Mayor’s State Of The City: ​“Strengthening”

Back in the Aldermanic Chamber for his first in-person, live-audience annual address since the start of the pandemic, Mayor Justin Elicker extolled a ​“strengthening” city that has been bolstered by a sudden surfeit of state, federal, and Yale cash.

The second-term mayor offered that assessment Monday night during his latest ​“State of the City” address. 

He delivered the 20-minute speech to the Board of Alders and several dozen city staffers, department heads, and members of the public who filled the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall. (See below to watch and read the speech in full.)

The speech marked a significant departure from Elicker’s previous State of the City addresses on at least two fronts.

For one, it took place in person, before a live audience of real people gathered together — with face masks on — in the same room. 

Last year, speaking just as Covid-19 vaccines had started trickling out to the general public, Elicker gave his State of the City address in an all-but-empty Aldermanic Chamber while local legislators and other ​“attendees” watched online via Zoom.

Monday’s speech was also perhaps the most optimistic State of the City address yet from a mayor who warned of New Haven’s ​“precarious” state his first year as mayor, and sought out ​“hope” admit the wreckage of Covid-19 during his second.

The reason for such optimism emerged in the final section of Monday night’s speech, when Elicker — just as he did during his inauguration speech — celebrated the opportunities that come with the torrent of new municipal revenue and federal aid heading towards the city.

Those new sources of cash include a $50 million bump to the state’s annual Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) reimbursements to New Haven, a planned $10 million annual increase in Yale University’s voluntary payments to the city, and $115 million in one-time federal pandemic-relief aid through the American Rescue Plan Act.

Over the course of his speech, Elicker lauded his administration for putting that money to use on better equipping Livable City Initiative (LCI) housing code inspectors, providing summer jobs for 750 young people last year, purchasing 500 police surveillance cameras, and — pending aldermanic approval — investing tens of millions of dollars of ARPA aid in youth centers, vo-tech education, rental and downpayment assistance programs, and a new New Haven Land Bank.

“You can’t support individuals experiencing homelessness without funding to do so,” Elicker said during the finance-focused conclusion to his speech.

“You can’t create a new youth center without funding to do so. 

“You can’t plow or pave a street, trim a tree, fix a sidewalk, without funding to do so. 

“You can’t educate our children, without funding to do so.”

Elicker said that the additional annual funding from the state and Yale in particular ​“took us off the precipice. It allowed us to stabilize our finances. 

“And, yes, New Haven still faces financial headwinds in the future because of our pension obligations, increasing health care costs and debt. It won’t be easy. But this year will be dramatically different than last. From a budget perspective we finally can stand on two feet, in a position of strength.” 

Mayor Justin Elicker's 2022 State Of The City Address

President Walker-Meyers, members of the Board of Alders, distinguished guests and New Haven residents – it is an honor to be before you to offer an update on the state of our city.

Madam President, I’d like to take a moment to congratulate you on your re-election last month to the Board’s top post. I appreciate the long hours and hard work you, the rest of your leadership team and the entire board put in to serve the residents of this city.

This event, now my 3rd state of the city address, is a time for us to reflect. Two years ago in this chamber we were maskless – not yet fully aware of the invisible threat already circulating in our community. Then last year – after nearly a year of fear and uncertainty, of isolation and loss, we had a safe and effective vaccine. The pandemic was still taking lives and causing hardship – but the optimism was palpable.

Now, I’m an optimistic person – but not all optimism is the same. 

Our collective optimism in February of 2020 relied on the bliss of being ignorant to what lied ahead, while our February of 2021 optimism was undergirded by a hope that vaccines would deal a quick and decisive knock- out punch to COVID-19. 

Today’s optimism is different, and it stems from two years of proof that New Haven and our residents have what it takes to fight and what it takes to care for each other. 

We have the grit and determination to sacrifice, to push through, to have difficult conversations, and to get back up after we’ve been knocked down.

And today’s optimism is grounded in the remarkable progress the City of New Haven has made over this past year in our support for young people, our work on housing, our work on wealth creation, our work to grow our transportation hubs, our work to stabilize our city’s finances, that put us in a stronger position than we have been in for decades. We’re hitting our stride.

New Haven we’re hitting our stride.

If COVID-19 in 2020 was an earthquake, then 2021 is when we felt the aftershock. Not as acute or jarring as the initial event, but instead a sustained tremor we just couldn’t ignore.

The crunch in the supply chain and tension in the labor market made it challenging for our small businesses to keep products on the shelves and to hire enough folks to keep operations running. 

The year of remote learning brought to the surface mental health and social emotion learning challenges that have plagued young people for years.

After two decades of declining violence across America – cities like New Haven saw the 2020 spike in violence continue and accelerate.

COVID-19 started as a health challenge, but quickly sprawled into an everything challenge.

Someday soon the masks will go away, you’ll go into a crowded restaurant without a second thought, and eight straight hours of zoom meetings will be a thing of the past. But, the aftershocks of the pandemic will persist.

If you were new to this city, you might ask why. Why if the pandemic is over, or simply becoming endemic, would our kids need historic investments into their mental health to get them on track, why do our local businesses need a helping hand, why do we hear the echo of gun fire so often. 

But, for those of us who aren’t new we know. It’s because these issues, these challenges are not new. Sure they look slightly different, they may have compounded, become more acute and more omnipresent – but they’re not new.

But, I’m confident in saying our city has never been better positioned to tackle these long standing challenges and do so in a way that equitably lifts up every neighborhood.

2020 was one of the deadliest years of gun violence in our nation’s past two decades. And 2021 started off with an incredibly violent month for New Haven – we had 5 homicides in a single month. Lost five members of our community. This level of violence is heartbreaking and completely unacceptable.

I can tell you that there is no duty that I take more seriously than my responsibility to ensure members of our community are safe.

When you talk with individuals involved in violence reduction they will tell you that unwinding these cycles is hard and takes a long time. But there are strategies that we know work – they’re backed by evidence and have a long track record in our community. 

But, the pandemic in 2020 led to the suspension or alteration of many critical services in the area of violence prevention.

Project Longevity and Project Safe Neighborhood – programs that hold regular call-ins with individuals at risk of engaging in or being victim of violence crime didn’t hold in-person call-ins in 2020, but we re-started them in 2021. 

Youth Connect continued to meet but not with the same in-person engagement that is vital to keep our most at-risk young people on track.

2020 was also a year without the other robust youth services we’re used to seeing. 

Summer camps and Youth at Work are critical tools to keeping young people engaged in productive activity, help them learn new skills, meet new friends, and earn some extra money.

We knew that this wasn’t sustainable. We also knew that restoring this programing to previous levels wasn’t enough. 

After a year of virtually no summer engagement and a year of distanced learning our young people needed more. 

We matched the moment and invested $1.5 million into summer and youth engagement. We expanded camp options and hours and we offered a summer job for the first time in our city’s history to every single young person who applied – over 750 young people.

And beyond this historic programmatic funding, we re-opened the Q‑House – to deliver high quality services to young people in the heart of our Dixwell neighborhood. Without the hard work of Alder Morrison, city Engineer Giovanni Zinn, and so many others, this wouldn’t have happened. 

And the Shack has come online, thanks to the support of our state delegation, city support, and most importantly the passion and tenacity of Alder Smith.

New Haven returns dozens of residents every year from incarceration. These individuals have paid their debt to society, but often face incredible obstacles when returning home – from employment and housing to substance use and mental health challenges – they need our support.

Like other programs, our re-entry work was impacted in 2020 by the pandemic, but in the early days of 2021 we cut the ribbon on the re-entry welcome center. This new one-stop-shop offers wrap-around services for individuals re-entering our community. 

And in their first year of operation, they served more than 350 individuals. Project M.O.R.E. is a leader in our community and the work they’re doing is incredible. Our team will continue to bring stakeholders together to support the services being offered at the welcome center.

Conversations around public safety all too often start with the police, but instead I will close this section with police – because they’re just one part of a city-wide strategy to address violence in our city.

After years of declining numbers of officers within the department, walking beats had taken a real hit. This face-to-face interaction between resident and officer forms the foundations of strong relationships. 

New Haven is a leader in community policing. Last year we increased our investment into summer walking and biking beats, we expanded PAL camp, and Police Department hosted community events – like the police versus fire department basketball game.

We also made a large push in recruitment and this year we had the largest applicant pool for New Haven Police Officers in a long time – the group of more than 500 applicants was also more diverse and a higher percentage of New Haven residents than previous applicant classes.

Currently we have 30 new recruits in the academy. Slowly but surely, we’re rebuilding the department – adding the capacity to deepen our community policing model.

This year we will build on that work. Looking ahead we have so much to be optimistic about.

We have sent to the Board our proposal to invest $10 million in American Rescue Plan funding into expanded youth engagement and employment opportunities.

Later this month Mayors and First Selectman, in concert with our legislative delegation, will call on the state of Connecticut to do its part, by making an historic investment into our young people too. Robust summer camps and youth employment for every young person who desires opportunity shouldn’t be the aspiration, but instead it should be the new standard.

And we have more work to be done in order to ensure that neighborhoods have access to a youth center – the Q‑House in Dixwell and the Shack in West Rock will touch lives and shape the trajectory of our young people. But there are more opportunities – like in Trowbridge Square in the Hill.

And we will build on last year’s work to improve the Police Department. Last week I swore in seven new Sergeants – these new leaders in our department look like our community and are the latest step in our efforts to rebuild the department. 

Next month we will be promoting more officers to Detective, adding much needed capacity in our efforts to hold perpetrators of violence in our community accountable. 

But, more Sergeants and Detectives alone isn’t enough to address our clearance rate, which is why, thanks to your support, we’re funding 500 new cameras that will be deployed to assist in investigations. 

There may be a few vocal doubters of the utility of cameras, but we’ve talked with our counterparts in Hartford and Bridgeport, cities that have many more cameras than New Haven. They have said that cameras have been used in nearly every homicide they have solved. Cameras won’t solve everything by any means, but they will be a critical tool for achieving the goal of solving homicides and bringing justice for so many families and friends of our lost community members.

Taken together these efforts will build on the work we started in 2021 and work to make our city safer for all residents.

Next, I’d like to talk about housing. 

In many ways, New Haven is booming. You look around the corner – cranes in the sky, buildings going up all over the place and more in the pipeline — Audubon and Orange, Olive and Chapel, Howe Street, Whitney Avenue, Blake Street, the Fusco development on Long Wharf, Dixwell Plaza. It’s remarkable. It’s truly remarkable.

On the other hand, so many New Haveners are deeply struggling when it comes to housing. Just yesterday someone called me about her heat being out and the landlord being slow to respond.

We all know countless stories – of people’s rent going up and housing quality going down.

When we think about creating a safe community for every resident – the idea of safety must extend into the home. Every resident in our community deserves to have a safe AND affordable place to live. Far, far too many in our community currently do not. 

Last year we dramatically accelerated the work to improve affordability and housing safety in many ways.

On safety, instead of fighting, we sat down with New Haven Legal Assistance because we both share the goal of keeping our young people safe from lead poisoning. We know that lead exposure can have devastating life-long health and cognitive consequences. 

The Health Department has revamped our inspection procedures, digitized the recordkeeping, significantly increased the number of inspectors and eliminated the case backlog. Now action is taken immediately to help New Haven’s most vulnerable children when exposed to lead.

Over the past year our health department has secured more than $6 million in federal Housing and Urban Development grant money to scale up abatement programs and inspections for lead and other home hazards – such as radon and mold. 

And LCI has increased inspections for safety related code violations. Each inspector is now responsible for conducting at least six inspections per day and they’re equipped with new technology to record and upload inspection reports in real time. 

And this Board is poised to provide LCI with yet another tool when, I hope, you pass the natural person’s ordinance, allowing us to find out what real person is behind the LLC that mistreats a resident.

Together, we also implemented this past year one of the most aggressive expansions in affordable housing policies and developments the city has seen. 

Providing new tools like accessary dwelling units to create more housing supply. And, passing one of the most progressive inclusionary zoning ordinances to require affordable and deeply affordable units as a part of new developments. 

Now, when developers invest into our community – that development will benefit everyone by increasing the supply of affordable units.

The number of new affordable units projected to come online – between Beacon, Beulah, Ashmun and Canal, Thompson-Winchester and others is remarkable.

On top of all this progress, we’ve submitted to you all a proposal to spend an additional $10 million on housing initiatives including expanding our down payment assistance programs, rental assistance, a fair housing fund, and more.

Finally, on the housing front we’re proposing the formation of a New Haven Land Bank and seeding it with $4 million of funds – this will allow us to be quick to the market to secure strategically important property before a large out of town developer does, giving us better control of the development direction in our community.

Each one of these initiatives – ADUs, inclusionary zoning, natural persons, LCI and the Health Departments operational improvements, hundreds of new affordable units coming online, expanded down payment assistance and rental assistance programs, the Land Bank – each one of these doesn’t change our city on their own or in an instant. 

But taken together, over time because of the work that’s gone on in this chamber and by the people that work in this building and by advocates outside this building, we will have dramatically changed the trajectory of our city’s housing – to be more humane, inclusive, equitable.

New Haven is the economic hub of our region. A world-renowned research institution sits at our city center, our Hill neighborhood is home to a top-of-the-line hospital, and cultural institutions like the Shubert Theatre and Bregamos dot our city streets.

Prominent new businesses bring growth and opportunity. Halda Therapeutics is developing lifesaving drugs at Winchester Works and contributing to our burgeoning bioscience industry.

Without projects like Winchester Works and other business incubators across the city we wouldn’t have been able to break ground on 101 College Street last summer – a project that will bring 700 – 1,000 jobs to the Elm City. 

And our neighborhoods are home to hundreds of small businesses both existing and new, that are the lifeblood of our city’s future.

You’ve heard about these projects. And you’ve heard just how important it is that we now have a viable airport and viable train station for years to come to help the development and growth in New Haven.

But we all know this growth must not benefit just one group of people, but that all New Haven residents must benefit – not just with a short-term job or a one-time subsidy – but with true creation of wealth. 

Existing City programs like DNA of the entrepreneur have assisted new entrepreneurs gain the skills needed to start new businesses – I’ve been at many of their ribbon cuttings. But now it’s time to expand on these programs. 

With your collaboration, we will expand the work of the City’s Financial Empowerment Center, support creative entrepreneurs in a way that is consistent with the City’s new cultural equity plan, provide direct grant support to small businesses with an emphasis on black and brown business owners, and more.

And we’ve talked a lot about youth programming and employment, but our young people also need to benefit from the growing economic opportunity in New Haven. Our commitment doesn’t stop when summer ends or when they’re getting ready to leave high school. 

We have a duty to ensure that if you’re a young person in this city that you have a path to a career that pays enough to support a family. And while a 4‑year degree is right for some young people, we must not think that is the only option.

This year we will be doing more to invest into vocational and technical education. By investing $8 million in American Rescue Plan funding, we will launch a Vo-Tech initiative with the goal of creating a vocational and technical school and a training and entrepreneurial pipeline so that young people – no matter who they are – are ensured the opportunity for a good paying job and a bright future.

The State of the City is a time to step back and look at things through a bigger lens. 

Do you remember the State of the City address last year? Because I think it underscores just how far we’ve come. 

I was standing here, alone, in the Board of Alders chamber speaking to a camera. I spoke of hope, but at the same time one of the centerpieces of my speech was about just how dire the financial health of our city was. 

And the people in this room today know better than anyone that our City’s finances tie into every aspect of how we serve our residents. 

You can’t support individuals experiencing homelessness without funding to do so. 

You can’t create a new youth center, without funding to do so. 

You can’t plow or pave a street, trim a tree, fix a sidewalk, without funding to do so. 

You can’t educate our children, without funding to do so.

I specifically called out the State and Yale University about their duty to do more. 

Less than a month after this speech I submitted two budgets to the Board Alders – one that I’m sure you remember well – because it included massive cuts and a significant tax increase if we did not increase state aide and get a larger commitment from Yale.

Since then we have seen historic changes – first with the increase in PILOT from the state from $41M/year to $90M/year in direct payments. 

Second with the increase from Yale University from $13M/year to $23M/year in direct payments. 

Just think about that. An increase of almost $60M annually. The city’s General Fund Budget is just over $600M. Last year we were able to increase our revenues, with no additional cost to our taxpayers, by almost 10%. That’s remarkable.

That additional funding took us off the precipice. It allowed us to stabilize our finances. And, yes, New Haven still faces financial headwinds in the future because of our pension obligations, increasing health care costs and debt. It wont be easy. But this year will be dramatically different than last. From a budget perspective we finally can stand on two feet, in a position of strength.

And as I’ve talked about this evening, these changes combined with the American Rescue Plan Funds allow us to ensure our young people get a summer job.

They help our residents have support for a down payment on a home so they can start building wealth/equity.

They provide seed funding to help a resident start a new business.

They provide safe spaces for a young person to go in their neighborhood with mentors and support.

They deepen the work around protecting our climate.

All while we do the small, but important things people expect from local government. 

Three years ago I said the state of our city was precarious. Last year I said the state of our City was hopeful. And this year, we’re hitting our stride, and the state of the city is strengthening. 

We have much work to do, but look at how far we’ve already come, as we walk towards a day when in New Haven every resident has the opportunity to thrive.