Zoning Overhaul OK’d

Marchand reviews example of mixed-use development before vote.

March 13, 2017 - Karyn Gilvarg and Tom Talbot of New Haven’s City Plan Department have been working on amendments to the city’s zoning ordinance that make it friendlier to mixed-use development: the idea that stores and apartments and offices can be mixed all together in dense city blocks rather than separated in specified districts.

The Board of Alders Legislation Committee has unanimously approved their proposed text edits, allowing the changes to be voted on at the next full Board of Alders meeting.

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New Food Cart Rules Advance

Hot dog man Sweeney: “Don’t put dollar up front!”

March 10, 2017 - The city came one step closer to realizing a new regulatory framework for monitoring New Haven’s food trucks, carts, and stands thanks to a vote following a three-hour public session at City Hall.

Before the vote Thursday night, some vendors told lawmakers they remain concerned about the unintended consequences that these regulations might have on the traffic safety of both their employees and their customers.

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Lights ... Camera ... Puzzle!

Test your knowledge of New Haven’s past and present film scene with this week’s Elm City Crossword puzzle.

The puzzle includes a range of names of movies about New Haven, movies by people from New Haven, local residents who make movies, and other Elm City film trivia.

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Best Video Rolls Out Red Carpet

Casting a mock Oscar ballot at Best Video.

February 27, 2017 - Standing amidst shelves lined with DVDs and tables stacked with mock awards ballots, Best Video founder Hank Paper thought for a minute on which movie would win, and which movie should win, this year’s Oscar for Best Picture.

“La La Land, which is a tribute to everything that Hollywood holds dear, will probably win,” Paper said, referring to Damien Chazelle’s nostalgia-tinged musical about two aspiring artists in contemporary Los Angeles.

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Call Him Sen. Relentless

Blumenthal at Cross Saturday.

February 26, 2017 - U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal promised his base at a spirited town hall meeting that he will not just vote against Donald Trump, but make some trouble.

“I will do everything I can in terms of legal action outside of the Senate as well as being relentless within the Senate to stop and to resist any infringement on the power of the courts,” he said. “We can talk about alternative facts. But nobody is above the law.”

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More Cops On Foot? Or In Cars?

Anderson (center) pushes for more motor vehicle enforcement.

February 22, 2017 - Sometimes, Sgt. Sean Maher told Wooster Square and downtown neighbors, they may need to choose between more walking cops and more traffic cops.

Maher made the observation while reoprting good news — and then getting some pushback in response — at Tuesday evening’s monthly Downtown Wooster Square Community Management team meeting at City Hall.

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Shelter Change Draws Local Opposition

Wednesday, February 15, 2017 - A plan to change a small Hill homeless shelter into a rent-subsidized residence for young people who have aged out of the foster care system is meeting with opposition from neighbors worried about parking and crime problems.

That opposition surfaced at a Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) public hearing at 200 Orange St. on Tuesday night on New Reach Inc.’s request to convert its Careway Shelter at 223 Portsea St. in the Hill’s Trowbridge Square area into a more conventional affordable housing residence for previously homeless and at-risk young women.

New Reach came up with the new plan two years after losing city funding and embarking on an effort to rethink how to house people who are, have been, or at risk of becoming homeless.

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Alder, East St. Neighbors Oppose Homeless Shelter’s Move

Lawyer Erskine McIntosh (center), with ESMS’s Arnold Johnson (left) and Curtis McBride (right) at hearing.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017 - Operators of a Grand Avenue homeless shelter looking to move around the block will have to wait at least another month before the zoning board can vote on its relocating request. The reason for the delay: missing paperwork, and an incomplete application.

Meanwhile, the neighborhood’s alder and some neighbors showed up to oppose the move.

That was the outcome of a hearing at Tuesday night’s Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) meeting at 200 Orange St., where one of the topics under discussion was the proposal by Emergency Shelter Management Services (ESMS) to move its men’s homeless shelter from 645 Grand Ave. to 923-925 East St. The board decided to extend the public hearing on the shelter’s variance use request to give it a little more time to get its application in order. ESMS is asking for a variance to permit an emergency shelter in a light industrial zone.

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Homeless Shelter Seeks New Home

293-295 East Street

Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - The neighboring strip club has no objection, but a flood plain may stand in the way of one of New Haven’s homeless shelters moving into a new home.

After two years of searching, operators of the shelter — Emergency Shelter Management Services (ESMS) — have located a new location after learning they need to leave their current location at 645 Grand Ave.The only hurdles left are building regulations, concerned city officials, the skepticism of a few reluctant neighbors, and the costs that come with being adjacent to the flood plain.

Tuesday night the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) will consider the Grand Avenue homeless shelter’s proposal to move into a new home at 293-295 East St.

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Lions Dance, & “Sisters” Toast

David Youtz

Saturday, February 4, 2017 - Saturday began with a colorful parade through downtown marking the Chinese New Year and was capped with a toast to New Haven’s budding relationship with its Chinese soon-to-be sister city of Changsha — a beacon of people-to-people diplomacy at a time of uncertain government relations.

This attitude of national uncertainty and local enthusiasm was one of the defining sentiments of a formal reception held on the second floor of Yale’s Woolsey Hall on Saturday night that celebrated New Haven’s plan to establish its formal relationship with Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province in central China.

The event was one of the capstones of Lunarfest 2017, New Haven’s annual Chinese New Year festival, which features a variety of activities around the city and Yale’s campus that celebrate Chinese history and culture.

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Punk Rockers Raise Money for Refugees

Raising funds for IRIS.

Monday, January 30, 2017 - The same day that President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring select Muslim refugees from immigrating to the United States, a few dozen New Haven punk rockers gathered in a garage in East Rock to blast a different tune — declaring their support for being good neighbors.

“Earlier this week as I was sobbing into my hands, trying not to be overcome by fear, a friend of mine told me that all you have to be is a good neighbor,” said Brian Frenette, singer and front man of the Western Massachusetts-based punk rock band Blessed State.

“And I thought: how beautiful, and how simple. Here we all are, trying to be good neighbors. Let’s keep this up, because this shit’s only going to get worse before it gets better.”

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Skateboarders Brainstorm On Coogan 2.0

Tuesday’s night’s meeting.

Tuesday, January 25, 2017 - David Moser offered a simple choice to the group of skaters and bikers and rollerbladers gathered in a circle before him Tuesday night: “Concrete vs. asphalt.”

“How critical is that difference?” the city’s landscape architect asked, flipping through his notes on the ideal design of an urban skate park.

“Very!” Nearly everyone in the room shouted at once, voicing their unanimous support for concrete.

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Hausladen: Bikes Don’t Kill People ...

East Rockers Monday night suggested potential bike share spots.

Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - As he presented a plan to bring hundreds of rentable bikes to New Haven’s streets, city transit chief Doug Hausladen invoked statistics about smash-ups on the road to respond Monday night to complaints about dangerous cyclists.

Hausladen showed up to the monthly East Rock Community Management Team to get input from neighbors about a new “bike share” program about to bring 300 instantly borrow-able cycles to the city.

He received lots of ideas and enthusiasm, along with complaints about New Haven’s users of fast-growing transit choice.

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City Scrambles To Salvage State Millions

DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY PHOTO

Friday, January 20, 2017 - 

City officials are hustling to secure promised state reimbursements for upwards of $5 million in road-paving money after being caught off guard by the abrupt ending of a popular capital improvement program.

Whatever happens, they promise, the city will keep patching potholes.

The scurry began on Dec. 29 of last year, when Connecticut Office of Policy and Management Secretary Benjamin Barnes sent a letter to towns and cities throughout the state announcing the end of the Local Capital Improvement Program (LoCIP).

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Love Marches On

Wanda Faison and Deacon Vincent Smith on the Love March.

January 15, 2017 - Rodney Mitchell hoisted the American flag at the front of Sunday’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Love March, just as he has for the past decade and a half. His possible successor was right beside him.

Standing alongside him was his son Jayden, who held a simple yellow poster emblazoned with a white peace sign.

Click here to read the full article (http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/mlk_love_march/).

Paperwork Snag Could Cost City

Alders Dolores Colon, Adam Marchand, Evette Hamilton at hearing.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017 - Alder Al Paolillo Jr. ran both of his hands through his hair as he tried to process what city Budget Director Joe Clerkin had just said: $1.6 million from the state might not make it into city coffers because of uncompleted paperwork.

That’s not money designated for future capital and infrastructure investments; that’s money the city has already spent and counted on getting back.

“So we’re not getting the [money] from the state?” Paolillo asked. “And the state just told us this?”

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Rose: Heed Us, Or Pay Your Own Bill

Rose at Monday night’s hearing.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017 - Can the city’s chief legal adviser deny representation to a department head who refuses to heed his advice? Should the city have to foot the bill when a city employee then seeks outside counsel?

These two questions occupied the first half of a nearly three-hour meeting held by the Board of Alders Finance Committee at City Hall Monday night.

A unified front of alders pushed and pulled with city Corporation Counsel John Rose Jr.over just how far the city’s legal department should go to defend municipal employees caught up in legal disputes, especially when those clients disregard the advice offered by the city’s appointed attorneys.

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2 Paths Seen To Black Power

Participants brainstormed about how to achieve women’s equality. (Thomas Breen photo)

January 4, 2017 - Fighting back in 2017 requires crafting a “black agenda” or an “American agenda” — two different approaches suggested in a passionate community discussion held Tuesday night in Newhallville.

The event, the third in a monthly post-election series of “community conversations” hosted by the New Haven Alumnae Chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, was held at ConnCAT in Science Park. It brought to the fore key differences in emphasis and tactics, if not necessarily in goals or good will, among leaders of New Haven’s African-American community present on the panel.

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Murphy: I’ll Vote Yes On Some Trump Picks

Murphy at Monday night’s town hall at Daniels School.

December 20, 2016 - Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy lifted two fingers to count out the tests he’ll be using when Congress is asked to vote on each of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees.

“Number one, you can’t be a radical,” he said. “Number two, you should have some level of experience in the field in which you’re going to be leading.”

Then Murphy gave a New Haven audience a head’s up: “I know that I’m going to vote for some of his nominees who I disagree with, because I think the president has the right to put people around him who are going to carry out government according to his wishes. But there is a line, and already many of these nominees have crossed that line.”

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Substation Xanadu Revealed On Whalley

December 19, 2016 - Standing alongside a dozen framed black-and-white photographs from the New Haven police department’s past and present, Sgt. John Wolcheski paused with a smile as he recalled the story behind each picture.

“This is from 2012, when a flash flood raised the water level of the West River by four or five feet,” he explained, pointing to a picture of himself dressed in department-issued scuba diving gear, bobbing just above the surface of a swollen river. “And here’s a picture from when JFK visited the Yale Law School, and a New Haven police officer blocked an excited student from rushing the motorcade.

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