grant that hasn’t received a public hearing. He said residents have a right to ask questions about how the grant money is going to be used, and even if they don’t exercise that right, alders who represent those residents have the right to ask questions too.

“If you get grant paperwork late and you know you can’t get it passed in time, then you just missed the grant,” he said. ​“I hate to give up any money, but you have a process for a reason and they’re required to follow the process.

“I was prepared to say no to unanimous consent,” he added. ​“They’ve already spent the money for a grant they don’t have. Some people go jail for that kind of stuff. How do you spend money you don’t have? Fortunately, I think it is a reimbursement, but they’ve already applied for it without approval, already spent it without approval. What good is having a board, having a guideline if you’re not going to follow it?”