nothin Harp, Paca Portray 2 New Havens | New Haven Independent

Harp, Paca Portray 2 New Havens

Christopher Peak Photos

Harp, Paca at their first joint forum Thursday night.

In Mayor Toni Harp’s New Haven, violent crime has fallen nearly 75 percent in six years. In challenger Marcus Paca’s New Haven, bullets still fly in struggling neighborhoods, with victims shot even in their own homes.”

Young people are flocking downtown for walkable living and a startup-friendly culture, in Harp’s city. In Paca’s, economic development hasn’t touched the Westville, Grand Avenue or the Dixwell main drags.

Harp’s New Haven hasn’t had a property tax increase for the last two years. Paca’s city is perilously close to one because of endangered state aid.

Those strikingly different takes on the Elm City’s current outlook were presented in tandem Thursday night at a Ward 25 Democratic Town Committee (DTC) meeting at Edgewood School. Candidates for mayor, school board member, city clerk, probate judge and alder all lined up to make their pitch to the residents in the Westville flats of Ward 25 — an area known for its high voter turnout, campaign volunteerism and open process for endorsing Democratic candidates.

Each of New Haven’s 30 wards gets two DTC co-chairs, elected to two-year terms, who help shape the city’s political landscape by selecting which candidates will run on the Democratic ticket at the party’s convention next month. The two leaders may vote for whichever candidate they personally support. In Ward 25, Co-Chairs Mike Slattery and Janis Underwood vowed to endorse whomever the ward’s entire committee favors in an extensive process—that in at least one past instance meant voting at the convention against a candidate they didn’t personally support.

Ward 25 Co-Chair Janis Underwood.

The city is the right size that if we can put enough people in a room, it’s worth their time,” Slattery said. If any campaign has the expectation that they’ll get workers, people to knock doors for them, then they should show up and talk to us.”

Roughly 75 people packed into the Edgewood School library to listen to eight-minute speeches and chat with their representatives over fruit salad and brownies. The campaigns tried to put literature into as many hands as possible, while organizers reminded everyone to stay civil.

This meeting is not a debate,” Underwood noted at the start.

The forum marked the first time this election season that Harp and Paca have pitched their candidacies at the same forum, offering an initial look at how they will cast their campaigns. Both are Democrats; Paca is looking to challenge Harp in a party primary.

Edgewood Alum’s Return

Paca spoke first, stripping off his jacket midway through the presentation of his résumé. He noted that he’d attended Edgewood School, where he was bullied for a speech impediment, until his mother complained and got him a speech pathologist.

Now, I was fortunate. People came to me when they saw I was staring in the wrong direction and put me back on the right track. I had mentors and teachers,” he said. New Haven had some good people working for it them and some very good people working for it now. As residents and citizens, it’s our duty to make sure we have the program, training and foundation to see that our children succeed in post-secondary opportunities.”

Paca turned to his own quasi-governmental” work experience, discussing setting up national marketing campaigns for Verizon, heading a program to weatherize homes in Fairfield County and training workers for jobs in the healthcare industry. He breezed through his time as Harp’s city labor relations director; neither he nor she mentioned that she fired him.

I have dedicated my life to helping New Haven,” Paca said. What we need now is more energetic leadership.”

He criticized Mayor Harp for requesting a municipal budget increase given the state’s dire economic straits, for allowing wasteful spending at the Board of Education and public safety employees’ overtime, and for ignoring crime and the lack of job opportunities outside downtown.

I’m up here because I care about New Haven, and I believe everyone deserves a fair shake in this town. I’m tired of grandparents telling me they’re traveling to Austin or Charlotte to see their grandkids, because there’s not a lot of opportunities here in New Haven,” he concluded. What I want to ask each and every one of you is to consider a new, fresh vision for New Haven.”

Harp: Progress

Mayor Harp took a matter-of-fact tone in presenting her record, reading off a slew of statistics that demonstrated improvements in safety, education and employment during her administration. Without asking for reelection, Harp let her record speak for itself.

Since 2011, violent crime and homicides had both decreased by nearly three-quarters, and nonfatal shootings had been halved, she noted. When you look at my public safety track record, we’ve made more progress than any administration has made probably in the last 20 years.” (Click here for a previous story about the two candidates’ different interpretation of city crime statistics.)

At schools, the Youth Stat program — in which cops, social workers, teachers, probation officers, and school administrators strategize to help students most at risk of dropping out and/or landing jail — and other initiatives have helped curb expulsions and chronic absenteeism, Harp said. Initiatives are pushing reading and arts citywide, and students are getting a leg up by taking classes at Gateway Community College or Southern Connecticut State University.

At Hillhouse High School, I know you’ve heard about the awful stuff, but I also know there’s amazing stuff,” Harp said. Last year, a student had graduated with 58 college credits. One mother said she saved $60,000 because of access to college credits we have in New Haven Public Schools.”

When it came to the Elm City’s workforce, Harp said she has fostered economic development, both through supports for small businesses and through transit-oriented development. She cited the recent deal struck with the state over future management and development of Union Station as an example of the tough negotiations she’s willing to have to protect living-wage jobs in the city. She also noted that her administration just succeeded in securing a $2 million state innovation grant, and opened a one-stop-shopping job-training and small-business assistance center on Dixwell Avenue.

Paca said after the event that he was impressed so many had shown up to inform themselves about the races. But he also noted that he was looking forward to an event with more debate and fewer canned lines.

I was a little disappointed that we didn’t have an opportunity to engage directly with the folks here while we were giving our speech, because to me, that’s the true essence of democracy: a true back-and-forth, a dialogue, letting people ask questions about what a politician says, instead of just listening to me ramble on about me,” he said.

Despite that, did he think he picked up some votes? Absolutely,” Paca answered. In a town like New Haven, where folks love debate, I have to believe that New Haveners are looking at me as a viable candidate at this point.”

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