GOP Leader Keeps Town On Toes

She composts. She brings reusable canvas bags to the grocery store. She drinks from a Yeti rather than buy plastic waster bottles.

And she’s a Republican. Who urged Hamden not to ban single-use plastic bags from local stores.

Meet Marjorie Bonadies, minority leader of Hamden’s Legislative Council.

It’s not easy getting attention as a Republican in Hamden. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans four to one. No Republican has won the town’s mayoralty this century. Voters have turned not just Democratic, but liberal Democratic.

But the town’s rules reserve two seats on the Legislative Council for second parties. So for six years, Bonadies, a private nurse by trade, has devoted her time to serve on the Council to seek attention for an alternate point of view.

Her role in the recent debate over Hamden’s new ban on retail plastic bags — which the Council passed last week — demonstrated the role Bonadies plays in questioning the majority take on issues. And how that role might not fit conventional definitions.

“I try to maintain the two-party system with robust debate,” Bonadies said during an appearance Tuesday on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline Hamden” program.

Take the plastic bag ban, which had overwhelming support from members of the public who spoke before the Council. Advocates acted out of concern over global warming, trash that ends up on streets and in the water, as well as the long-term health impacts on micro-plastics in the human body and environment. (Click here for an interview with one environmentalist who played a role in pushing for the law. The portion about the plastic bags begins at the 35 minute point.)

Bonadies said she, too, is concerned about litter and pollution.

She argued the ban won’t help the problem. It will lead to stores stocking up on more expensive paper bags that contribute to the felling of 14 million trees a year, overuse of water in production, and polluting transportation. It takes 43 reuses of a paper bag that replaces a plastic bag to benefit the environment, she said; that rarely happens.

Ban proponents advocate that people use, and reuse, canvas bags instead when they shop. Bonides said she in fact does that. But it still takes 131 reuses of a canvas bag to benefit the environment over use of a plastic bag, she argued.

In short, she said, she opposed the ban because she believes it won’t work. It won’t help the environment.

“I don’t think we can ban ourselves out of a litter problem,” she said. ​“I prefer the carrot to the stick.”

For instance, she regularly rides her bike on the Farmington Canal Trail and sees, with concern, all the trash dropped there. She said the solution there lies in making more public trash receptacles available and in better educating people not to litter, including through programs for students who then bring the gospel home. She said she’d like to work with the town’s Clean & Green Commission to find ways to address the litter problem.

She also said she looks forward to working with the town’s new recycling coordinator to find ways to reuse trash.

She spoke of a program at New Haven’s Tower One/Tower East complex as a model Hamden could explore replicating. Seniors in that program crochet mats for homeless people out of plarn from pastic bags.

“That’s a win all the way around,” she said.

Bonadies said she comes to her position out of a commitment to the environment. She’s an enthusiastic composter, for instance: ​“I have to feed my tomato plants”; she cans many of the tomatoes for year-round use. She said she for years has reused canvas bags when she shops. She has carried her Yeti for five years to avoid wasteful plastic bottles.

Though she did not prevail on the plastic bag ban, Bonadies said she hopes to follow up by having the town report on how it’s working a year later, to see if the law had its intended impact.

Meanwhile, she doesn’t reflexively oppose Democratic positions. And, as usual with local politics, there often isn’t a ​“Democratic” opinion, but rather different views among people within each party. Thursday night, for instance, Bonadies ended up siding with the Democratic mayor in a vote that split his party over a reshuffling of his office. (Read about that here.)

Reserving Judgment On Cop Stop

Bonadies offered an alternative take to the majority Democratic opinion in town to a recent video aired on WTNH, which showed a Hamden cop threatening to shoot a Latino man in his driveway and to report him to federal immigration authorities unless the man answered his questions, spoke English, and complied with his orders.

Officials have condemned the officer’s actions and launched an investigation.

“I will refrain from making judgment” until the full investigation is completed, Bonadies said.

She said that while she found the short clip aired on WTNH ​“very disturbing,” it needs to be seen in a broader context.

“Police work is not for everyone. It’s gritty,” she said. Cops ​“take their life in their hand every time they get out of the car.”

The officer in this case had reason to be concerned for his safety after following a driver home who had allegedly sped through a red light and failed to heed repeated orders to pull over, she argued. ​“The officer is thinking, ​‘I want to go home at night. I want to see my family.’”

She was asked if she agrees with calls to create a civilian review board in Hamden to monitor the police, similar to one voted into existence last month in New Haven. Bonadies said the town’s Police Commission is already charged with fulfilling that duty, so she sees no need to create a separate new body.

Click on the Facebook Live video below for the full interview with Marjorie Bonadies on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline Hamden” program.