Another man and another woman came knocking on Westville doors Thursday night. They came to listen, not to peddle bogus magazine “subscriptions” for charity.
But they did hear about those magazines.
The man was Otis Johnson (at left in above photo), New Haven’s Fair Rent Commission chief. The woman was city Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Jennifer Pugh (at right).
Both have worked in City Hall for a long time. Thursday night they and 18 of their colleagues left City Hall to fan out across lower Westville to bring City Hall to the people — by asking them for feedback on city services and their neighborhood.
Teams of city government department heads canvass several neighborhoods a year. (Click here to read an in-depth account of a 2010 venturing out into Wooster Square by City Hall’s top lawyer and a top housing authority official.) The department heads try to answer any questions at the door; if they don’t know the answer, they forward the question to another official to respond.
Paul Bass Photo
In the Westville flats Thursday evening, Johnson and Pugh heard from one neighbor about her displeasure with tertiary-tier street snow plowing. Nearby, on Central Avenue, Samuel Cohen (at right in photo) told them about having a few bikes stolen. And he told them about the young people who had been knocking on doors earlier this week asking people to donate money to allegedly buy magazines and books for the Mitchell branch library. Pugh knew about that scam; she had read about it here.
