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Rafael Ramos at WNHH FM: “Government can impact people’s lives.”
After 25 years making sure porches didn’t crumble and the heat stayed on in renters’ apartments, Rafael Ramos is taking on a new challenge: making sure kids don’t eat lead paint at home and diners don’t eat poison at restaurants.
Ramos begins that challenge Oct. 4 as the city’s new director of environmental health programs.
He will oversee a team within the Health Department of 15 inspectors enforcing laws regulating lead paint in homes, water quality at beaches and pools, health standards at restaurants, and weights and measures (whether that gallon of gas or pound of ham is truly a gallon of gas or a pound of ham).
After a quarter century working in the city’s anti-blight Livable City Initiative (LCI), where he most recently served as a deputy director, Ramos could have retired. He could have put his feet up, devoted the rest of his time to his many volunteer pursuits, from running Fair Haven’s Bregamos theater and serving on the board of Junta for Progressive Action to taking neighborhood kids on annual camping trips.
Instead, he decided to put his inspection and enforcement experience to use in a new public-service mission.
“I’m not ready to retire,” Ramos said during an interview about his past work and future plans, on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program. “I like challenges. If I take 60 kids camping, you know I love challenge!”
In one sense, Ramos is returning to his roots: Before joining LCI in 1996, he worked as a lead paint inspector for the city of Bridgeport. Through decades of public service, he said, he has learned how “government can really impact people’s lives.”
Ramos’s new boss, Health Director Maritza Bond, called him the “ideal” person to fill the environmental health post at a time when the city has ramped up lead-paint enforcement after ending years of litigation on the issue.
“Everyone’s really excited” to work with Ramos, Bond said. “He’s a great person. He’s passionate about public health.”
The post has been vacant since the retirement two years ago of its longtime previous occupant, Paul Kowalski. The health department has hired more lead inspectors since then. It has pivoted to direct outreach in neighborhoods like Newhallville, Dixwell, Fair Haven, and the Hill to get prevention advice to renters and remediation help to property owners. It has started a free training program for landlords’ maintenance crews.
Ramos said he believes in leading with “education” before “enforcement. “I’m a true believer in voluntary compliance,” he said. But he has no hesitation pivoting to citing people who still refuse to comply with the rules.
Click on the video to watch the full discussion with Rafael Ramos on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.”
Mr. Ramos is a great New Havener.