Thomas Breen photo
Karen DuBois-Walton at Tuesday’s presser.
Spend $10 million of New Haven’s incoming federal pandemic relief on police accountability and gun violence prevention.
Karen DuBois-Walton issued that fiscal call to action Tuesday evening, detailing for the first time since she announced her exploratory bid for mayor some of her top policy priorities for City Hall.
Those plans are included in a four-page write up of a speech that DuBois-Walton intended to read at a public safety-oriented press conference she held Tuesday afternoon alongside the Amistad memorial in front of City Hall.
Click here to read those remarks in full.
DuBois-Walton currently runs the city’s public housing authority, and is exploring a Democratic primary run for mayor against first-term incumbent Justin Elicker.
DuBois-Walton supporters outside City Hall.
DuBois-Walton changed her plan for Tuesday’s press conference because of the afternoon-long standoff between police and an active shooter in Branford. She and a dozen supporters decided to pivot from talking about her American Rescue Plan ideas in person, and instead to collectively mourn the spike in gun violence that has taken place across the city, state, and country so far this year.
“We stand here in solidarity with our neighbors and our friends in Branford, as that signals just another in a horrifically long line of episodes of gun violence and trauma in our community” in recent days, DuBois-Walton said outside of City Hall.
“This all takes a toll,” she said about the Branford incident, as well as about this weekend’s shooting deaths of a 3‑year-old and a 16-year-old in Hartford, a police officer’s shooting and killing of a 20-year-old Black man in Minnesota, and the nine homicides that have taken place in New Haven so far this year.
“That takes an emotional toll. That steals a part of our spirit, our energy, our health, our mental wellbeing. We need to not be afraid to acknowledge that, and not be afraid to draw on the power of healing and the amazing resources in this community that are available to us.”
Youth outreach workers and anti-violence activists Alkim Salaam, Sean Reeves, and William “Juneboy” Outlaw.
After the presser, her exploratory campaign released a draft of the remarks she had planned on reading. They included suggestions for how City Hall should spend some of the $94 million in federal aid its slated to receive thanks to the American Rescue Act.
While she declined to go into detail during Tuesday’s press conference about what specific steps she would like to see City Hall take to make New Haven a safer city, the pre-prepared remarks her campaign sent to the Independent after the presser offered some insight on what kinds of services DuBois-Walton would champion were she to make her expected run for mayor official.
Her remarks called on the city to spend $10 million of the estimated $94 million it expects to receive from American Rescue Act federal funds “specifically to address police accountability and the prevention of gun violence.”
What might that look like?
DuBois-Walton exploratory committee press person, Will Viederman.
“First, we must invest in community-led efforts to disrupt violence and in community-driven healing and restorative practices,” she wrote.
That means supporting the work already being done by organizations like the Bereavement Care Network, the CT Violence Intervention Program, Ice the Beef, SPORT Academy, Black Lives Matter New Haven, and Citywide Youth Coalition.
“Second, we must invest in community organizations that bring civilian partnerships to deal with matters in our community that should not be police matters.”
She referenced the Yale Child Study Center-New Haven Police Department partnership as an example of the type of program that the city should support and expand through additional funding.
(The Elicker administration is currently in the process of building out a community crisis response team, which would have trained social workers instead of police officers respond to certain 911 calls.)
“Third, we should make targeted investments in models that create opportunity for our community members and provide options to young people such that turning to the street never feels like the only option.” DuBois-Walton cited a local universal basic income as one such potential way to help New Haveners rise out of poverty.
She then called for the city to use these Covid-era rescue dollars to enact the police accountability recommendations included in the comprehensive legislation championed by New Haven State Sen. Gary Winfield and signed into law last summer.
DuBois-Walton lists some police accountability measures worth funding as:
• Building up “alternative systems for intervention,” such as “non-armed professionals for calls for service around homelessness complaints, neighbor disputes, intoxication, sex work, and other engagements that don’t require an armed officer.”
• Revising the city’s use-of-force policies, and creating a local taskforce to “engage in comprehensive review and implementation of best practices in use-of-force.”
• Completing a deployment study to best understand how many police officers New Haven really needs on its force.
• Implementing screening and wellness reviews of officers, with a focus on PTSD.
• Incorporating mandatory intrinsic bias, anti-racism, and anti-bias training and use of force and de-escalation training “as an ongoing practice for effective relationships in the community”
• Developing a pipeline program beginning in middle school to recruit New Haveners to join the local force.
• And strengthening support for officers “who adhere to the duty-to-intervene requirements.”
“A $10 million investment in these worthy causes is a down payment on a debt long overdue,” DuBois-Walton wrote, “and the first step towards a bright future for our city. New Haven: let’s have big vision, let’s act boldly, let’s pay up.”
Elicker: A “Once-In-A-Generation Opportunity”
Elicker, at a presser in the Hill with New Haven’s federal delegation in late March.
Mayor Justin Elicker also recently submitted a proposed order to the Board of Alders that outlines his administration’s next steps for figuring out how best to spend the $94 million in federal aid en route to New Haven.
On April 5, the mayor’s office sent the alders a communication package describing how the city expects to receive a minimum of $94 million spread over two payments: one to come within 60 days of the enactment of the American Stimulus Plan Act of 2021, the second to come by the end of the calendar year.
Click here, here, and here to read those documents.
“The City is undertaking a fiscal impact assessment for unrecovered municipal costs associated with the coronavirus and recovery which will be submitted for the Board’s consideration at [a] committee hearing,” the communication’s fiscal impact statement reads.
The city’s current estimate of lost city revenue due to Covid-19 for the period of January 2020 to June 30, 2021 is between $17 million and $20 million.
Elicker wrote in an April 5 letter to Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers that, while the U.S. Department of Treasury will ultimately determine what kinds of spending is eligible under the American Rescue Act, the legislation itself already provides a fair amount of guidance about how local governments can use this new tranche of municipal aid.
The proposed order itself states that the American Rescue Act allows for the creation of a local fiscal recovery fund for use in response to the public health emergency and associated economic impacts of Covid. That could include:
• Assistance to households, small businesses, and nonprofits, or aid to impacted industries such as tourism, travel, and hospitality;
• Premium pay for essential workers, or grants to eligible employers that have eligible workers who perform essential work;
• Funding for government services to make up for lost revenue during Covid;
• And investments in water, sewer, or broadband infrastructure
Elicker wrote that his administration will help lead a “community engagement process known as the Civic Space” to get public input on American Rescue Act spending.
“In totality, the American Rescue Act represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lift up our city by addressing income inequality and wealth creation through jobs, neighborhood revitalization and overall wellbeing,” Elicker wrote in his letter to the alders. “As a community, we have been planning for this moment and the Together New Haven approach provides us with the framework to move forward in a timely basis.”
Gobbly Goop Notes: