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Rethinking government: Community Services Administrator Mehul Dalal discusses plans at press conference last week.
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The city’s pitch for a new Department of Community Resilience.
Alders unanimously advanced the Elicker Administration’s proposed creation of a new bulked up and reorganized social problem-solving city department — after debating using short-term federal cash to address long-term societal problems.
Local legislators took that vote Monday night during the Board of Alders Finance Committee’s latest regular monthly meeting, which was held online via Zoom and YouTube Live.
At the end of the three-hour virtual meeting, committee alders unanimously supported one proposed order and two proposed ordinance amendments that would create a new Department of Community Resilience within the city’s Community Services Administration (CSA).
Zoom
Monday night’s Finance Committee meeting.
City Community Services Administrator Mehul Dalal said that the new department would be tasked with finding a coordinated and data-driven way over the next four years to address a complex and interrelated set of problems, from homelessness to mental health disorders to drug addiction to prison reentry.
“It’s a lot of initiatives to be organized in a scattershot way,” Dalal said about the city’s current approach towards tackling issues that sit at the intersection of housing insecurity, substance abuse, and mental health. “I think [this new department] can bring them the focus and attention they deserve, and help [city staffers and programs working on these issues] sustain and succeed over the long term.”
$6M Annual Budget; 4 New Positions, 4 Reshuffled
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In addition to creating a new Department of Community Resilience under Chapter 16 1/2 of the city’s code of ordinances, the proposed legislation before the committee alders on Monday would use $8 million of federal American Rescue Plan (ARP) money to fund four new positions over the next four years.
Those new positions would include a director of the Department of Community Resilience, a coordinator of the Office of Violence Prevention, a coordinator of the Office of Mental Health Initiatives, and a data/GIS manager.
The third piece of the proposed legislation would move four existing city positions into the Department of Community Resilience from their current siloed positions elsewhere in CSA.
Those current city positions slated to be relocated would be the special projects director that currently oversees the reentry center and the community crisis response team initiative, the coordinator of the Office of Housing and Homelessness, the manager of community development initiatives, and the homeless health outreach staffer.
In all, Dalal said, the new department would have an annual budget of $6 million for each of the the next four years: with $2.1 million each year coming from the general fund, $1.9 million each year coming from federal block grants, and $2 million each year from the pandemic-era ARP aid.
“Our Duty” To Try This Out
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Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison.
Ultimately, all of the committee alders in the virtual meeting threw their support behind the proposal.
“We’re never really in a position financially to be able to try something that would be considered preventive,” Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison said. “We are a very reactive society. … So often we touch on things when it comes to mental health, substance abuse, reentry. We tapdance on them. This particular division is going to give us an opportunity to really make an impact, some type of change in the lives of our constituents.”
And if it doesn’t work after four years, she said, the city can drop it.
“I think this is our opportunity to collect the data to see whether having this coordinated effort really works,” said Board of Alders President and West River Alder Tyisha Walker-Myers. “So at this point, I’m in favor.”
East Rock Alder Charles Decker.
With at flood of federal pandemic-era financial aid coming to the city, East Rock Alder Charles Decker said, “we have an opportunity I’ve never seen before to try to make this major change to how we are addressing these major concerns.”
“I think it’s our duty to take it,” he said. “I think the only way we’re going to find out is in the doing.”
The three related pieces of legislation now advance to the full Board of Alders for further debate and a final vote in the fall.
Click here, here, and here to read some of the documents associated with the proposed Department of Community Resilience legislation.
But Why A New Department?
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Gary Doyens: Just rearranging the deck chairs.
Committee alders and a long-time city budget watchdog did push back against the Elicker Administration’s proposal — not in the mission of the new Department of Community Resilience, but in the notion that a new city department has to be created in order to do this work.
Why not just have this work take place under City Hall’s current prison reentry services office? Walker-Myers asked.
The city already has a plethora of private social service agencies that work in this space, from the Cornell Scott Hill Health Center to Yale New Haven Hospital to Yale University, Hill Alder Evelyn Rodriguez noted. Why not direct federal aid money directly to those organizations that already exist rather than creating new administrative costs at City Hall?
“I’m still not convinced,” added Hill Alder Ron Hurt. “The issues that this new department [will be facing] exist already. What is this department going to do differently that the other departments aren’t [already] doing? … What difference is this gonna make, developing a new department, when we have not addressed the existing issues” with the city workers and programs already in place?
During the public testimony section of the meeting, Westville resident Gary Doyens raised a near-identical set of concerns.
“What’s going to change?” he asked. “Are we going to see overdoses go down? Are we going to see homelessness go down? Are we going to see less violence from reentry felons? Are we going to see less housing insecurity? None of these problems are new …
“How is rearranging the deck chairs going to change the outcome? I’m concerned about the outcome both financially and, more importantly, for these problems — because these problems, from my view, are getting worse, not better.”
When asked to justify the creation of a new city department, Dalal time and again emphasized the value of having “a single point of leadership” and a coherent, stable departmental structure for city workers currently tasked with addressing separate but related social issues on their own.
He said that the proposed new data/GIS analyst position will ensure “data-based accountability and quality assurance programs” for the new department.
Grouping these initiatives in one place and having an experienced, qualified department head overseeing their work will put the city in a better position to advocate for and apply for additional funding from state and federal government, Dalal added.
“The intention is that by creating a kind of focal point that addresses these types of issues, that we would be much, much better positioned to apply for or attract additional funding,” Dalal said.
Earlier in his presentation, he stressed that the Biden Administration, the Lamont Administration, and the Connecticut state legislature appear poised to direct significant levels of aid to municipalities working on finding social service responses to issues that historically have been delegated to law enforcement.
“The bottom line is the city needs to strategically position itself to advocate for and benefit from these new resources,” Dalal said.
The only other person besides Doyens to speak up during the public hearing section of the meeting was Yale School of Medicine Peer Wellness Coach Richard Youins.
Youins said he has previously struggled with addiction and housing insecurity. He has experienced firsthand many of the social problems discussed at length Monday night. Based on his work mentoring people returning to New Haven from prison, he said, the city’s social service infrastructure as it currently exists is not working, and is not enough.
“If we don’t do it, if we don’t follow through, if we don’t hold ourselves accountable, we’ll be like the 50-year-old Urban Renewal that [Mayor] Richard Lee implemented in our city, and we’ll be paying the price for it as citizens of New Haven,” he said.
“I ask you to commit to something that will make [people on the margins of society] know that they matter, that they count, and that they can do better.”
Missing Information:
One has to laugh at Ald Decker - in his young life, he's never seen an opportunity like this one. There is a lot he hasn't seen.
It's not surprising the first time the Finance Committee sees this, they approve it despite a lot of unanswered substantive questions. This is what leads to episodes like the now defunct Great Escape and laundry business both of which came with heavy costs.