The Good Stuff of 2013

The nicest darned place in America. 

Posted below  are some of the best posts, in reverse order from most recent to oldest, from 2013.

This was a particularly good year for Nhv.Org because it was a great year for New Haven. We have a new mayor, a new Yale President, and it seems evident that some things are going to change next year.
Change is something we embrace each season, and that's one thing that's lovely about New England; we experience it drastically every year with each season.

Channel 8 Mayoral Debate

Conversations with Candidates

Toni Harp speaks to Steve, a resident of East Rock on his front porch.


Justin Elicker speaks to Jahmal Henderson on a bench in Newhallville.

From CWOS Alternative Space Last Week

With so much news pertaining to the mayoral race this year, it's difficult to determine the position of the candidates.  Wouldn't it be great if you could just sit with each one for ten minutes and discuss the issues of the day? These were filmed over the summer.  It was part of a series, with a theme.  Community members were paired up with different candidates and asked to have a conversation. The result was something that might be considered more organic and authentic than traditional news; something insightful and helpful to those who are still determining which candidate they would like to vote for;  everyone is hoping for one of the biggest turnouts in #nhv voting history.  Voting day is November 5th.  If you are looking for your polling location, try here.

Click here for Nhv.Org's full video coverage of important mayoral race events this year in 2013.

Honorable mention to Henry Fernandez who participated in the project.  Here is the audio of his interview with Ibrahim Abdul Qawiyy on the New Haven Green.

Are You An Explorer?

Near Koffee on Audubon

Do you like to Explore?  Are you new to New Haven?  What happened to Ye Olde Haven?  I don't know either.  Let's find out.

Search town and meet interesting people using this amazing new device we've dubbed "the internet."  You can over-dub the internet with dub reggae, if you know how [latest vid].  Think it's dumb?  Well, we don't have a budget!  Imagine how much more incredulous the material here on the #Nhv's would be if we were partnered with an organization like a university or a nonprofit.

News about the Mayoral Footage

New Plan

During the primary season, Nhv.Org reached out to each and every mayoral candidate to get an interview.  Every campaign reached out to us, interested in being a part of the process.

Unfortunately, a mechanical failure in the hard drive (Seagate) which was recently acquired somehow caused an error which no longer allows that data to be readable.  Still-frames of these interviews still exist.  It was filmed in 1080p and I thought that the idea was well-developed.  Here was the concept:

All Voting Locations (Dynamic Map) Listed By Ward

View Voting Locations in a larger map

Source:  CityofNewHaven.Com/RegistrarofVoters/

Democratic Primary Polling Locations and Candidate Comments

A running list of all of the 4 candidates on Twitter as they send out messages almost constantly throughout the day.

All of the Mayoral Candidates are Democrats!  So the Primary this year serves as more than just to determine who represents the democratic party.  If you are a registered Democrat in New Haven, here is where you can expect to submit your vote.  To the left indicates your Ward.

NhvMayor2013 Interview Series - 1 Left!

Video StillFrame:  Harp and Poland (E.Rock)

As part of our "Get To Know #Nhv" Theme, this website has been approaching candidates with the interest of conducting one-on-one interviews with community members.  Toni Harp spoke to Steve, a resident of East Rock. Justin Elicker had a conversation with Jahmal Henderson, a resident of the neighborhood of Newhallville.  Each conversation is from 10-15 minutes in length, none of the content is rehearsed or recited.

Many of the match-ups are selected with the intent of drawing from contrast, and the conversations themselves hold to the interests of the community at the present time.  The full run time of the completed project should be approximately 30-45 minutes.  We're reaching out to the Fernandez and Carolina campaigns to participate in the two remaining sections which have yet to be filmed.

Video StillFrame:  Elicker and Henderson (Newhallville)

While these interviews may not have an impact on the outcome of the election, they might encourage the community to become more actively engaged in the voting process.  To whomever wins the election, this video might be a worthwhile piece to watch, because all of the points being discussed throughout this project will probably be relevant throughout his or her time as mayor and reflect the current climate, relating the problems posed by citizens and the solutions proposed by the candidates who seek to represent them at mayor.

The tone of the discussion is more like a conversation than a debate. These are conversations between candidates and individual community members in outdoor spaces as the mayoral race heads into the Autumn.  We'd like to release the footage in October in segments online as well as in one full-length documentary due out to be aired just weeks before the election.

If successful, we hope to make this into a tradition of support and work with the museum in preserving these conversations as a part of history.  This in particular is an historic race for mayor, with John DeStefano announcing earlier this year that he would not be seeking re-election.  2014 will be the first year that New Haven will have a different mayor other than DeStefano since 1994.  Stay Tuned for more and click *Like* to the left on home version to get Nhv.Org updates.

Get to Know your Candidates! (Debate Video)

Four of the five major candidates running for mayor attended the New Haven Mayoral Debate on Policing (presented by the New Haven Police Union AFSCME and Local 530).  This is a complete video for you, the potential voter, to be more informed by the comments made by the candidates, so there's not much need to editorialize or highlight any particular comments.  Here is some information about each candidate, in the same order as they appear on screen from left to right:

• Henry Fernandez
  Livable Cities Initiative, LEAP
  
• Sundiata Keitazulu
  Community Member and Citizen
  
• Justin Elicker
  Alderperson, Friends of East Rock Park
  
• Toni Harp
  CT State Senate, Former Alderperson

One of the most important things to consider, especially with regard to the internet, is the ability to help people make informed decisions.  That's why the full debate is available here.  Missing from this debate for reasons stated in a New Haven Independent article was:

• Kermit Carolina
  Principal, Hillhouse High School

NHV Education Debate Commentary

June 21st at 6:30pm at Varick Memorial Zion Church at 242 Dixwell. 

Fernandez and the OneCity Tax Vision (Video, Transcript)

The voice you're hearing in this video is that of Paul Bass of the New Haven Independent.  We're keeping a running list of things pertaining to the mayoral race here on NHV, all viewable here.
This video originally appeared on the New Haven Independent. 

Paul Bass:  "Fair Haven's taxes go up if East Rock's taxes go down, correct?"
Henry Fernandez: "Right, but let's be clear; wealth in Fair Haven goes up."
PB:  "So if your wealth increases in your house you can afford more taxes."
HF:  "Exactly."
PB:  "You have to borrow to do that."
HF:  "Well, no it happens in a number of ways.  One is, if property values go up across a neighborhood like Fair Haven, then you're generating significantly more wealth in the community, which allows more businesses to open which creates jobs, meaning more people can pay their bills, including their tax bills.  If you increase wealth in the community, it means more people will go to college, graduate from high school and go to college.  It means more people can pay their bills, including tax bills, and it also means that crime will go down.  And if crime goes down, we all benefit.  And the issue is not whether or not people are going to pay taxes.  It's whether they're going to get quality services for those taxes, and whether those taxes are going to be fair, and equally applied."
PB:  "We gotta improve the schools and cut crime.  That costs money.  Are you actually going to keep spending where it is, without increasing it, and also improve schools and cut crime?"
HF:  "So I actually think we can make very significant changes, or improvements, in the schools and with regard to crime, without major new investments from the taxpayers of the City of New Haven.  I think it goes to, for instance, with regard to the schools, a very aggressive approach to making sure we have the best principals, leaders at the school building level.  We wouldn't be paying those principals more, but we would be investing..."
PB:  "...Hire better."
HF:  "Hire better, but also provide professional development to them."
"On the crime reduction, we're seeing that you need a lot of overtime or extra bodies for the programs like Project Longevity, whether it's Chicago or New Haven."
HF:  "Yeah.  Switching from the schools to policing, one of the issues we have with policing as a result of a number of changes, we're seeing a significant number of officers retire.  And because of that high level of retirement, we have very high levels of vacancy in the department.  So a big part of the reason we have overtime costs is because we don't have the officers to fill the regular duty jobs.  And so part of the solution with regard to overtime is to fill those vacancies, and make sure we have enough officers so we don't have to turn to overtime.  We do need to maintain the improvements that we've seen in terms of community policing, officers walking the beat, but a big part of the way we do that is filling our ranks, so we don't have to turn to overtime."

Request for Mayor 2013 Footage.

Hey Candidates,

I am hoping that we can give your campaign a boost by making a high-definition video with some of your key positions, as well as your responses to a few questions of ours.

If you'd like to schedule an interview with us, it would require 30 minutes of your time and be online the same day.  The video length would be probably 3 minutes long and contain relevant on-screen information about your campaign (the URL of your campaign address, for example).

We do not editorialize and provide a service to the community where you are able to speak your mind without providing our own opinion.  We hope you'll respond to our request.


Take a look at the site for some idea of the work we produce.
Fill out the Video Appointment Form.

Toni Harp Announces Mayoral Candidacy

Harp announced on Sunday in Edgewood Park she will be a candidate in this year's mayoral election.

From Wikipedia:

Toni Nathaniel Harp is an American politician. Harp, a Democrat, has been a state senator from Connecticut since 1993.

Harp, a resident of New Haven, represents the western half of the city as well as part of West Haven in the Connecticut Senate.

Harp was born in San Francisco and graduated from Roosevelt University and received a M.Ed. from Yale University. Prior to being elected in the Connecticut Senate, Harp served as a New Haven Alderman; she defeated incumbent Senator Charles H. Allen III for the Democratic nomination in 1992.

In 2001 her husband, the prominent architect and developer Wendell Harp, was embroiled in a scandal after he sold a property to the city of New Haven for $485,000, more than twice its assessed value. The city later resold the property at a huge loss, leading to allegations of corruption.^[1] It soon after emerged that as Mr. Harp owned over $200,000 in back taxes to the city, he should not have been able to do business with the city at all.^[2]

In 2007 Harp introduced a bill to have the state pay for free diapers for poor mothers. ^[3]

You can find out more about her history on her web page here.

Danny Glover say What?

Danny Glover has no political ties to New Haven for any reason, except to support Henry Fernandez.  Says Glover, "You can't solve every problem with your fists."

When asked about his political stance, in particular his interest in New Haven politics, Glover stated, "I think we should cut the blue wire."

Comments:

If you could select a celebrity to support your political candidate, who would you pair up?

example:  *Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich for Elicker
*____________ for Toni Harp, et cetera.






News Flash! We'll be downtown asking people about their thoughts on this, tomorrow at noon.

Fernandez Launches Campaign

Henry Fernandez launched his mayoral campaign at ArtSpace on Orange Street in the 9th Square this afternoon at approximately 6pm this evening.  He called on the support of aldermen and union organizers, some of whom spoke on his behalf before his speech.  ArtSpace spokesperson Shannon Lee Connors expressed that the space had been made available to all candidates, that Fernandez's campaign team were the only group to follow up on the offer.  Foxon Park Soda and Elm City Lager were available to attendees, depending on age.

Henry Fernandez gave a speech (view it in its entirety as video available only here on Nhv.Org):

Faced with a question regarding the uprooting of key City Hall positions as Parks and Rec Department Director, and Superintendent of Schools, Fernandez did not indicate a favored replacement for Bob Levine or Reginald Mayo, but did indicate that he would spend the time to find the best replacement possible for each of these positions.

Fernandez also focuses in his speech on the idea of "One City," meaning that we cannot live in a society where there is one group of have's and another of have-not's.  New Haven,  being the microcosm for the world as it is, has become the fault line for class divide; with impoverished neighborhoods outlying one of the world's finest academic institutions, Yale University.  As a founder of L.E.A.P. and a champion for the installment of a urban center for Gateway Community College, it seems that Fernandez has been quietly behind the scenes for many major progressive steps in New Haven since his arrival 23 years ago.

Other competitors for mayor this year are Justin Elicker and Gary Holder-Winfield.  You can find more about the race for mayor after the announcement that DeStefano would not seek re-election after 18 years in office.  Update:  Toni Harp is also running.

The search feature for this election season is Mayor 2013.

Meet Fernandez at L&L This Friday

See Calendar Next Week For Reminders

One week from today, get a chance to meet Henry Fernandez, who has decided to run for mayor.  This event is open to the public and will be held at The Luck & Levity Brewshop, a recent addition to the 9th Square. Luck and Levity teaches and supplies home brewing enthusiasts throughout the area.

Winner of the election this year will be given access to specially-designed "@NhvMayor" Twitter account, which has been handed down from mayor to mayor for generations since the days of Roger Sherman.

Other candidates running are Justin Elicker, Gary Holder, and Kermit Carolina.

DeStefano "Closing Time" Speech (Full)

3:33

At "The Russian Lady" on Tuesday January 29th at approx. 6pm

Justin Elicker Running for Mayor

Important points made by the announcement were:

• Justin prides himself on attending community meetings as much as possible (0:27)
• Accumulating ideas from local citizens by asking people about their hopes and visions
• Interested in a "government that listens, and doesn't only talk to you."

1. Schools:  "Our children deserve a public education that shows them the potential in life ... that they could be.  And gives them the tools to approach that.  Over the last 20 years we spent 1.5 billion dollars on our schools, yet inside of our schools we have so much more that we need to do.  Every child deserves that education.  Good schools attract people to New Haven.  Good schools keep people in New Haven.  We need to fix the inside of our schools in this city."
2. Developers don't need to be political contributors to be contenders in bids for contracts.
3. Neighborhood Support  "Our government needs to respond directly to what so many people are calling for."

• Also he called for a hybrid Board of Education, partially elected and partially appointed.
  "We can not have true school reform until we have a new independent-minded and reform-minded superintendent.  Schools must engage, actively engage the parents in their child's education."  (4:25)
• "We have to stop making decisions based on 2-year political cycles."

Here's just the audio version of the speech.  The campaign site is Elicker2013.Com