Zoom
Monday’s virtual Board of Alders meeting.
The Board of Alders voted unanimously in support of transferring $100,000 in city funds towards paying for a planning study for a new social worker-centered mobile crisis response team.
Local legislators took that vote Monday night during the latest regular bimonthly meeting of the full Board of Alders. The virtual meeting took place online on Zoom and YouTube Live.
Alders unanimously backed transferring an aggregate of $100,000 from four vacant salary budget lines in four different departments to fund a planning study for the proposed crisis response team.
Modeled after community response teams already in place in other cities and states across the country, New Haven’s version would send out social workers and healthcare experts to 911 calls for service that are related to behavioral and mental health issues, substance abuse, and homelessness.
Community Services Administration (CSA) officials are in the process of pitching the idea to community management teams across the city. They’ve already won the support of a group of local clergy, who lauded the Elicker Administration for promoting a “non-intrusive approach” to emergency response that does not overburden police officers.
The $100,000 transferred Monday night is slated to be used to pay a contractor to lead the planning process around developing such a program.
City staffers told an aldermanic committee last month month that the next step after a planning study is complete would be to establish a six-month pilot program, before potentially transitioning to a new full-time city crisis response team.
Escape Escaped
Also on Monday night, the alders took one last vote on the long-delayed, never-realized Escape teen center and youth homeless shelter.
They unanimously voted in support of an order that will “unsequester” $200,000 in capital funds that the city and alders first budgeted in Fiscal Year 2017 – 2018 (FY18) for necessary repairs for the planned “Escape” site at 654 Orchard St. in a building owned by Bethel AME Church.
“This request makes funds available to support work at the teen center building that will allow the property owner to obtain a certificate of occupancy, which will enable the city to terminate the contract this year,” said Edgewood Alder and Finance Committee Chair Evette Hamilton.
That is: The city’s lease with Bethel required it to leave the proposed teen center site in a habitable condition were the city to pull out of the agreement. Now that the city plans to do just that, it needed to invest upwards of $200,000 to bring the half-constructed site back to usability.
Click here, here, here, and here for background on the Escape.
So the church and our former employee - spent what, $500K on a dump the church knew was uninhabitable. And they meet and pray - for more suckers and suck ups.