Jack O’Melia photos
Rev. Andal at Hamden, New Haven candidate forum: “It is our faith that compels us to build a better world.”
“Yes.” “Yes.” “Yes*.”
“No.”
Four Hamden and New Haven Democratic mayoral candidates consistently offered that litany of answers to policy demands posed by a grassroots organizing group at a public health and safety forum.
Congregations Organized for a New Connecticut (CONECT) hosted the candidate assembly Wednesday evening at Congregation Mishkan Israel in Hamden, two weeks before a three-way Sept. 14 Hamden Democratic mayoral primary including incumbent Mayor Curt Leng, DTC-endorsed Lauren Garrett, and political newcomer Peter Cyr.
In-person crowd Wednesday night — many more joined through Zoom.
New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, who does not face a Democratic mayoral opponent this year, was invited to participate as well.
Elicker drew the line on each question with a firm “no” to each question, which concerned a policy request by the group; he said the questions required more nuanced answers, which he provided.
Meanwhile every Hamden candidate answered positively, with an important asterisk, or caveat, from Leng.
The event was built around a shared theme of public safety as well as unity across municipal lines. Hamden and New Haven candidates also answered distinct sets of questions specific to their communities.
The three Hamden runners got the chance to address their stances on environmental justice, affordable housing, and police reform. (You can read previous Independent articles documenting their positions on those issues here and here.) The three issues discussed within New Haven concerned rates of asthma, street safety in Fair Haven and gun violence prevention.
Each candidate had one minute to respond to three questions. The moderators — Reverend Philippe Andal of Community Baptist Church in New Haven and Congregation Mishkan Israel’s Rabbi Brian Immerman — required each candidate to provide a concrete “yes” or “no” answer to each of those inquiries.
The questions aimed at Hamden candidates were relatively broad and less binding than those put to Mayor Elicker. For the most part, they resulted in resounding “yes’s” across candidates — with one exception on the part of Mayor Leng on the topic of police reform. Hence the asterisk.
Hamden mayoral hopefuls were asked:
• Will you commit to working to pressure the Olin Corporation to remediate and preserve Six Lakes?
• Will you commit to increasing mixed-used, multifamily and affordable housing in parts of Hamden that currently lack it?
• Will you commit to creating a non-police crisis response team to include social workers and mental health professionals that reflect Hamden’s racial diversity to respond to relevant emergency calls? Will you commit to replacing the current Police Commission with more proportional representation from the neighborhoods most impacted by policing and seek racially diverse appointees?
The first two points gave way to an easy “yes” from each candidate. Differences in how the candidates considered Hamden’s police commission proved to be one of few evident distinctions made that night between their views.
Mayor Curt Leng: Stands by current police commission.
“Saying people on the commission are bad and taking them off is not the answer,” Leng said of the police commission. He said he has been proud to appoint members such as Kim Washington, the founder of anti-gun violence organization Mothers Demand Action.
Garrett noted that provisions in a proposed charter that was vetoed by the Legislative Council last month would have required district representation within the police commission, meaning all nine members would be elected from a different one of Hamden’s nine districts. Specifically, Kathleen Schomaker and Berita Rowe-Lewis, two incumbent council members running for reelection on Leng’s slate, voted against the document. “Republicans working with Mayor Leng’s allies on the council” rejected the possibility of proportional representation, Garrett argued. Read about the work Garrett is doing to get the vetoed charter onto the ballot here.
Leng did not respond to Garrett’s assertions during his own one-minute presentation.
All three agreed to pursue creation of a non-police crisis response team, like one in the works in New Haven. Only Peter Cyr brought up Hamden’s new police union contract, which guarantees no layoffs of officers for three years. He said changing that clause is crucial to real police accountability.
Candidates’ campaign strategies were on display Wednesday night. Leng focused on the concrete work he has done in office to demonstrate his commitment to each issue. For example, he brought up the town’s work with a street outreach worker team. That program, led by Leonard Jahad, works throughout Hamden and New Haven to respond to work with families impacted by shootings and other forms of youth violence. (Read more about that here.)
Lauren Garrett: Wears the DTC label.
Lauren Garrett pointed the audience of over 200 to her campaign website during each response, saying she had already outlined her stance on the issues online as well as through the Democratic Town Committee’s municipal platform.
Though Leng did not mention his slate, Garrett brought up her town committee-endorsed team of primary candidates — and the fact that she’ll be on Row A on Sept. 14 — virtually every time she spoke. “I’m a coalition builder,” she said, describing how she would treat the job in a collaborative fashion.
At the end of the one-minute presentations, each Hamden candidate had three minutes to discuss their plan to address high taxes in Hamden. Leng said that while “taxes are obnoxiously high,” he claimed that he has put the town in a superior financial position over the course of his term. He pointed out that the pension was fully funded this year for the first time ever and noted that he changed the town’s fund balance from negative to stable. Leng argued that Hamden is already on a clear track to economic stability.
Garrett shook her head.
“Taxes have gone up 25 percent” since Leng took office, she said. “We have $1.3 billion in liabilities and the most debt per capita of any state in Connecticut. Our bond rating is just one step above junk status.
“The mayor has had six years to right the ship and has failed. .. We can’t trust the current administration to clean up the mess that they’ve created.”
She said that “tax cuts are not enough,” and said that her efforts will be channeled to bringing business to Hamden to stimulate the local economy and increase town revenues.
Peter Cyr: “There’s so much smoke and mirrors,”
Though Cyr largely refrained from criticizing Leng for most of the night, he also said that “there’s so much smoke and mirrors it’s really hard to figure out what’s going on … Yes, there’s mismanagement.”
He called it unrealistic to lower taxes just through cutting spending. He said he would focus on getting increased funding from the state level moving forward. He also claimed that one could “directly attribute the deficit” to Quinnipiac University’s tax-exempt status. “They’re our number one employer, but everytime they grow it’s more taxable property off our roles,” he said.
Elicker listens to individuals posing questions through Zoom.
Meanwhile, Elicker celebrated the fact that he would not have to right Hamden’s financial ship.
“Thank goodness I do not have to talk about Hamden taxes,” he joked.
The questions that were directed towards Elicker were more specific and action-oriented than those put to the Hamden candidates, resulting in one “no answer” after another. He faced no Democratic competitors who might have pressured him to answer differently.
Those questions included:
• Will you allocate $2 million of American Rescue Plan funds to hire Community Health Workers to support New Haven public school students with asthma?
• Will you commit to addressing at least 75 percent of the 85 street repairs and improvements we have identified in Fair Haven? (CONECT sent Elicker a list of those 85 items a week before the event).
• Will you facilitate public, monthly sessions to provide updates on the status and progress of the Department of Community Resilience and the Community Crisis Response Team and seek community input?
The answer was “no” to all three. Elicker asserted that such procedural and financial decisions must go through a process of community and administrative approval before he can commit to any one of them.
Instead, he highlighted the work he has already done to confront each issue. He said that New Haven already has nurses in every school and has funded new speed bumps around Fair Haven. He proposed that those looking to become more involved in crisis response join the city’s Homelessness Advisory Commission.
“You should want this,” Elicker said to the audience about his negative responses. His answers, he noted, represented an awareness and respect of rules and administrative structures.
The entire event virtually evaded debate, focusing on a “relational” conversation, in the words of Rev. Andal.
An apparent goal of the evening was to encourage Hamden residents to pick a candidate they believe would work best across municipal lines alongside Elicker.
Elicker stated that while Hamden and New Haven are “distinct and governed separately, there’s just a thin line that separates them.”
“There’s overwhelming overlap between these two cities,” he said, adding that the municipalities are “linked” by the “wonderful things that happen” as well as “the issues that plague” them.
“I have to admit I’ve gone to Hamden town hall and protested myself.”
“Elicker nailed it,” Cyr said. “Crime knows no borders.” Neither does Covid-19.
At the conclusion of the forum, Rev. Andal asked one last question: Will you commit to a public working relationship with CONECT to continue confronting issues of public health and safety?
This time, all four answered in the affirmative.
Not to be crass here but it's miraculous that the photographer got a picture of Garrett looking up because she literally read off her phone for every answer the entire night.