Thomas Breen photo
Elicker (center) poses for a photo with immigrant activists from ULA.
City Hall was filled with winter jackets, striped sweaters and crumpled khakis and jeans — rather than tuxedos and gowns — at the official party welcoming New Haven’s new mayor.
Over 100 New Haveners dressed down to attend the event Sunday afternoon on the ground floor of City Hall.
Newly elected Mayor Justin Elicker held the free casual affair in a public space as a contrast to the customary big-ticket banquet-hall mayoral ball, to make a point: that his newly minted administration will be accessible to the general public.
City residents mixed with government staffers and department heads at an event that eschewed any kind of program or formal structure.
For three hours, attendees filtered in an out of the reception, leisurely chatting over turkey sandwiches prepared by Petals Market and chocolate chip cookies baked by Gateway Community College culinary students and Herbie Hancock covers played by the High School in the Community jazz ensemble (pictured).
Coming four days after Elicker was sworn into office as the city’s 51st mayor, the casual nature of the reception represented a sharp break with the tone and formality and cost of past mayoral inaugural balls—black-tie affairs and fundraisers with tickets as high as $250 a piece.
Sandwich spread provided by Petals Market.
Few ties of any color were on display at Sunday’s reception. Elicker himself wore a blue-grey suit jacket over a light-blue spread collar shirt.
When he addressed the crowd half-way through during the event’s only semi-formal speech, he spoke not from behind a podium, but instead behind a music stand with a microphone clipped to the top.
Standing alongside his wife Natalie and his youngest daughter April, Elicker (pictured) said the goal of Sunday’s party was to “set the tone about accessibility of government by opening up the doors of City Hall today to you all to ensure that you know that this is your home. This is your hour. This is your church. This is your community. You are always welcome here.”
“This City Hall is going to be accessible to everyone,” he continued. “Nobody will be turned away regardless of what you look like or your ability to pay.”
As they ambled about between different tables and benches and animated conversations, many in attendance lauded Elicker for continuing with the informal ease of access to the highest reaches of city government that he promised while on the campaign trail, where he handed out his personal cellphone number at nearly every stop.
“I’m here to support Elicker, and I want to be present for the start of this change,” said West Division Street resident Lillie Chambers, pictured wearing a white blouse and gray cardigan alongside Dixwell resident Adair Franklin.
“It shows his commitment to community,” Chambers added.
Pat Solomon — pictured sporting a pink sweater and black-and-purple scarf alongside fellow city staffers Evan Trachten and Jeff Moreno —agreed.
“I think this is indicative of his personality,” she said about the newly minted mayor. She called Elicker “humble” and “very observant,” and commended him for bringing a cross-section of New Haven’s ethnic and racial and neighborhood diversity into City Hall for the event.
“I hope they do this at least twice a year,” said Trachten. He said he had seen on Sunday not only colleagues from City Hall, but also residents from Dixwell and Newhallville and the Hill whom he has worked with over the years in his professional capacity at the city’s anti-blight Livable City Initiative (LCI).
“I love that there are no barriers” to city government and its leadership at an event like this, he added.
“It’s different,” Bethel AME Church Rev. Steven Cousin, wearing a grey blazer and a black-and-white pinstriped spread collar. “But different is good.”
There are plenty of people who may want to talk to and celebrate with the mayor but cannot afford an inaugural ball ticket or tuxedo, he said.
Sunday’s event opened the doors of City Hall to residents who may have followed the election but had never even visited the center of city government, he added. And it did so in an informal, accessible, and non-intimidating way.
“You have to commend him for that.”
Newhallville Democratic Ward Committee Co-Chair Oskar Havyarinama — wearing a black-and-white striped suit jacket above a blue-checkered collared shirt — said he hopes the city saved a few dollars on such a low-budget celebration.
“The question is: ‘Where will that money go?’” he asked. Ideally, he said, towards social services … or lower taxes.
City library staffer Bill Beckett donned a tan, wide-collared jacket and a green-and-white checkered scarf for the event. He said he too has been encouraged by Elicker’s more casual approach to public office so far.
“I am very pleased that he rode a bike to work,” said Beckett, who makes his daily commute by bicycle as well. “I feel like I have a champion.”
The one attendee this reporter spoke to who lamented the lack of a more formal celebration in honor of the new elected leadership was Fair Havener Mishele E. Rodriguez, who sported a fuzzy purple cardigan and a floral-patterned scarf.
“I wish there was an inaugural ball to celebrate everyone who worked so hard” during the campaign season, she said. Rodriguez helped lead City Clerk Michael Smart’s successful re-election campaign, and works as one of his two social media managers.
The informal gathering was nice, she said, but suggested it should have been done in addition to, not in place of, a more dressed-up affair.
Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch Elicker’s brief address at Sunday’s inaugural reception.
Was the pic from the balcony at the height of the attendance? Seems sparse.