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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - Noveber 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

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Carolyn Michelle Smith, who plays Silver. Lucy Gellman Photo.

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Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, left, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal

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Harp Takes Budget Show On Road THE INNER-CITY NEWS - November 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

by MARKESHIA RICKS New Haven Independent

You might see Mayor Toni Harp at your next management team meeting. She and the city’s budget officials are making the rounds to talk about the city’s finances ... and to claw back a narrative that lays the blame for dire straits at her feet.

The presentation comes in the wake of an 11 percent property tax increase, a scandal with the city’s purchasing card program that resulted in the termination and arrest of a mayoral staffer, and the more recent revelation that the city’s Youth Services director authorized grants to a staffer he oversees.

Harp’s rounds have so far brought her before the community management teams in Dwight, East Shore, and, this past week, her home base at Westville/West Hills, which gathered at Mauro Sheridan School.

“There’s been so much misrepresentation about the budget,” Harp said during her most recent appearance on WNHH FM’s “Mayor Monday” program. She said she’s pointing out to people that over her four years in office, city spending has risen a total of 3 percent. State cutbacks have forced taxes to rise to meet the costs, she said — and even then, she argued, New Haven’s mill rate is lower than those in some neighboring communities.

She spoke of how the same three-family house over the Hamden border on Shelton Avenue would be charged more in taxes than one on the New Haven side. Same with a house on the West Haven stretch of Forest Road.

Harp told the roughly 40 Westville/West Hills neighbors gathered for the meeting at Mauro Sheridan this past Wednesday night that she wants people to get an explanation about the budget process how it works, where the city stands currently and how it got where it is. The presentation sets

the stage for a five-year plan Harp plans to roll out in the new year along with Board of Alders leaders to tackle the city’s longterm structural deficit (pegged at at least $30 million) as well as next year’s round of budget deliberations.

City Controller Daryl Jones and Budget Director Michael Gormany delivered a roughly 41-minute Budgeting 101-style presentation in which they talked about where the city gets its money: 51 percent from property taxes, the rest from the state in the form of education cost sharing grants and Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) reimbursements as well as voluntary payments from Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Much like the state, the city is grappling with how to beef up underfunded pensions and deliver city services when it has limited sources of revenue, they said.

“New Haven remains strong financially but we do face obstacles,” Jones said.

The state is supposed to pay up to 77 percent of lost tax revenue to municipalities through PILOT. In fact, it has been paying between 30 and 40 percent, Gormany noted.

He pointed out that during the 2016-2017 fiscal year, state aid covered 43 percent of the city’s budget. It has since gone down to 39 percent. Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital make voluntary payments for city services that now add up to about $14 million; Gormany noted that their combined exempt property would bring in $194 million if it were taxed. Gormany did note that the university and the hospital system are the city’s largest employers and also the largest taxpayers.

The city spends a lot of its money on fixed costs like pensions for active and retired city employees, healthcare and education.

It can’t tax Yale University and Yale-New

Haven Hospital because of their federal tax-exempt status.

And about that 11 percent tax increase that caught people by surprise this year? It was a function of closing a financial shortfall that happened when the state cut expected PILOT and education funding two quarters into the city’s fiscal year, Jones argued.

Even with the tax increase, Jones pointed out that New Haven residents still pay some of the lowest taxes in the state when compared to other larger Connecticut cities and even when compared against the mill rates under the previous administration.

Westville neighbor Dennis Serfilippi, who started a website to recall the mayor and the Board of Alders, blasted the administration for hanging its budget projections last year on anticipated state funding when it knew that the state was unlikely to be able or willing to provide that funding.

“That state is broke,” he said. He asked why city departments weren’t asked to make up the differences and why the city didn’t go to unions and ask for concessions. He also blasted the administration for not being more transparent with department purchases through the city’s credit card program. He criticized the administration for giving developers a 17-year tax break to build 156 units of affordable housing on Route 34, when a market rate development or single family homes might generate more revenue for the city.

Jones pushed back about the state funding, noting that the city’s fiscal year started July 1; the cut to the city was announced almost six months into the year. Gormany also pushed back about the assertions on spending, noting that expenditures went up only 1.5 percent.

Jones defended the use of the credit card to make certain purchases through sites like Amazon, where he said the city sees

MARKESHIA RICKS PHOTO Harp faces Westville-West Hills managment team. significant savings. It also generates thouthe possibility of the state Municipal Acsands of dollars in rebates to the city under countability Review Board (MARB) taking over the city. a state “p-card” program. He said it ensure that bills are paid on time.

“The state doesn’t have the money,” Mayor Harp said. “It spent it all on the Hartford Neighbor Tom LoRicco pointed out the bailout. MARB could come take over the recent uptick in crime in Westville (which has since abated) and asked to know the city, but no money would come with it.”

She said after the meeting that there was so status of the police contract. The police department is going on two years without a much focus on the 11 percent tax increase that she wanted to try to widen the aperture contract; the union and the city are now in arbitration. Meanwhile, the city is looking on the conversation.

“It wasn’t the whole story,” she said. for a way to recoup the full costs of training officers about $60,000 per officer from “People really need to know what it took to construct the budget and what we were towns that poach them.

Neighbor Jonathan Gordon asked about up against.”

Pirelli Hotel Plan Survives Surprise Attack

by THOMAS BREEN

New Haven Independent

A plan to convert the long-vacant and historic Pirelli Building into a 165-room hotel received approval from the City Plan Commission despite a one-hour push by labor-affiliated alders and city staff to stall the proposal.

That was the upshot of Wednesday night’s regular monthly meeting of the City Plan Commission, which played out over nearly five hours on the second floor of City Hall.

Commissioners voted 3-1 in favor of IKEA’s detailed plan and coastal site plan for the conversion of the historic Pirelli Building at 500 Sargent Dr. into a 165room hotel with 129 dedicated parking spaces.

Only around 10 minutes of the hour-long Pirelli section of the meeting were dedicated to IKEA’s actual plans for the iconic Marcel Breuer-designed Brutalist building,

which was built in 1968 and has long sat vacant in a sea of parking lots off of Sargent Drive, serving as little more than a highway-facing billboard for IKEA’s latest home furniture products.

As local attorney Jim Segaloff explained, IKEA has not yet found a developer for the site, but wants to tee up the property for any interested buyers by first receiving City Plan approval for the hotel conversion.

The approved plans call for a 165-room hotel, 129 dedicated parking spaces, 200 square feet of bicycle storage in the bottom of the IKEA sign, stormwater management and landscaping improvements, a reconfiguration of IKEA’s existing 1,241-space surface lot, and the repair and cleaning up of the building’s facade. The proposal does not call for any changes to be made to the building’s exterior.

Con’t on page 06

THOMAS BREEN PHOTO

meeting.

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IKEA attorney Jim Segaloff prevailing at Wednesday’s City Plan

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The Pirelli Building.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - Noveber 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

From Detroit To Dixwell, “Paradise Blue” Echoes

by Lucy Gellman, Editor, Arts Paper www.newhavenarts.org

A jazz club is fighting the rising tide of gentrification before it even knows what it’s up against. Inside, patrons trickle in unaware. Strains of horn and piano filter through, unwittingly setting the soundtrack for a new chapter in forced migration. Outside, the neighborhood has started to gasp for air.

But is it Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood circa 1949, or New Haven’s Dixwell Corridor just a few years later? Or somewhere else entirely, where the story is so familiar and so American we don’t even need the city’s name?

Last week, that question hit the Stetson Branch of the New Haven Free Public Library (NHFPL) as New Havener Ife Michelle Gardin and the cast of Long Wharf Theatre’s Paradise Blue spoke about the play, and its resonances in New Haven seven decades after it takes place. Close to 40 people attended the event.

The play opens Wednesday Nov. 21 and runs through Dec. 16. Tickets and more information Long Wharf Theater (203) 787-4282 Written by MacArthur Genius Award winner Dominique Morisseau, Paradise Blue unfolds in Detroit’s now-demolished Black Bottom neighborhood and Paradise Valley entertainment district in 1949, just a year before the city government razed the entire area under the guise of urban renewal and the American Housing Act of 1949. In its once thriving Paradise Club, Blue (Stephen Tyrone Williams) can already hear the grim knock of gentrification at his door, scratching the brick and paint with something that sounds like sharp nails and eminent domain.

Around him, Morisseau has built a universe that is as deeply human is it is historical. As Blue thinks about selling the club (Gardin described him as “the brother that’s in all kinds of conflict!”), we get a look into its life: club co-owner Pumpkin (Margaret Odette), musicians Corn (Leon Addison Brown) and P-Sam (Freddie Fulton), and a mysterious outsider named Silver (Carolyn Michelle Smith) who rolls into town like a rhythm no one’s ever heard before.

Every breath they take is soaked in midcentury jazz, channeling a time when Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus and many others were still alive, touring and recording.

And every breath is threatened by outside forces, waiting at the edges to dismantle the neighborhood.

“This play finds characters at a real crossroads for all of them,” said Fulton.

As the cast gathered at Stetson, Director Awoye Timpo spoke about the play’s baptism in music and history, the two inextricably linked in a story of displacement. A product of redlining, Black Bottom was built in the 1930s, as the city’s Black population boomed, but was largely excluded from other neighborhoods due to unfair housing practices.

Black Bottom became, for decades, a model of Black self-sufficiency: hundreds of Black-owned businesses, social workers, doctors and dentists populated the neighborhood, with an entertainment district dedicated to their needs. According to Detroit historian Ken Coleman and records from the Detroit Urban League, the area once laid claim to 151 physicians, 140 social workers, 85 lawyers, 71 beauty shops, 57 restaurants, 36 dentists, 30 drug stores, 25 barber shops, 25 dress makers and shops, 20 hotels, 15 fish and poultry markets, ten hospitals, ten electricians, nine insurance companies, seven building contractors, five flower shops, two bondsmen and two dairy distributors.

“There was an influx of opportunity happening in Detroit,” said Timpo. “Black Bottom, Paradise Valley … it was one of the hottest jazz places in the country.”

And then it was gone. After the passage of the American Housing Act of 1949, the City of Detroit seized and razed the area, claiming “slum clearance” and using the land to make room for the Chrysler Freeway (I-75), sprawling Detroit Medical Center, and now-historic Lafayette Park neighborhood, where apartments designed

by Mies van der Rohe now sell for a small fortune. Almost no traces of the area’s history remain.

While big venues like the Paradise Theatre ultimately saw a resurrection (it is now Orchestra Hall, where the Detroit Symphony Orchestra plays its shows), most of the area’s jazz clubs were crippled in their tracks, names wiped from the historical record. And in the intervening decades, Southeastern Michigan has become one of the most segregated areas in the country.

And the history of displacement keeps telling the same story. As a new wave of gentrification has swept over the city in recent years, Detroit’s The Downtown Development Authority has put $52.4 million back into the area—to build a 24-hour entertainment district poised to house just one tenth of the people it did over half a century ago.

“We’re in these places where history repeats itself,” Timpo said, noting protests in Long Island City over Amazon’s planned relocation there. “The play takes place 70 years ago, but it’s happening right at this moment.”

And not just in Detroit but in New Haven, where the Dixwell Avenue Corridor was the city’s own Paradise Valley. While Unsung Heroes: The Music of Jazz in New Haven notes that New Haven only had about 3,000 Black families at the turn of the 20th century, that number soon grew with the promise of employment. Like Detroit’s auto industry, the Winchester Repeating Arms Factory had the city booming, keeping whole neighborhoods in business as it churned out military-grade equipment in one hand, and signed paychecks with the other.

“Paradise was the Monterey. It was the Elks Club,” Gardin said, recalling go-to jazz spots and beloved musicians of the

Carolyn Michelle Smith, who plays Silver. Lucy Gellman Photo.

Stephen Tyrone Williams: from a discussion about Coltrane’s A Love Supreme to his character’s own theme.

Leon Addison Brown and Freddie Fulton. Lucy Gellman Photo.

Ife Michelle Gardin and Paradise Blue Director Awoye Timpo. Lucy Gellman Photo.

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time. “We didn’t have to leave this area for anything. It was safe. It was a village.”

She recalled what it was like to walk down Dixwell Avenue, and have a whole world of Black-owned businesses at one’s fingertips, stretching from one end of the avenue all the way to the other. While grocers, doctors and dentists built a thriving economic ecosystem, music pulsed at spots like The Monterey and Dinkie’s Jazz Club. Now, the Monterey stands empty at 265 Dixwell, across from the Dixwell Ave Mini Mart and Flowers By Design.

“I don’t think we realized how fortunate we were,” said Branch Manager Diane Brown, whose mother Lillian was one of the first Black homeowners in New Haven’s Newhallville neighborhood. “We just thought that was the norm.”

As the play lands in New Haven—it was performed at New York’s Signature Theatre to great acclaim earlier this year— Long Wharf has sought to recreate many of those memories. While Timpo said she considers Signature Theatre Director Ruben Santiago-Hudson a mentor, she was quick to add that this production is, in many ways, uniquely Long Wharf’s.

Working from scratch, jazz trumpeter Alfonso Horne has devised music not only for the club’s performances, but for each of the characters who inhabit the space.

Several weeks ago, he came in during a cast read-through of the script, speaking with cast members when he wasn’t listening to the words. Smith, who plays Silver, said that his presence helped her forge a connection with not just the material, but with the time period itself.

Williams, who plays Blue, recalled telling Horne about a specific scene in John Scheinfeld’s Chasing Trane, in which the guitarist Santana says he plays John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and burns sage each time he gets to a new hotel room.

Horne took the chord structure from parts of the 1964 album and turned it into Blue’s theme, which follows the character each time he exits and enters the stage.

“It was crazy, but it was beautiful,” Timpo recalled of Horne’s whirlwind trip to the theater. She later added that it she finds it exhilarating “to think of a time when Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus would just be walking around the neighborhood.”

Fulton, who plays P-Sam, jumped in.

For the characters in this work, mastery of the music is just as important as every other aspect of the show, because the actors want to honor “the ancestors”—the jazz greats who have come before them, and graced Paradise-like venues across the country.

When crafting Paradise Blue’s world, Timpo looked critically to two other works that comprise Morisseau’s Detroit Trilogy: Detroit ’67 and Skeleton Crew, the first of which Collective Consciousness Theatre (CCT) performed in 2014. She praised the works’ timeliness, drawing a parallel with August Wilson’s heralded American CenCon’t on page 06

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - November 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

“Next Door” Reimagines The Neighborhood Bar

by MARKESHIA RICKS New Haven Independent

In a town where getting a good slice is a given, Robin Bodak and Doug Coffin thought adding one more place to the apizza landscape couldn’t hurt, especially when in a place where people have good memories.

On Thursday, with snow threatening, Bodak and Coffin welcomed city officials and the press into their new restaurant, Next Door New Haven at 175 Humphrey Street.

The restaurant is in the former home of the restaurant Humphrey’s (which has a storied history dating back to a Prohibition-era speakeasy) at the corner of Humphrey and East Street. A little over a year after getting its final zoning and building approvals from the city, Next Door officially opened to the public on June 6. On Thursday city officials gathered to celebrate that opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Next Door New Haven is the brick and mortar brainchild of Bodak and Coffin, who are most known for the Big Green Truck Pizza, a fleet of six wood-fired pizza trucks based out of an adjacent building at 530 East St. Mayor Toni Harp said she was happy to be inside and near a hot pizza oven where it was warm. She was even happier to recognize the marriage of a city well-known for its pizza with business owners who know a thing or two about making pies.

“It seems like a marriage made in heaven, or in New Haven anyway, for the Big Green Truck Pizza makers to launch a new brick and mortar pizza restaurant in the piz-

za capital of the world,” Harp said. “Like so many city residents, it is my firm belief that when it comes to pizza there is no such thing as too much of a good thing.”

Wooster Square Alder Aaron Greenberg said he had the opportunity to be at Next Door for the soft opening, where he learned that the place has more than just great pizza.

“They have really great appetizers and drinks and whole wonderful menu,” he said.

Greenberg noted that the Jocelyn Square spot has hosted a variety of venues over the years “some great, some less great.”

“I’m very confident that this is going to be an incredible amenity to this neighborhood and to this whole part of New Haven,” Greenberg added. “If you come here any night of the week, you will see people in all three rooms enjoying themselves. Come for the pizza, stay for the dessert and the whole menu.”

Coffin said opening Next Door is his and Bodak’s attempt to breathe some new life into the corner and that part of the neighborhood.

“People have a lot of memories of Humphrey’s, and I’m honored to try to bring that back,” he said.

He credited Bodak, who has managed the catering end of the Big Green Truck Pizza and is now a co-owner and executive chef for Next Door.

“I would not have undertaken doing a pizzeria if I didn’t think we could also have Robin’s wonderful food to go with that,” Coffin said. “It’s a pizzeria but also a phe-

Editor-in-Chief Liaison, Corporate Affairs Babz@penfieldcomm.com

Advertising/Sales Team Trenda Lucky Keith Jackson Delores Alleyne John Thomas, III

Editorial Team Staff Writers

Christian Lewis/Current Affairs Anthony Scott/Sports Arlene Davis-Rudd/Politics MARKESHIA RICKS PHOTO Mayor Harp and Alder Greenberg join owners Coffin and

Bodak, and GM Corina cutting the ribbon. nomenal restaurant that has some of the best food anywhere.

“I would put her food up against anybody’s in the state, any day of the week.”

Bodak said she grew up being able to hang out “next door” in her neighborhood, She wanted to infuse the restaurant with the same concept of being a safe place to play, grab something to eat, and be entertained.

She said the beyond-the-pizza-pie menu skews toward an eclectic mix of Mediter-

by THOMAS BREEN New Haven Independent

Local architect Wayne Garrick and Langan Engineering Vice President Timothy Onderko.

THOMAS BREEN PHOTO

Publisher / CEO

Babz Rawls Ivy

ranean entrees to ice cream made in-house.

“We’re trying to reimagine the neighborhood bar,” she said.

Next Door also is reimagining the face of the restaurant business, with several women running the show. Bodak is joined by chef Chelsea Peterson and General Manager Maria Corina.

“There are a lot of working moms here, and that makes it special to me,” she said.

Downtown Office-To-Residential Proposal Clears City Plan A Greenwich developer cleared the last administrative hurdle in his plans to convert the upper levels of two adjacent Chapel Street buildings into 29 marketrate apartments.

That happened at the most recent monthly City Plan Commission meeting on the second floor of City Hall.

At the end of a jam-packed, nearly five-hour meeting, commissioners voted unanimously in support of East River Partners LLC’s plans to convert upper-level office space at 742-750 Chapel St. and 754 Chapel St. into a total of 29 apartments.

The project is the second proposed residential development at that very corner from East River Partners, which is run

by Greenwich developer (and New Haven native) Joseph Cohen. East River Partners also plans to build a six-story, 60-unit mixed-use apartment complex atop a surface parking lot around the corner at 294-302 State St. “Good!” City Plan Commision Chair Ed Mattison said after voting in support of the Chapel Street development proposals at the meeting, which took place

John P. Thomas

742-750 and 754 Chapel St.

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last Wednesday evening. “That block needed some work.”

Local architect Wayne Garrick and Langan Engineering Vice President Timothy Onderko walked the commissioners through the proposal, which consists entirely of interior construction except for the addition of an emergency stairwell and covered bicycle parking in the back of the building.

East River Partners plans to convert 20,433 square feet of existing vacant office space on the second, third, and fourth floors of 742-750 Chapel and the second and third floors of 754 Chapel into 29 residential units: four onebedrooms, two two-bedrooms, and 23 studio apartments.

“Both buildings are on the Historic Register,” Garrick said. “We have no plans to adjust the facade.”

The first floors of the buildings are currently occupied by commercial tenants like a Subway sandwich shop and the U.S. Postal Service. At September’s Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) meeting, Cohen said that he does not have any plans to move out any of the current commercial tenants.

Contributing Writers David Asbery Tanisha Asbery Jerry Craft/Cartoons Barbara Fair

Dr. Tamiko Jackson-McArthur Michelle Turner Smita Shrestha William Spivey Kam Williams Rev. Samuel T. Ross-Lee

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Contributors At-Large

Christine Stuart www.CTNewsJunkie.com Paul Bass New Haven Independent www.newhavenindependent.org

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - November 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

Con’t from page 03

Pirelli Hotel Plan Survives

“Drive by the Pirelli Building and for 20 years, it’s vacant,” said Segaloff. “We now all have an opportunity to fill it up. ... We have an opportunity to fill up the building, and put in a first-class hotel.”

The vast majority of the hearing was taken up instead by a passionate, repetitive, bewildered and bewildering debate among Segaloff and his colleague attorney Caleb Hamel (both of whom were representing IKEA), the City Plan Commission staff, and the five voting members of the City Plan Commission.

The debate centered on which administrative body the Board of Alders or the City Plan Commission has proper legal jurisdiction to act on the IKEA proposal.

As with debates over whether to overhaul city zoning rules and whether to withhold approval of a makeover of the Duncan Hotel, a strong sense in the room Wednesday night was that the intense wrangling had to do with unspoken as much as with spoken arguments and agendas. Hovering behind the IKEA hotel debate, though never mentioned explicitly, was Yale’s UNITEHERE labor union, a powerful local political player that has close ties to aldermanic leadership and an effective ruling majority on the Board of Alders, and that has a direct interest in hotel worker organizing.

UNITE HERE has sought to ensure that hotels built in New Haven have unionized workforces.

The nominal source of the debate was a Sept. 16 letter sent by the seven leaders of the Board of Alders to city Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson, requesting that the local economic development chief pull IKEA’s hotel conversion proposal from the City Plan Commission’s oversight and redirect it to the Board of Alders’ purview.

The rationale the alders offered was that the proposed conversion of the vacant 108,000 gross-square-foot building into a hotel constituted a change of use within the Planned Development District (PDD) #100 zoning regulations that the alders passed in 2002 to help pave the way for IKEA’s move to Long Wharf.

“We are aware through media reports that there is proposal for a change to the current use of the Pirelli Building in the IKEA PDD,” the Sept. 17 letter reads, “and it has been forwarded tot he City Plan Commission. As you know the practice is for changes to current uses in a PDD to be communicated to the Board of Alders for review, approval, and referral.

“Given that that practice is the appropriate action for this matter,” it continues, “please remove it from the City Plan Commission agenda and communicate this proposal to the Board of Alders so that it may get proper consideration.”

The letter is signed by West River Alder and Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers, Dixwell Alder and Board of Alders President Pro Tempore Jeanette Morrison, Whalley/Edgewood/Beaver Hills (WEB) Alder and Board of Alders Majority Leader Richard Furlow, Wooster Square Alder and Third Officer Aaron

City Plan Commission Chair Ed Mattison (center) with commissioners Adam Marchand and Jonathan Wharton.

City Plan Commissioner Leslie Radcliffe and Marchand.

Greenberg, Hill Alder and Deputy Majority Leader Dave Reyes, Hill Alder and Black and Hispanic Caucus Chair Dolores Colon, and Newhallville Alder and Black and Hispanic Caucus Vice-Chair Delphine Clyburn. All were elected with the support of UNITE HERE; three of them have held leadership positions in or work for the union.

Segaloff, who passed around thick packet of papers containing a copy of the alders’ letter, a legal brief he had written, and a copy of the 2002 PDD legislation, consistently criticized the alders’ reading of the law as incorrect.

A hotel falls well within the list of sanctioned uses as defined by the 2002 PDD, he and Hamel argued again and again. That means that the City Plan Commission, not the Board of Alders, is the appropriate administrative body to review the detailed plan and coastal site plan proposals.

“What’s the legal issue here?” Segaloff asked. “What’s behind this? What’s it all about?”

Marchand, the aldermanic representative on the commission, and a UNITE HERE employee, asked commission Chair Ed Mattison to table IKEA’s proposal to give the alders and city staff more time to talk with Corporation Counsel about which body should take the lead on IKEA’s hotel plans.

Acting City Plan Director Michael Piscitelli agreed, saying that the City Plan

staff had completed its technical review of IKEA’s submissions, but that the city was not prepared for a vote on the matter because of outstanding potential legal concerns.

Mattison was initially sympathetic to that argument.

“If there is an internal city disagreement,” he said, “we’re not going to vote on it.”

He said that he did not want the City Plan Commission to decide on what was ultimately a difference in legal interpretations of the PDD. Segaloff pushed back.

“Who doesn’t want a hotel here?” he asked.

“I think we’re getting screwed here.” He said that he helped write the PDD law back in 2002, and that the law is clear: a hotel is a permitted use of the Pirelli building.

The tide among the commissioners began to shift when City Plan Commissioner Leslie Radcliffe expressed concern about potentially abdicating the legal authority of the City Plan Commission at the mere request of seven alders.

“I’d like to see the letter myself,” she said, prompting Segaloff to distribute copies of the Sept. 17 missive from the alders.

Mattison asked about what would happen if the commission tabled the matter for a month, giving the alders and the city a little more time to pin down Corporation Counsel for a definitive legal opinion on the matter.

Hamel pointed out and City Plan Commis-

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sion staffer Anne Hartjen confirmed that the commission has to act on a proposal within 65 days of its submission.

Since the commission received IKEA’s proposal on Sept. 20, Hartjen said, the commission simply could not push off a vote until December. A lack of action at Wednesday night’s meeting would by default approve the hotel conversion request.

But, Piscitelli cautioned, the city needed a little bit more time to hammer out a “timing issue” behind the scenes. The commission could always ask the applicants if they would be open to an extension of that 65day window, thereby giving the city a bit more time to decide.

“Is the use permitted in the PDD?” Radcliffe asked the City Plan staff point blank.

“We would not have written a report or even accepted an application if we did not think it fit the regulations,” Hartjen replied.

“I think we should act within our jurisdiction,” Radcliffe said.

The commissioners called a vote.

Radcliffe, Mattison, and commission alternate Jonathan Wharton, who is a Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) professor and the former chair of the Republican Town Committee, voted for the hotel conversion plan.

Commission alternate Elias Estabrook, who works as a jobs coach for the local UNITE HERE-affiliated job-placement group New Haven Works, voted against the proposal. Estabrook said he voted no because he did not have confidence one way or the other that the commission had adequate legal standing to rule on the matter.

Marchand abstained from the vote.

After the vote, Alder Furlow, who attended Wednesday’s meeting for a separate hearing, said he thought the alder leadership had acted appropriately in sending the September letter to Nemerson and in seeking out Corporation Counsel’s opinion. He said the Board of Alders has broad authority and jurisdiction, but that the intent of the letter was never to circumvent the authority of the City Plan Commission.

He also noted that there are currently two other hotels on Long Wharf: La Quinta Inn and New Haven Village Suites.

“Now there’s going to be three on the block,” he said.

City economic development chief Nemerson said he had expected the IKEA team to be open to tabling the issue until next month’s meeting. Instead, he said, IKEA pushed the issue, and ultimately prevailed.

“In New Haven, we want to be very respectful of our relationship with the Board of Alders,” Nemerson said.

But, from an economic development perspective, he said, he is thrilled to see a long-vacant building finally on the brink of reuse. He said that one of the very first things he did upon assuming office in 2013 was meet with IKEA to talk about how best to develop the Pirelli Building.

“We’re delighted that it’s going to be developed as something,” he said.

Con’t from page 03

“Paradise Blue” tury Cycle, which memorialize 100 years of Black life in 20th century Pittsburgh.

From those works, she said, she was overwhelmed by the sense that history keeps repeating itself, creating and recreating systems of trauma and displacement for people of color.

Attendee Sharon Brooks, who was born and raised in New Haven’s Dixwell neighborhood, pointed out that Gardin and the cast had skirted the G word—gentrification (Gardin was quick to say that hadn’t been her intention). She called out families who left the neighborhoods when they had the financial mobility to do so, heading to Hamden, West Haven, and Westville only to discover that “they couldn’t escape their skin color, that melanin.”

As a lifelong New Havener, she said that she’s watched Yale University snap up real estate at an almost unprecedented rate, making New Haven less livable for the people who have called it home for generations. While she did not mention them by name, the insatiable appetites of local mega-landlords Mandy Management, Pike International, and Ocean Management pulsed at the edges of the room.

“We are just being swallowed up,” she said. “That gentrification is so real. And coupled with lack of opportunity, the lack of real money—with Yale’s [$29.4 billion] endowment, who can compete? Unless we pool our resources.”

She described a national Facebook group called “Buy The Block,” dedicated to fighting gentrification by pooling community resources, and reinvesting in real estate in historically Black neighborhoods.

She suggested that if enough community members pitched in, a group could buy back The Monterey, and surrounding properties.

“In small ways, that is what we will have to do to turn this tide of gentrification,” she said.

Gardin nodded. “I’d like to believe that there are people who want to preserve their community,” she said. “For us, by us.”

Dominique Morisseau’s Paradise Blue runs at Long Wharf Theatre from Nov. 21 to Dec. 16. For tickets and more info about the play, visit the theater’s website www. longwharf.org Hundreds of photos from before Black Bottom’s destruction still live in the Burton Collection at the Detroit Public Library.

Large CT Fence & Guardrail Contractor is looking for Fence Installer foreman and helpers. Foreman must have at least 5 years’ experience. Helpers-no experience required, will train the right person. Work available 10-12 months per year. Valid Ct. Driver’s license required and must be able to get a DOT Medical Card. All necessary equipment provided. Medical, vacation & other benefits included. Must be able to pass a physical and drug test. Foreman rates from $22 to $28.10/hour plus benefits, helper rates from $16 to $18.10/hour plus benefits. OSHA 10 training required.

Please email resume to pking@atlasoutdoor.com AA/EOE

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - Noveber 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

SIGN YOUR CHILD UP FOR SUCCESS! There are still openings in preschool programs for children ages 3-5 years.

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - November 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

Blumenthal Challenges Whitaker Appointment In Court

by Peter Urban Ct. News Junkie

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal on Monday filed a legal challenge to President Donald Trump’s appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting Attorney General, claiming it violates the U.S. Constitution’s Appointments Clause.

“Americans really prize a system of checks and balances. They know that checks on autocratic and dictatorial power are essential to our democratic system. President Trump’s appointment here betrays those checks and balances,” Blumenthal said.

Blumenthal is asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to nullify the appointment on the grounds that it deprives members of the Senate their right to confirm presidential appointees working at the highest level of the federal government as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. He is joined by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, DR.I., and Sen. Masie Hirono, D-Hawaii, on the court filing.

President Trump appointed Whitaker as

acting attorney general after Jeff Sessions agreed to leave the job at the request of the president. Blumenthal says the president should have appointed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as acting attorney general, noting that — unlike Whitaker — Rosenstein is next in line and has faced Senate confirmation in his current role.

Whitaker was Session’s chief of staff.

Blumenthal went farther in discrediting Whitaker saying he “would never pass the advice and consent test” because he is “completely lacking in qualifications.”

“He is, in fact, a lackey and sycophant.

That is exactly why we have the advice and consent clause,” Blumenthal said on a conference call with reporters.

President Trump’s Legal Counsel, Emmet Flood, issued a memorandum last week defending the appointment saying Whitaker has served at the Justice Department at a significant pay level for over a year — fulfilling the requirements to serve as acting attorney general under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.

Flood noted that former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush had similarly appointed non-Senate confirmed individuals as acting agency heads. Under the law, those appointed in acting positions can serve in those roles for up to 210 days.

Blumenthal’s concern over the appointment of Whitaker appears to be driven by concerns that Trump is looking to undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections.

Whitaker has in the past criticized the investigation.

“What we are witnessing right now is a slow-motion Saturday Night massacre,” Blumenthal said, alluding to President Richard Nixon’s attempt to torpedo a special counsel investigation of the Watergate affair. Rather than an overnight firing of Mueller, Blumenthal suggested the Trump administration is imposing a “death by a

WIKIMEDIA & CTNEWSJUNKIE COMPOSITE

Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, left, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal thousand cuts” strategy to undermine the to violate the Constitution, to undermine special counsel. the rule of law and sabotage a valid special “The consequences are largely the same — counsel investigation,” Blumenthal said.

Hamden Plans To Go After Car Tax Scofflaws

by Jack Kramer Ct. News Junkie

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HAMDEN, CT - The town of Hamden is taking the first step in trying to stop people who live in town and skip paying car taxes by registering their cars in other states.

The town recently released a request for bids for “Out of State Motor Vehicle Reporting,” asking for qualified vendors to investigate and report motor vehicles used or housed by Hamden residents which are registered in a state other than Connecticut.

Hamden Mayor Curt Leng said: “Historically, Hamden has taken a loss in motor vehicle tax collections due to the large amount of residents living in town who have not yet registered their vehicles in Connecticut.”

“This pushes the burden unfairly onto all compliant taxpayers and is a large untapped source of town revenues,” Leng said. “My hope is to get the majority of these residents to properly report their motor vehicles and file taxes so that we can collect additional revenue and work on a motor vehicle mill rate reduction.”

Hamden and many other Connecticut municipalities lose tax revenue by residents whose main residence is Connecticut but register their cars in lower tax states, such as Florida or Maine.

Hamden’s current tax rate tax is just short of 48 mills.

Kevin Maloney, spokesperson for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, who is also a Hamden resident, said he knows that Leng has been concerned about the issue for some time.

Maloney termed the issue “problematic for many in Connecticut.” He said it presented a “barrier to the maximum collection of motor vehicle property taxes that are owed to a town to help pay for services in a community.”

Because each municipality in Connecticut has its own vehicle tax rate they have wide variations, with the bigger cities and larger towns such as Hamden generally having

8

JACK KRAMER / CTNEWSJUNKIE

A vehicle with a Florida license plate in a Hamden shopping plaza much higher tax rates than more affluent, smaller, suburban towns.

During the recent gubernatorial campaign, Governor-elect Ned Lamont floated the idea of a single statewide rate for motor vehicle taxes as a fairer, more equitable way for all taxpayers.

Municipal officials have fought similar proposals in the past because they’re afraid the state wouldn’t make them whole for the lost revenue stream.

Municipal officials in Connecticut have known about the out-of-state car tax dodge problem for years. Some cities, including Bridgeport, Danbury, New Haven, Stratford and Waterbury, have also tried contracting with companies in the past to track down tax evaders.

A study done by the city of Waterbury in 2016 uncovered more than 4,000 vehicles registered out of the city. The study estimated that the cost of those lost registrations approached nearly $450,000.

Part of the issue is proximity. In Waterbury for instance, most of the violators were found to be registered in New York.

In Hartford, the violators were found to be registered in Massachusetts or Maine.

City of New Haven mayoral spokesman Laurence Grotheer said Thursday that New Haven had instituted a similar program to crack down on out-of-state license plates,

but discontinued it in 2014. He declined to elaborate on why.

Back in 2015 the General Assembly considered, but did not pass, a bill to create a task force to study the problem of out-ofstate car registration and recommend solutions.

Leng said the vendor that will be chosen to go after Hamden tax skippers will report on vehicles that are subject to taxation under Connecticut general statutes but to date have are not included on Hamden’s tax rolls.

Leng said the selected vendor will be tasked with: managing the process used to screen suspected tax violators; collect, investigate, and develop sufficient evidence to support violations and ensure statutory compliance; prepare correspondences and receive phone inquiries; provide tax collector with address updates for collections purposes; provide investigative support to the town; and develop program details to ensure efficiency and standards of service.

“Hamden can no longer stand to leave this valuable motor vehicle tax revenue uncollected. We are taking concrete action to improve our ability to collect these lost funds,” Leng said.

Municipal aid is one of a handful of “nonfixed” costs in the state budget and there’s a concern that the current budget deficit will force Gov.-elect Ned Lamont to cut municipal aid.

In a letter to Lamont, Office of Policy and Management Secretary Ben Barnes suggested that it’s one of the places the newly elected governor could find savings in order to balance the budget.

Barnes suggested canceling new tax cuts promised in the budget adopted earlier this year by the General Assembly, transferring part of the Teacher’s Retirement System to municipalities, reducing the flow of money under the volatility cap to the Rainy Day Fund, reducing rates paid to certain Medicaid providers, and “reducing Municipal Aid where appropriate.”

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - Noveber 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

TBT: Senate Democrats Last Leadership Battle – 1994

by Peter Urban

WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats unanimously agreed on Wednesday to continue with their same leadership team headed by New York Senator Chuck Schumer – marking yet another in a series of leadership elections for the caucus that were decided without a fight.

In fact, it has been 24 years since Senate Democrats have had a contested election – that one pitted Connecticut’s Chris Dodd against South Dakota’s Tom Daschle. Dodd lost by a single vote.

Daschle began campaigning to lead the Senate Democrats in early 1994.

He expected to face Tennessee Senator Jim Sasser but Sasser lost his bid for reelection to the Senate. The results of the November general election left Democrats with 47 seats. Dodd, who had supported Sasser, announced his intention to be minority leader in December as the Hartford Courant reported.

When the vote was tallied, Dodd lost 24-23.

On Wednesday, Senate Republicans also selected their leaders for the 116th Congress, and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky will continue as majority leader.

House Democrats aren’t voting on their leadership until later this month but a battle is brewing for the top spot although no challenger has emerged to take on California Democrat Nancy Pelosi as she seeks to become House Speaker.

Historically, the majority party rallies behind one of their own to insure that when the House votes in January for House Speaker their candidate wins. As

Lamont Names Two Men To Build His Cabinet

by Christine Stuart Ct. News Junkie

ALBERT H. TEICH VIA SHUTTERSTOCK

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York

U.S.

the numbers work, Pelosi would need 218 Democrats to defeat whomever Republicans decide to run for the position.

That means she can afford only a handful of defectors as Democrats will hold between 227 and 237 seats at the start of the 116th Congress. (A handful of contests have yet to be decided.)

If Pelosi cannot guarantee the necessary support within her caucus, her opponents hope to find another member who can rally the needed numbers.

House Democrats will also be selecting other top leadership spots including: Majority Leader, Majority Whip, Assistant Democratic Leader or Caucus Chair. No one in the Connecticut delegation is vying for those positions.

HARTFORD, CT — Gov.-elect Ned Lamont hasn’t hired anyone to his administration, but on Monday he announced two more members of his transition team, who will be responsible for vetting the people he hires.

Lamont announced that Kevin Myatt, senior vice president of human resources for Yale-New Haven Hospital, and John Denson, a senior client partner at Korn Ferry in Stamford, will be going over the resumes submitted through LamontTransition.org.

Lamont said he knows how important hiring the right people was in his private life.

“I was a sociology major and I was building telecommunication systems,” Lamont said. “I had to have really good people who complimented my skills.”

Lamont founded Lamont Digital Systems back in 1980. He sold the company before announcing his run for governor.

Lamont said he’s looking for Myatt and Denson to vet the resumes they receive, but also to recruit talent.

Lamont is responsible for hiring commissioners and deputy commissioners in some cases, which means he will directly be hiring a over 100 people before January.

Lt. Gov. -elect Susan Bysiewicz said she didn’t know exactly how many hires they will need to make, but “expect one person to lead each commission.”

“I want the best and the brightest to be our commissioners,” Lamont said. “That’s for darn sure.”

He said he’s going to set an example by not taking a salary or benefits, but he can’t ask his commissioners to do the same.

“I don’t think the salaries will be an issue for getting top talent,” Bysiewicz said.

Quinnipiac University business expert available

by telephone to offer tips on Black Friday

Hamden, Connecticut – Nov. 20, 2018 – Fred McKinney, director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Quinnipiac University’s School of Business, is available to discuss Black Friday.

To arrange a telephone interview with McKinney, contact John Pettit, assistant director of public relations, at 203-5828580 (office) or 203-415-7370 (cell).

“Despite the rising popularity of online shopping, consumers are still very excited about Black Friday,” McKinney said. “It remains all hands on deck for retailers, who expect to see people lining up and staying up all night – regardless of weather. Some people participate because of habit; others, for the fun and to get the best deals. Retailers are still willing to create loss leader deals to drive traffic. In the past, we’ve seen Best Buy offer a $500 television for $50 in order to generate crowds. Retailers believe if they can get consumers to the store, they will spend money on the things they came to buy and on things they were not planning to purchase.

Fred McKinney

McKinney added, “As more consumers grow comfortable buying on line, though, fewer people are willing to wait in line. As a result, traditional brick-andmortar retailers are trying to engage with consumers virtually. Walmart purchased a major internet company in order to

compete with Amazon, while Amazon is supporting its virtual business with forays into brick-and-mortar. Today’s retail market is brutal, you have to do what consumers want and the way they want it, or the company will suffer the consequences. We saw Sears collapse because it did not act in a way that conformed to consumer behavior.

“Everyone is willing to go all out on Black Friday because it kicks off the period of spending during the six weeks between Thanksgiving and the end of the year when shoppers spend the most money,” he continued. “The fourth quarter can account for as much as 40 to 50 percent of annual sales, and for retailers, it is a make-or-break time of the year.

Retailers that don’t meet fourth quarter goals see lower annual profits.

“For consumers, my best advice for Black Friday is to do your homework.

Know what you want; know your options; be sure to research all alternatives; and buy from the retailer that offers the best deal.”

9

CHRISTINE STUART / CTNEWSJUNKIE Ned Lamont and Susan Bysiewicz She said they’ve already heard from people who love the state and want to serve.

Lamont said they have meetings with all the commissioners and plan to get an update from them on their priorities for their state agencies, “but I am looking for a fresh start.”

He said he’s likely going to keep some agency heads.

Department of Children and Families Commissioner Joette Katz, Department of Corrections Commissioner Scott Semple, and Emergency Management and Public Safety Commissioner Dora Schriro have already announced their departure from state service.

Policy Progress?

Lamont said he’s facing a $75 billion structural budget deficit that he’s going to have to work through.

He declined to offer many details about how he plans to charge his transition team when it comes to creating budget police.

He said he feels like he was clear on the campaign trail when he talked about the “big buckets” of the state budget “where we need to make changes.”

“I spent a lot of time talking about health care and what we can do there,” Lamont said.

Lamont’s health care proposals related to the budget were vague on the campaign trail. He talked about regional purchasing of pharmaceuticals, but was vague about his plans for the Medicaid population. And he offered no promises of universal coverage or a state-based individual mandate.

Lamont also cited “stretching out our pension payments for a period of time so we

don’t have any cliffs,” as a solution to the budget pressures.

Those pressures he learned are more acute in Connecticut than in western states.

Just back from his first National Governors Association meeting in Colorado Springs, Lamont said at the end of the day he couldn’t tell who the Democrats were and who the Republicans were.

He said he didn’t even hear President’s Trump name come up over the 72 hour period.

“It’s a very different world when you start moving into governance,” Lamont said.

What he quickly learned was the states who receive revenue from oil and gas have it better than Connecticut where the largest source of state revenue is the personal income tax.

He joked that one governor was complaining that his $20 billion sovereign wealth fund was only going to pay for 65 percent of his budget, instead of 70 percent, due to reductions in oil and gas prices.

He said another governor was talking about improving transportation structure with an excise tax on fracking.

Connecticut’s special transportation fund was on the verge of insolvency earlier this year, which is why Lamont has proposed a toll on out-of-state truckers.

Lamont’s agenda today including a briefing on emergency management and a meeting with the Department of Economic and Community Development. On Tuesday, Lamont will be meeting with the Office of State Ethics to make sure they are in compliance.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - November 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

Recounts Show Logan Defeating Cabrera By 85 Votes

by STAFF

New Haven Independent

State Sen. George Logan will be returning to Hartford to represent the 17th District for a second, two-year term.

Unofficial results Wednesday from the last of seven recounts conducted this week show Logan defeated Democratic challenger Jorge Cabrera by 85 votes, according to a Facebook post on Logan’s campaign page.

The Valley Indy will post the vote total when it is available.

“It is an honor and privilege to have this opportunity to represent you in the Senate for another term,” the post read. “I look forward to working with Governor-elect Lamont and his new administration in a bipartisan manner to move CT forward in a way that improves the lives of everyone living and working in CT.” We did it. We won the CT 17th Senatatorial District by 85 votes!

It is an honor and privilege to have this opportunity to represent you in the Senate for another term. I look forward to working with Governor-elect Lamont and his new administration in a bipartisan manner to move CT forward in a way that improves the lives of everyone living and working in CT. Cabrera said he called Logan to congratulate him Wednesday.

“Of course we’d want a different outcome but it was very close and we’re happy with the work that we put in and the team we

assembled,” Cabrera said.

Cabrera said he’d thinking about running for office again — after taking some time off. “At this point I’m going to relax and enjoy Thanksgiving with my family and probably watch some Netflix with my boys and reassess at the turn of the year,” he said.

The 17th District includes Ansonia, Derby, Beacon Falls, Bethany, Hamden, Naugatuck, and Woodbridge.

Those towns had until Wednesday (Nov. 14) to conduct a state-mandated recount of the Nov. 6 vote, because the final tally was so close.

Logan won on Election Day by just 65 votes.

But the results from the Nov. 6 election weren’t finalized until Nov. 8, after Registrars in Ansonia discovered through the Logan campaign that they had initially submitted wrong vote tallies to the secretary of state.

The mistaken vote tally was attributed to a problematic machine and human error.

See the links at the bottom of this story for background.

The mistake highlights problems in the state’s antiquated methods to conduct elections. Ansonia did a recount Tuesday — in the presence of a bunch of lawyers and staffers for both political parties and the campaigns.

Cabrera and his supporters held a rally in front of Ansonia City Hall Monday to

focus attention on the recount.

He said Wednesday that “the biggest thing for me was to make sure every vote was counted fairly.”

“It wasn’t the result we would have liked, but considering coming from virtually nowhere and coming so close, we have a lot to be happy about,” he said.

Meanwhile, the state’s Election Enforcement Commission voted Wednesday to probe just what happened on Election Day in Ansonia.

The move comes after Ansonia Town/City Clerk Janet Waugh sent a letter to the commission asking for an investigation.

The commission’s staff will conduct a fact-finding mission and write a report for the commission to consider. The pending complaint is filed as 2018-106, and can be tracked by the public through the commission’s website.

There’s no deadline for the investigation to be complete.

When the results were still up in the air, Nick Balletto, the chairman of the Connecticut Democratic party, floated the possibility of a legal challenge.

But after the recount ended Wednesday he issued a statement saying “While this is not the outcome we hoped for, I’m proud that we came so close in such a competitive district.

“Jorge Cabrera ran a great race, and I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of him in the future,” Balletto said.

Also, I want to take this opportunity to thank my entire campaign team, my mom, the rest of my family and friends/suppo...

Scientology Church Gets OK To Rebuild

by THOMAS BREEN

New Haven Independent

The Church of Scientology of Connecticut got the thumbs up to convert a vacant Westville former furniture warehouse into a place of worship, despite reservations of two neighbors who lambasted the organization for long neglecting the property and spurning the community.

During Wednesday night’s regular monthly City Plan Commission meeting on the second floor of City Hall, commissioners voted unanimously to approve the Church of Scientology of Connecticut’s site plan to convert the former Masonic Temple and Hallock’s furniture store at 949 Whalley Ave. into a “community meeting space” for the church.

The church, a local chapter of a modern international religion founded by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, popularized

by Hollywood celebrities like Tom Cruise and John Travolta, and sharply criticized by investigative journalists like Lawrence Wright, purchased the former Westville furniture store in 2003 for $1.5 million.

The church has left the building vacant for the past 15 years. Most recently it has been operating instead out of a smaller building further up the road at 980 Whalley Ave. Despite the protests of a Whalley Avenue alder and a neighborhood economic development booster, the commissioners ap-

Scientology architect Christopher Sanders (right) and project manager Larry Nardecchia pitch plans.

proved the church’s site plan, arguing that the City Plan Commission as an administrative body can only evaluate technical planning concerns and zoning compliance.

It cannot enforce anti-blight violations or community indignation.

“They would be well served to engage more with the local community,” Westville Alder and City Plan Commissioner Adam Marchand cautioned the church’s representatives. But, regarding the site plan presented on Wednesday, he said, “They seem to be in compliance.”

The City Plan staff report for the church’s proposed conversion of the former Hallock’s, which was first built as a Masonic Temple in 1926, is scant on details about actual renovations.

“The proposed project consists of the renovation of the existing 18,907 SF building in a community meeting space for the Church of Scientology of Connecticut,” the report reads. “Proposed site improvements include the installation of stormwater management infrastructure, landscaping, and the repaving of the existing parking lot.”

10

The three professionals representing the church’s site plan proposal on Wednesday night offered no other insight on what would actually happen within the building once the conversion is complete.

“No comment,” said Larry Nardecchia, a project manager from the New Jerseybased real estate firm Avison Young. He said a church representative would have to provide any information on what will actually happen inside the building.

Christopher Sanders, an architect from Atlanta, Georgia, and Brian Brewer, a lawyer from Richmond, Virginia, similarly declined to comment on the use of the building.

The Church of Scientology of Connecticut did not respond to a request for comment by the publication time of this article.

During the group’s presentation before the commissioners, Sanders did explain what kind of construction work the church plans to undertake in its conversion of the vacant building.

He said that the church will restore the masonry on the building, fill cracks, repair walls, and install a new roof. He said the conversion also calls for the demolition and reconstruction of a small extension in the rear of the building, which, when renovated, will serve as a gym for the church’s members.

Sanders also briefly showed a design ren-

dering of the converted church, dramatically lit with a purple sky and a handful of spotlights sprinkled throughout the facade.

City Plan staffer Anne Hartjenseized on the rendering as a potential problem for the site plan review. She said that the church had not submitted that image as part of its site plan package; that the image included “monument lighting,” which involves light fixtures pointing up or down to spotlight specific sections of a building in dramatic and bright halos of light; and that “monument lighting” is specifically prohibited by New Haven zoning law.

Sanders responded that this design isn’t actually how the building will look. This rendering was just an example of what Marchand dubbed “artistic exuberance.”

“What would be the hours of operation?” asked Commissioner Leslie Radcliffe.

Brewer said he is not exactly sure, but that other Scientology church projects he has worked on throughout the country tend to be open between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m.

“We’ve worked on various projects for the client,” said Sanders. “There’s usually one main event that happens a couple times a year.”

Radcliffe said she had no idea what that means. A couple hundred people three times a year? And how much foot and car traffic on a weekly basis?

Con’t on page 18

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - Noveber 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - November 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

The True Story of the ‘Green Book’ Movie Jazz, race and an unlikely friendship inspire the new film about navigating Jim Crow America

By Anna Diamond

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2018

It was well after dark on a Saturday night in January 1963 when the Don Shirley Trio took the stage in Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

The program of show tunes, jazz and classical music, the local paper reported, was “brilliant and exciting and warmly received by the large crowd.” But its famed leader and pianist, Don Shirley, who was black, knew his welcome was conditional. A hateful sign stood at Manitowoc’s city limits: “N-----, don’t let the sun go down on you in our town.”

When the trio set out on another tour later that year, Shirley hired a white driver, a gregarious Italian-American bouncer known as Tony Lip, to handle problems that might arise in the “sundown towns” of the North and the Jim Crow-era South.

“My father said it was almost on a daily

basis they would get stopped, because a white man was driving a black man,” recalls Lip’s son Nick Vallelonga, who has turned their journey into Green Book, a new film garnering Oscar buzz.

Vallelonga was 5 years old when his father headed out on the road with the pianist. After they returned more than a year later, the men lived their separate lives— Shirley played to acclaim in Europe and Lip became an actor—but they remained friends. As a child Vallelonga visited Shirley in his studio in Manhattan and heard stories about their trip. “That’s an unbelievable movie,” he remembers thinking.

“I’m gonna make it one day.” In his 20s, Vallelonga, an actor and occasional screenwriter, interviewed his father and Shirley about how these two men from starkly different backgrounds navigated the racism they encountered. But Shirley stipulated that he didn’t want the story told until after

his death.

Both men passed away in 2013, and those conversations, along with letters Lip wrote his wife, form the basis of Green Book, which stars Mahershala Ali as Shirley and Viggo Mortensen as Lip. The title is a reference to The Negro Motorist Green Book, a travel guide for African-Americans published from 1936 to 1967 that promised “vacation without aggravation.”

Making the film more than half a century after the events it depicts hasn’t muted its powerful message about overcoming prejudice. Lip “was a product of his times.

Italians lived with Italians. The Irish lived with the Irish. African-Americans lived with African-Americans,” Vallelonga says.

The trip “opened my father’s eyes...and then changed how he treated people.”

Printed with permission of the Smithsonian magazine.

Holiday Home Entertaining Tips to Avoid Stress

by Anthony Rodell is the co-principal and Chief Architect Officer of Reid Rodell It’s not too late to re-think the next 30 days of festivities. If your chest is sinking at the thought of traveling across town for dinners and parties, while packing for a trip out of town for family holiday events, then it is time to take control of the holidays before they take control of you. Here are a few tips to decrease the anxiety and increase the joy.

Redefine and reassign hosting duties Everyone showers you with platitudes about the way you host the entire family and their friends for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Do not be taken in by the flattery. Consider they know you put in a lot of work, which means less work for them.

This year, make everyone work and redefine what it means to be a great host or hostess. Instead of being the one responsible for the main event, decide to host people for dessert within a three-hour window. Once that window of time closes, they will not have to go home, but they will have to leave yours. Choose three or four desserts, serve punch and other non-alcoholic beverages (alcohol makes people want to stay longer), play festive music, and wind it all up by handing each guest a small gift bag

filled with a dessert and nuts – to go. Another alternative is to hand over hosting to another relative, offering to clean or help with expenses.

Host a post-holiday brunch Scrambled eggs and quiche are great accessories to leftover holiday ham, turkey, and veggies. Add in a champagne punch, sparkling water, and coffee and teas, and you have the beginning of a memorable event that doesn’t require the sweat equity. Purchase mini fruit tarts, muffins, and cookies from a local bakery. Need vegan and vegetarian options? Create a luxurious salad filled with nuts, berries and greens, and you can even ask non-meat and dairy eating guests to bring what they would like to eat and share. The day or two after a

holiday gives you an opportunity to breathe a bit, especially if travel is in your holiday plans.

Make reservations Restaurants can be your dining room.

In fact, many have private and extended dining spaces for large groups as well as pricing plans for fixed menus. They create the menu - with your assistance - for your group and you work out payment (self-pay as in a gift or group-pay as in each person pays for their own participation). Make the reservation and show up for great service that does not require you to clean or entertain for long hours. All you have to do is exchange gifts, swap a few stories, and pass out hugs. Keep home a haven of rest.

We are a tradition-loving people, but our

lifestyles are not meeting the demands of those traditions. Our health is not meeting the demands of stress and anxiety for what comes down to about 40 days a year. Of course, it is okay to say no too. However, managing activities can alleviate fatigue and a few headaches.

These tips will assist you in creating new traditions that are not only memorable but healthy.

Anthony Rodell is the co-principal and Chief Architect Officer of Reid Rodell, an event partnership in the greater Washington, D.C. area. For over a decade, Anthony has planned meetings, corporate, gala, and wedding events around the globe. His clients are both well-known and people simply in need of his assistance in organizing and planning events with a unique vision.

Shorter Preps Commencement for First Cohort of Incarcerated Learners HBCU News Wire

Shorter College is one of just two institutions in the state of Arkansas participating in the Second Chance Pell program, a federal initiative granting funding for non-violent inmates to earn college degrees and professional certificates while incarcerated. On Nov. 30, the school will award 25 graduates serving sentences in the Arkansas Department of Correction and Arkansas Community Correction with associate degrees in entrepreneurial studies.

According to officials, Shorter is playing a significant role in reducing recidivism and empowering offenders to productive

lives through work and rehabilitation through education.

“The 25 inmates who have earned an associate degree will have a bonafide second chance at life because they will return to freedom with an education and skills they didn’t have when they entered prison,” Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said in a release. “They will leave with the pride of this accomplishment and the confidence that they can succeed in life. Thanks to the Pell Grant program and Shorter College, these men and women have the opportunity to improve life for their families and their community.”

According to the Vera Institute of Jus-

tice, incarcerated citizens who participate in prison education programs are 43% less likely to return to prison than non-participants.

“Shorter understands the critical role it plays in assisting the state as it works to return men and women back to their communities with education and skills to live as productive citizens. “As the only HBCU in Arkansas to participate in this program, we are proud to have been selected,” Shorter President O. Jerome Green said. “Second Chance aligns perfectly with our mission of providing an accessible, affordable and high-quality education.”

12

Courtesy: Stephen B. Thornton (Arkansas Democrat Gazette)

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - Noveber 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

Airbnb Offers More than Just a Place to Stay

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Correspondent@StacyBrownMedia

After more than a decade in business, Airbnb has gone beyond being recognized as just a worldwide accommodations platform that folks use as an alternative to hotels.

The company was founded in 2008 by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nate Blecharczyk; it’s very first listing was Chesky and Gebbia’s Rausch Street San Francisco apartment. During a weekend where hotel rooms were completely sold out for a design conference, the duo decided to host guests on air beds and serve them breakfast in order to make enough money to pay their rent.

Today, Airbnb boasts more than 400 million guest arrivals with an average number of 2 million people staying with Airbnb per night, in an excess of 1,000 cities. But, the company offers more than just a room to sleep in.

Airbnb also offers “Experiences,” which are one-of-a-kind activities designed and hosted by locals that you enjoy both when you’re traveling or when you’re at home.

Unlike a typical tour or workshop, Experiences go beyond the activities themselves.

They offer a deep-dive into the local host’s world through their passion.

Hosts offer their guests special knowledge, unique skills, and inside access to

local places and communities that guests couldn’t find on their own, creating lasting connections and treasured memories.

Experiences tell the story of the host’s unique perspective and passion, whether it’s their love of street food, sewing, or the history of their neighborhood.

For instance, an Airbnb Experience in Paris could be visiting the Louvre with an art historian who’s also a comedian.

In Harlem, it’s a jazz concert with a local musician or in L.A., a concert featuring music from the African diaspora. In Cape Town, mountain biking can be experienced with views of Table Mountain and in Barcelona, making paella based on an old family recipe can be experienced in a private garden.

Cassidy Blackwell, who works on the company’s Communications Team as the Director of Strategic Projects, said there are also more than 15,000 Airbnb experiences worldwide which also includes diversity-filled events and attractions.

“Our company’s mission is to ensure anyone can belong anywhere,” Blackwell said “It’s really important for us to make efforts to bring different communities onto the platform and to dispel myths around the world about Airbnb,” she said.

The folks at Airbnb have counted on people being inherently good and the more that the company can use travel as a way of breaking down barriers, the better everyone

can be as a global community.

The Experiences on Airbnb include classes, tours, concerts and a host of other exciting activities. Most are designed for people to discover an easy way of doing or even learning something different.

One Experience is hosted in New Quay by Gerry, a marine biologist who has worked in the world of oysters for many years – breeding, growing, marketing, opening, and eating them. Gerry offers a tour that’s informal, informative and entertaining. He says the humor dictates the script.

“We welcome you into our premises and give you a tour through a working oyster warehouse on the seashore. We introduce you to the area with particular emphasis on the sea outside and how the tides work to provide us with very clean water,” said Gerry, whose full description is available on the Airbnb website.

“We will show you our pet/touch tank that holds some of the fascinating sea creatures that inhabit the sea floor right outside our window and watch them as they do their thing.”

In South Africa, Martin guides tourists on a hike to the summit of the iconic Table Mountain where they can experience why it’s one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature.

“We will take some of my favorite more easily missed paths to the top. There are many routes that go up and together we will find one that suits your skill and confidence

OP-ED: Veterans Deserve Your “Thank You”

By Rosetta Miller Perry (Navy) and Ms. June (Air Force) Veterans that have had to endure the American flag being bastardized, the national anthem being politicized, and constant disrespect has become a sad part of life. It is extremely disappointing that citizens who have never served in the military have so many opinions and have become emboldened to disrespect Veterans of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

The observance of Veterans day represents individuals with courage and enough love for their country to volunteer to put their lives on the dotted line. Outside of the draft period the military of today is truly an allvolunteer force. A force that loses dignity, goes through humiliation and degradation beyond belief in the form of basic training only to rise and become a soldier. An individual can be a doctor, a lawyer, a pastor or a pilot but unless they have served their country and worn the military uniform, then a soldier will remain as one of the most honorable and dignified jobs on the planet.

The world’s largest bully that hails from the White House is beneath the newly minted soldier without rank, the leading double triple free throw player in the NBA is nothing compared to a petite female soldier with a M-16 assault weapon and at the end of the day, not everyone can do it. But

l-r; Mrs. Rosetta Miller Perry, Navy and Ms. June, Air Force those who can and have served deserve better acknowledgement and gratitude than what the United States is serving them.

Veterans Day is a time to thank the families that gave all as their military member lies beneath a headstone in a graveyard, a time to thank the Veterans that have lost vision and arms or legs and even those so full of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from military experiences they could snap anytime and kill everyone in sight. This is a time to pay it forward and check on the military widows, read to the children that has lost their military father or even buy a hot meal for a Veteran at Operation Stand Down.

It is the responsibility of every American that knows a Veteran to “thank them for

their service” on Veterans day, to eliminate the politics from football and keep the knee and the police brutality issue in proper context. Other than those that die in battle, some soldiers get to retire and hang their dog tags on the mantle, some are still here but homeless on the street due to politics and closure of VA medical centers while others have thriving careers as civilians but are still soldiers to the core. One thing for sure is the fact that from the Army to the Navy, the Air Force to the Marines and the Peace Corps, soldiers don’t die, they fade away. Veterans represent freedom, values and liberties enjoyed by every American and the least one can do is say “thank you.”

This article originally appeared in The Tennessee Tribune.

13

level,” Martin says.

The trails all include a combination of hiking, varied levels of scrambling and exposure to heights that will allow everyone to reach incredible viewpoints of Lion’s Head, Twelve Apostles, Camps Bay, Back Table and the Mother City.

“I will take you into the world of the breathtaking Fynbos Floral Kingdom and the very first occupants of Southern Africa who named the mountain ‘Hoerikwaggo’ –

or Mountain in the sea,” Martin said.

“Once we reach the summit we will go to one of my awesome viewpoints to take some summit photos or just enjoy the view from the top. If the Cable Car Station is open, then the hike will finish there. You can then spend some more time at the top and soak in some more views or go and enjoy a well-deserved treat from the restaurant, my recommendations being their hot Con’t on page 18

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - November 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

Stacey Abrams Ends Historic Gubernatorial Run

By Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D., NNPA Newswire Contributor

The State of Georgia’s Democratic Gubernatorial nominee has ended her historic run for governor in a controversial political race that has captured the attention of the country. In a press conference held today at 5 p.m. at her Kirkwood headquarters, Abrams acknowledged GOP candidate and former Secretary of State Brian Kemp will be Georgia’s next governor but failed to concede the race. “I will not concede because the erosion of our democracy is not right,” she stated.

Abrams announcement comes days after post-election lawsuits demanding that all votes be counted in the face of voter suppression tactics used by the Secretary of State’s office. Kemp, who was the Republican candidate for governor, failed to step down from the office while running for office, which was a clear conflict of interest.

During the campaign, it was reported Kemp’s office had removed 300,000 registered voters from the rolls in Georgia, 70 percent of which were voters of color.

The Georgia legislature’s reinstatement of the exact match rule, which had previously been ruled unconstitutional in a previous lawsuit, resulted in the removal of voters from the rolls for missing a hyphen or leav-

ing out a middle initial. A recent lawsuit found that those reasons could not be used to remove voters from the rolls or to discount provisional or absentee ballots.

Kemp declared victory on election night, stepping down from office two days later to begin what he called his transition to the Governorship.

Abrams refused to concede insisting all absentee and provisional votes should be counted, filing several lawsuits. The former Democratic leader of Georgia’s House of Representatives needed an additional 17,000 votes in order to force a run-off with Kemp but decided to end the election in order to work on reforming the voter registration and participation process in Georgia.

In her speech, she criticized the voting process and the state of Georgia’s mismanagement of the gubernatorial election, saying she will be filing a major lawsuit against the state of Georgia for the “gross mismanagement of this election and to protect future elections from unconstitutional actions” in the coming days.

The voter protection crusader says she will continue fighting for reform as a private citizen announcing the launch of Fair Fight Georgia, an operation that will “pursue accountability in Georgia’s elections and integrity in the process of maintaining voting rolls.”

Georgia’s GOP leadership has been mocking Abrams’ quest for justice. Kemp Spokesman Ryan Mahoney stated, “Radical Stacey Abrams is beyond desperate with her latest publicity stunt. Georgia voters made their decision at the ballot box. It’s time for

Stacey Abrams to end her ridiculous temper tantrum and concede.”

Paul Bennecke, director of the Republican Governors Association has said Abrams antics “will come back to haunt her if she runs for something again,” and Clay Tippins

who ran for the GOP Gubernatorial nomination stated, “To call Abrams’ move childish would be insulting to children.” Kemp thanked Abrams for her “passion, hard work and commitment to public service.”

First Black NHL Player

ARTS FUNDING Inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame NEIGHBORHOOD CULTURAL VITALITY GRANT

RDS GRANT AWA 00 $2,500-$5,0

grant DEADLINES Letter of Intent: November 21 | Application: December 19 MORE INFO/APPLICATION: 203.946.7172 UPCOMING INFORMATION SESSIONS Nov. 8 - Ives (Main) Library. 6:00pm.

Nov. 13 - Mitchell Library. 5:00pm.

Nov. 14 - Fair Haven Library. 4:30pm.

Nov. 15 - Wilson Library. 5:00pm.

Nov. 20 - Stetson Library. 5:00pm.

CITY OF NEW HAVEN, TONI. N. HARP, MAYOR

Nationwide — William O’Bree, the first African-American player to play in the National Hockey League, was recently inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, nearly six decades since he joined the league. Now 83 years old, O’Bree will be honored not just for his historical significance but also for his contributions in spearheading numerous youth programs across North America.

O’Bree made history when he started playing for the Boston Bruins in 1958. In his 24 seasons in professional hockey, he had to endure several offensive insults just because of the color of his skin.

In one incident, he had his teeth purposely knocked out by his opponent’s hockey stick. Another time, he had been yanked and attacked by a mob of hostile fans. He was often put on minor leagues, too. Despite that, he still loved the game and continued playing it.

“I heard that N-word so many times that I just let it go in one ear and out the other,” O’Ree told The New York Times. “I never fought because of racial slurs or remarks.

I fought because guys speared me, buttended me, crosschecked me and things of that nature. Otherwise I would have spent every game in the penalty box.”

O’ree persevered all those challenges and paved the way for other Black athletes who want to follow in his footsteps. After retiring from hockey, he also spent decades of

14

working with young players across North America through different youth hockey and outreach programs.

“Willie O’Ree’s story must not be forgotten,” Karl Subban, a father of three Black NHL draft picks, told Sports Illustrated.

“He has made it possible for my boys to have the NHL dream and to believe they could achieve it. He changed hockey which is now for everyone. Hockey needed him and so does the Hockey Hall of Fame. The time is right!”

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - Noveber 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

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15

INNER-CITY July21, 27,2018 2016 - August THE INNER-CITY NEWS - NEWS November November 2018 02, 27, 2016

ATTENTION GENERAL CONTRACTORS NOTICE ***INVITATION TO BID***

FIRE ALARM SYSTEM UPGRADES AT VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL HOUSING PRE- APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE KENNEDY, RIBICOFF & GRAHAM APARTMENTS HOME INC, on behalf of Columbus House and the New Haven Housing Authority, is accepting pre-applications for studio and one-bedroom apartments at this development located at 108 Frank Street, New Haven. Maximum income limitations ap1. THE HOUSING AUTHORITY of the CITY OF NEW BRITAIN (Housing Authority) will ply. sealed Pre-applications will be available from 9AM TO 5PM beginning Ju;y receive bids, in TRIPLICATE, for the above referenced construction project at Monday its development, 25, as 2016 and ending when sufficient pre-applications (approximately 100) have known Kennedy, Ribicoff & Graham APARTMENTS, New Britain, CT. been received at the offices of HOME INC. Applications will be mailied upon re2. The work generally consists of removal and replacement of existing fire alarm system. quest by calling HOME INC at 203-562-4663 during those hours. Completed prebemarked returned toAlarm HOME INC’sUpgrades offices at at Kennedy, 171 Orange Street, Third 3. applications All bids shall bemust clearly “Fire System Ribicoff and Graham Apartments”, delivered the 06510.

Authority Offices by mail or courier, and time and date stamped upon Floor, New Haven,toCT

CENTRAL CONNECTICUT AREA

receipt. Bids will be received until December 6th, 2018 at 2:00 P.M. at the office of the Housing Authority, 16 Armistice Street, New Britain, CT 06053, at which time they will be publicly opened and read aloud.

NOTICIA

4. There will be a pre-bid walk thru on November 8th, 2018 at 10:00 A.M. at Kennedy Apartments VALENTINA MACRI VIVIENDAS DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDES DISPONIBLES 300 East Main Street, New Britain, CT 06051.

Interested bidders should attend this meeting to understand and clarify the scope of work and intent of bid documents. Any bidder, who is not in attendance at this meeting, will be held responsible for the understanding and extent of the scope of work and the HOME INC, en nombre de la Columbus House y de la New Haven Housing Authority, está contract.

aceptando pre-solicitudes para estudios y apartamentos de un dormitorio en este desarrollo

5. ubicado Bid formsen andlacontract documents on file as ofHaven.

November 1st, 2018limitaciones at 1:00 P.M atdetheingresos Housing calle 109 Frank are Street, New Se aplican Authority Office. of these documents may be obtained by depositing a $50.00 check (CHECK máximos.

LasCopies pre-solicitudes estarán disponibles 09 a.m.-5 p.m. comenzando Martes 25 ONLY, NO CASH) made payable to The Housing Authority of the City of New Britain for each set julio, 2016 hasta cuando se han recibido suficientes pre-solicitudes (aproximadamente 100) of documents so obtained. Such deposit will be non-refundable.

en las oficinas de HOME INC. Las pre-solicitudes serán enviadas por correo a petición

6. llamando Each bidder is required with theirdurante bid, a bid guarantee of not less thandeberán 5% of the amount a HOME INCtoalsubmit 203-562-4663 esas horas.Pre-solicitudes remitirse of the bidoficinas in the form of a certifi ed check or Orange bank draft, U.S. tercer Government BondsHaven at par value, an irrevoa las de HOME INC en 171 Street, piso, New , CT 06510 . cable letter of credit or a bid bond secured by a surety company.

7. The successful bidder will be required to furnish a performance and payment bond for 100% of the contract price; or a 100% cash escrow; or a 25% irrevocable letter of credit. The surety must be a guarantee or surety company acceptable to the Housing Authority and licensed to provide sureties in the State of Connecticut. Individual sureties will not be considered.

NEW HAVEN

8. The Housing Authority reserves the right to reject any or all bids or to waive any informality in the bidding. No bid shall be withdrawn for a period of 90 days subsequent to the opening of bids without the consent of the Housing Authority.

242-258 Fairmont Ave 2BR Townhouse, 1.5 BA, 3BR, 1 level , 1BA

9. It is the responsibility of the Bidder to monitor the nbhact.org website for any notices and Addendum(s) that may be issued pertinent to the information being viewed.

All new apartments, new appliances, new carpet, close to I-91 & I-95 highways, near bus stop & shopping center The Housing Authority of the City of New Britain is an Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action EmPet under 40lb allowed.

Interestedwith parties contact Maria @ 860-985-8258 ployer and conducts its business in accordance all Federal, State and Local laws, regulations and

guidelines. Small, Minority, Women Business Enterprises and Disabled are encouraged to participate in this process.

HOUSING of the CITY OF NEW BRITAIN CT. Unified Deacon’s AssociationAUTHORITY is pleased to offer a Deacon’s Certificate Program. This is a 10John monthT. program designed to assistDirector in the intellectual formation of Candidates Hamilton, Executive in response to the Church’s Ministry needs. The cost is $125. Classes start Saturday, August 20, 2016 1:303:30 Contact: Chairman, Deacon Joe J. Davis, M.S., B.S. (203) 996-4517 Host, General Bishop Elijah Davis, D.D. Pastor of Pitts Chapel U.F.W.B. Church 64 Brewster St. New Haven, CT

NOTICE OF INVITATION FOR BID

HOUSING AUTHORITY OF THE CITY OF DANBURY REFUSE AND RECYCLING SERVICES IFB No. B18003

SEYMOUR HOUSING AUTHORITY Contact: Ms. Devin Marra Sealed bids are invited by the Housing Authority of the Town of Seymour 203-744-2500 x 141 August Telephone: 2, 2016 at its office at 28 Smith Street, E-Mail: dmarra@hacdct.org Seymour, CT 06483 for Concrete Sidewalk Repairs and Replacement at the Housing Authority of the City of Danbury 2 Mill Ridge Rd, Danbury, CT 06811 Smithfield Gardens Assisted Living Facility, 26 Smith Street Seymour.

HOW TO OBTAIN THE IFB until 3:00 pm on Tuesday, DOCUMENTS:

BID SUBMITTAL RETURN

Envelope Must Be Marked: IFB No. B18003 Refuse and Recycling Services

A pre-bid conference will be held atNovember the Housing Authority Office 28 Smith 30, 2018 by 2:00 PM (EST) Street Seymour, CT at 10:00 am, on Wednesday, July 20, 2016.

BID SUBMITTAL DEADLINE/BID December 7, 2018 by 10:00 AM (EST) BID QUESTIONS DUE DATE OPENING

Bidding documents are available from the Seymour Housing Authority Of[Minority- and/or women-owned businesses are encouraged to respond] fice, 28 Smith Street, Seymour, CT 06483 (203) 888-4579.

The Housing Authority reserves the right to accept or reject any or all bids, to reduce the scope of the project to reflect available funding, and to waive any

Field Engineer

State of Connecticut Office of Policy and Management The State of Connecticut, Office of Policy and Management is recruiting for an Information Technology Analyst 1 position, a Municipal Assessment Professional position and a Research Analyst position.

BA/BS in Civil Engineering or Construction Management.

2-5 yrs. experience. OSHA Certified.

Proficient in reading contract plans and specifications.

Resumes to RED Technologies, LLC, 10 Northwood Dr., Bloomfield, CT 06002; Fax 860.218.2433; Email resumes to info@redtechllc.com. RED Technologies, LLC is an EOE.

Project Manager Environmental Remediation Division

For information regarding the duties, eligibility requirements and application instructions, please visit https://www.jobapscloud.com/CT and click on:

3-5 years exp. and Bachelor’s Degree, 40-Hr. Hazwoper Training Req. Forward resumes to RED Technologies, LLC,

Information Technology Analyst 1 (40 Hour) Recruitment #180815-7603FD-001

RED Technologies, LLC is an EOE.

Municipal Assessment Professional Recruitment #180817-5864AR-001 Research Analyst Recruitment #180822-6855AR-001 The State of Connecticut is an equal opportunity/ affirmative action employer and strongly encourages the applications of women, minorities, and persons with disabilities.

Administrative Assistant

10 Northwood Dr., Bloomfield, CT 06002;

Fax 860.218.2433; or Email to HR@redtechllc.com

Must have DOT Construction Exp. Involves traveling to Job Site for record keeping.

Reliable transportation a must. NO PHONE CALLS EMAIL RESUME TO michelle@occllc.com EOE/AA Females and Minorities are encouraged to apply

Project Manager

InvitationDivision to Bid: Environmental Remediation nd 2 Notice

3-5 years exp. and Bachelor’s Degree, 40-Hr. Hazwoper Training Req. Forward resumes to RED Technologies, LLC, 10 Northwood Dr., Bloomfield, CTOld 06002; Fax 860.218.2433; or Saybrook, CT Email to HR@redtechllc.com RED(4Technologies, LLC is an EOE. Buildings, 17 Units)

SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE

Tax Exempt & Not Prevailing Wage Rate Project

Common Ground High School

Garrity Asphalt Reclaiming, Inc

seeks: Construction Equipment Mechanic preferably experienced in Reclaiming and Road Milling Equipment. We offer factory training on equipment we operate. Location: Bloomfield CT We offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits Contact: Dan Peterson Phone: 860- 243-2300 email: dpeterson@garrityasphalt.com Women & Minority Applicants are encouraged to apply Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer

Garrity Asphalt Reclaiming, Inc

seeks: Reclaimer Operators and Milling Operators with current licensing and clean driving record, be willing to travel throughout the Northeast & NY. We offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits Contact: Rick Tousignant Phone: 860- 243-2300 Email: rick.tousignant@garrityasphalt.com Women & Minority Applicants are encouraged to apply Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer

Union Company seeks:

is looking for a Part Time After-School Recreations Programmer.

New Construction, Wood Framed, Housing, Selective Demolition,Tractor Site-work,Trailer Cast- Driver for Heavy & Highway ConFor job details and how to apply, please visit http://commonstruction Equipment. Must have a CDL License, in-place Concrete, Asphalt Shingles, Vinyl Siding, groundct.org/2018/08/common-ground-seeks-a-part-time-afterclean driving record, capable of operating heavy Flooring, Painting, Division 10 Specialties, Appliances, Residential Casework, school-recreations-programmer/

Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection. equipment; be willing to travel throughout the Northeast & NY. Listing: Transportation - Immediate Openingcompliance requirements.

This contract is subject toAssistant state set-aside and contract

We offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits

High Volume petroleum oil company is seeking a full time TransContact Dana at 860-243-2300.

Bidtime Extended, Due6:00AM. Date: August 5, 2016 portation Assistant. Work begins at Previous peEmail: dana.briere@garrityasphalt.com troleum oil, retail or commercial dispatching experience a plus.

Anticipated Start: August 15, 2016 Women & Minority Applicants are encouraged to apply MUST possess excellent attention to detail,available ability tovia manage Project documents ftp linkmulbelow: Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer tiple projects, excel proficiency and good computer skills required. http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=sayebrookevillage Send resume to: Human Resource Dept., PO Box 388, Guilford, CT 06437. ********An rmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer********** Fax or EmailAffi Questions & Bids to: Dawn Lang @ 203-881-8372 dawnlang@haynesconstruction.com HCC encourages the participation of all Veteran, S/W/MBE & Section 3 Certified Businesses Haynes Construction Company, 32 Progress Ave, Seymour, CT 06483 Large CT Fence & Guardrail Contractor is looking Scale House Operator, Data Entry, Print,EMPLOYER Copy & Scan DocuAA/EEO for experienced, responsible commercial and resiments. Working knowledge of Haz. Waste Regs., & Manifests. dential fence erectors and installers on a subcontracDOT & OSHA certification a +. Forward resumes to RED Techtor basis. Earn from $750 to $2,000 per day. Email nologies, LLC Fax 860-218-2433; or Email to HR@redtechllc.com resume to pking@atlasoutdoor.com AA/EOE RED Technologies, LLC is an EOE.

FENCE ERECTING SUBCONTRACTORS

16

THE- August INNER-CITY INNER-CITY NEWS July 27, 2016 02, 2016 NEWS - Noveber 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

Accounting Department has an immediate opening for a full time

ELM CITY COMMUNITIES

NOTICE Request for Proposals

Master Lease Agreement Services VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL HOUSING PRE- APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE

The Housing Authority of the City of New Haven d/b/a Elm City Communities currently seeking Proposals forHousing Master Lease Agreement HOME INC,ison behalf of Columbus House and the New Haven Authority, Services. completeforcopy of one-bedroom the requirement be obtained from is accepting A pre-applications studio and apartments atmay this develElm Collaboration Portal opmentCity’s located atVendor 108 Frank Street, New Haven. Maximum incomehttps://newhavenhousing. limitations apcobblestonesystems.com/gateway Monday, ply. Pre-applications will be available from 9AM TObeginning 5PM beginningonMonday Ju;y October 15, 2018 at 3:00PM. 25, 2016 and ending when sufficient pre-applications (approximately 100) have

been received at the offices of HOME INC. Applications will be mailied upon request by calling HOME INC at 203-562-4663 during those hours. Completed preELMto HOME CITY applications must be returned INC’sCOMMUNITIES offices at 171 Orange Street, Third Floor, New Haven, CT 06510.

Invitation for Bid Pest Control and Preventative Maintenance Services

NOTICIA

The Housing Authority of the City of New Haven d/b/a Elm City Communities currently Bids for Pest Control VALENTINAisMACRI VIVIENDASseeking DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDES DISPONIBLESand Preventative Maintenance Services. A complete copy of the requirement may be obtained from ElmdeCity’s Vendor HOME INC, en nombre la Columbus House y deCollaboration la New Haven HousingPortal Authority,https://newhavenestá housing.cobblestonesystems.com/gateway beginning on Monday, Ocaceptando pre-solicitudes para estudios y apartamentos de un dormitorio en este desarrollo tober 15, 2018 at 3:00PM. ubicado en la calle 109 Frank Street, New Haven. Se aplican limitaciones de ingresos máximos. Las pre-solicitudes estarán disponibles 09 a.m.-5 p.m. comenzando Martes 25 julio, 2016 hasta cuando se han recibido suficientes pre-solicitudes (aproximadamente 100) en las oficinas de HOME INC. Las pre-solicitudes serán enviadas por correo a petición llamando a HOME INC al 203-562-4663 durante esasfor horas.Pre-solicitudes deberán remitirse Request Proposals a las oficinas de HOME INC en 171 Orange Street, tercer piso, New Haven , CT 06510 .

Dispatcher Galasso Materials is seeking a motivated, organized, detail-oriented candidate to join its truck dispatch office. Responsibilities include order entry and truck ticketing in a fast paced materials manufacturing and contracting company. You will have daily interaction with employees and customers as numerous truckloads of material cross our scales daily. We are willing to train the right individual that has a great attitude. NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE. Reply to Hiring Manager, PO Box 1776, East Granby, CT 06026.

EOE/M/F/D/V.

DELIVERY PERSON Part Time Delivery Needed One/Two Day a Week, Must Have your Own Vehicle

If Interested call

(203) 435-1387

The Glendower Group, Inc

The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven

Market Research and Brand Positioning

is seeking to fill the position of Director of Gift Planning.

Please refer to our website for details: http://www.cfgnh.org/ About/ContactUs/EmploymentOpportunities.aspx. EOE. Electronic submissions only. No phone calls

The Glendower Group, Inc an affiliate of Housing Authority City of New Haven d/b/a Elm city Communities is currently seeking proposals for Market Research and Brand Positioning. A complete copy of the requirement may be obtained from Elm City’s Vendor Collaboration Portal https://newhavenhousing.cobblestonesystems.com/gateway beginning on Monday, October 15, 2018 at 3:00PM

NEW HAVEN

242-258 Fairmont Ave 2BR Townhouse, 1.5Public BA, 3BR,Notice 1 level , 1BA

Listing: Retail Assistant Invitation to Bid: has an immediate full time opening. Previous Petroleum Company nd experience2 Notice helpful in answering multiple telephone lines and in dealing with customers. Personable customer service skills a must.

Previous petroleum experience a plus. Applicant to also perform Old Saybrook,tasks CT such as typing proposals, scheduling appointadministrative Buildings, 17 Units) parts and materials. Please send resume to: ments (4and ordering dential, TaxH.R. Exempt Manager, & Not PrevailingConfi Wage Rate Project P O Box 388, Guilford CT 06437.

SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE

The AllManchester Authority new apartments,Housing new appliances, new carpet,will close toopen I-91 & the I-95 waiting list for the Federal Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program. highways, near bus stop & shopping center Applications will be available at 8:00 AM Monday November 5th, Pet under 40lb allowed. Interested parties contact Maria @ 860-985-8258 2018- Friday November 5th, 2018 at 4:00PM in person and on the ********An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer********** MHA website at http://manchesterha.org and may be returned to 24CT. Unified Bluefi eldAssociation Drive Manchester, byConstruction, mail Wood Framed, Housing, Selective Demolition, Site-work, CastDeacon’s is pleased to offer a Deacon’s CT 06040 in person orNew Certificate Program. This is a 10 month program designed to assist in the intellectual formation of Candidates 8:00AM Monday November 26th, 2018 - 4:00PM Friday Novem- in-place Concrete, Asphalt Shingles, Vinyl Siding, in response to the Church’s Ministry needs. The cost is $125. Classes start Saturday, August 20, 2016 1:303:30 Contact: Deacon Joe J. Davis, M.S., B.S. ber 30th,Chairman, 2018.

Important Information: This is not first come first Flooring, Painting, DivisionInsulation 10 Specialties, Appliances, Residential Casework, good pay and benefits.

(203) 996-4517 Host, General Bishop Elijah Davis, D.D. Pastor of Pitts Chapel U.F.W.B. Church 64 Brewster company offering serve, The MHA will place all applications into a lottery process Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection.

St. New Haven, CT that and select 400 applications to be placed on the waiting list. mail resume torequirements. above address.. MAIL ONLY contract set-aside and contract compliance Once the lottery is performed the 400 chosen applicantsThis will re-is subject to state Please This company is an Affirmative Action/ ceive a letter informing them that they have been placed on the Equal Opportunity Employer.

HCV waiting list. Due to the anticipated volume of applications,

Mechanical Insulator position

SEYMOUR HOUSING AUTHORITY

Bid Extended, Due Date: August 5, 2016 Anticipated Start: August 15, 2016 Project documents available via ftp link below: The Manchester Housing Authority does not discriminate based upon race, until 3:00 pm on color, Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at its office at 28 Smith Street, disability, familial status, sex or national origin http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=sayebrookevillage FT Assistant Building Official Seymour, CT 06483 for Concrete Sidewalk Repairs and Replacement at the $38.03 hourly Smithfield Gardens Assisted Living Facility, 26 Smith Street Seymour.

Fax or Email Questions & Bids to: Dawn Lang @ 203-881-8372 dawnlang@haynesconstruction.com

the MHA will not contact applicants who are not chosen.

Sealed bids are invited. by the Housing Authority of the Town of Seymour

Public Notice A pre-bid conference will be held at the Housing Authority Office 28 Smith

Town of Bloomfield

For details and how to apply, go to www.bloomfieldct.org.

HCC encourages the participation of all Veteran, S/W/MBE & Section 3 Certified Businesses Pre-employment drug testing.

Haynes Construction Company, 32 Progress Ave, Seymour, CT 06483 AA/EOE The Manchester Housing Authority will open the waiting list for AA/EEO EMPLOYER Street Seymour, CT at 10:00 am, on Wednesday, July 20, 2016.

the Federal Low Income Public Housing (LIPH) program (Elderly/ Disabled) 2 BR units at 8:00 AM November 1, 2018. Applications are available the MHA website http://manchesBidding documentsinareperson availableand fromon the Seymour Housing AuthorityatOfterha.org be returned to 888-4579.

24 Bluefield Drive Manchester, fice, 28 Smithand Street,may Seymour, CT 06483 (203) CT 06040 in person or by mail. .

The HousingThe Authority reservesHousing the right Authority to accept ordoes rejectnot anydiscriminate or all bids, to based Manchester uponofrace, color, to disability, familialfunding, status, and sex to orwaive national reduce the scope the project reflect available any origin informalities in the bidding, if such actions are in the best interest of the Town of Bloomfield Housing Authority.

Full Time Assistant Assessor

$39.96 hourly

Pre-employment drug testing. AA/EOE For details and how to apply go to www.bloomfieldct.org

POLICE OFFICER

The Wallingford Police Department is seeking qualified applicants for Police Officer. $1137.20 weekly plus an excellent fringe benefit package.

The physical performance, written and oral board exams will be adminis-

Laborer: The Town of East Haven is currently accepting applications for

the position of Laborer in its Public Works Department. Qualified candidates must possess a High School Diploma or GED, some experience in heavy manual labor and CDL. Current base pay for this position is $40.782/year. The application is available at http://www.townofeasthavenct.org/civil-service-commission/pages/ job-notices-and-tests or The Office of the Mayor, 250 Main Street, East Haven CT. The Town of East Haven is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Minorities, Females, Veterans and Handicapped are encouraged to apply.

Class A driver F/T Experienced Email-Hherbert@gwfabrication.com 17

Accounts Receivable Assistant for a fast-paced office environment.

Must be experienced, highly organized, possess good computer skills and be detail oriented. Able to manage multiple projects. Send resume to: Human Resource Dept. P O Box 388, Guilford CT 06437. ********An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer**********

Common Ground High School

is looking for a full time Support Educator. For job details and how to apply, please visit http://commongroundct.org /2018/11/cg-seeks-a-support-educator/

Project Manager

Environmental Remediation Division 3-5 years exp. and Bachelor’s Degree, 40-Hr. Hazwoper Training Req. Forward resumes to RED Technologies, LLC, 10 Northwood Dr., Bloomfield, CT 06002; Fax 860.218.2433; or Email to HR@redtechllc.com RED Technologies, LLC is an EOE. CDL Driver with 3 years min. exp. HAZMAT Endorsed.

(Tractor/Triaxle/Roll-off) FAX resumes to RED Technologies, at 860.342-1042; Email: HR@redtechllc.com Mail or in person: 173 Pickering Street, Portland, CT 06480.

RED Technologies, LLC is EOE/AA.

The Housing Authority of the City of Norwalk, CT

is seeking BIDS FOR (1) F250 pickup truck or equivalent, (1) Transit Cargo Van or equivalent and (2) Transit Connect Vans or Equivalent. Bidding documents can be viewed and printed at www.norwalkha.org under the Business section, RFP/RFQ. Norwalk Housing Authority is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Adam Bovilsky, Executive Director

Common Ground is looking for an Assistant Manager of Facilities and Grounds to

assist the Site Manager with the care, upkeep and maintenance of Common Ground’s site and facilities in order to ensure they effectively meet all of Common Ground’s programmatic needs.

Click here for a full job descrtipion and how to apply: http://commongroundct.org/2018/07/ common-ground-is-seeking-an-assistant-manager-of-facilities-and-grounds/

Property Management Company is seeking a Resident Services Coordinator in New Haven, CT. Part time- 16 hrs/wk. Must have experience working w/ senior and disabled community. Social Services background preferred. Please call (860) 951-9411 x238 for inquiries.

The Housing Authority of the City of Norwalk, CT

is seeking BIDS FOR MAINTENANCE UNIFORMS. Bidding documents can be viewed and printed at www. norwalkha.org under the Business section, RFP/RFQ. Norwalk Housing is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Adam Bovilsky, Executive Director.

“IMMEDIATE OPENINGS!! PAID TRAINING!!” $21.10hr.

P/T Fixed Route Driver and ADA Driver – MUST HAVE CDL A/B & P and endorsement S, V, A or F Operate vehicles in the Transit District’s Fixed Route OR ADA /Shuttle department, providing Commuter Shuttle service between the rail stations and places of employment and Door-To-Door services.

To apply visit Norwalktransit.com/employment

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - November 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

Author Returns with Novel Detailing the Complicated Connection between Familial Love and Romantic Choices

TAMPA, Fla. – Author and educator Casey Curry understands the pressure of teaching creative writing while forging a career as a creative. Four years ago, Curry wrote and published a debut novel, Promises, which was so highly-received and acclaimed requests for a sequel were immediate. This month she released A Pillar of Fire, her second novel, and the answer to questions posed in Promises.

“Life can challenge a writer’s time, and I am no exception,” says Curry. Time proved to be an ally for the author who would decide not only how to tell the story but which character would narrate it. Unlike the first novel, which was narrated by the heroine, Pamela, A Pillar of Fire is narrated by Pamela’s deceased father, Jonas. “The story is still Pam’s but it is an important part of her backstory, which only Jonas can tell.”

Casey Curry’s debut novel challenged representations of the black military family and especially the wives of officers. The sequel is a continuation of Curry’s advocacy for dimensional and diverse imagery of African Americans. She says, “I wanted to shatter a few stereotypes about aging and our elders as well as the complicated ways we love as a people.”

Readers are treated to rare depictions of romantic love between black senior citizens and baby boomers that deal with the sometimes questionable choices we make in relationships tied to family and upbringing. Curry chose Jonas, the patriarch, to narrate as a form of explanation. She says, “Pam Sloane and her sister Ella Jean processed the love Jonas had for their mother in two entirely different ways. One sister fares better in love than the other. We see it in black families all of the time, but why?”

The author believes readers will gain valuable insights through the characters and storylines.

Since Promises’ debut, the retired military spouse and mother has enjoyed reception as an author across the nation as a speaker, and signing books for book clubs. She has been the invited guest at history conferenc-

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Scientology

Thanksgiving Etiquette Tips

Gets OK To

Casey Curry es, and events hosted by women’s groups such as The Links, Inc. and her sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. She has also shared the stage with Walter Mosely and Pamela Samuels Young.

“The experience has been phenomenal and life-changing but not nearly as phenomenal and life-changing as finishing something I began as a passion.”

A Pillar of Fire can be purchased at Amazon(dot)com or via Casey’s website at CaseyCurry(dot)org, where you can also learn more about the author and her work.

About Casey Curry Casey Curry is an award-winning author and the director of creative writing at a fine arts magnet school in Tampa, Florida. Since her debut as a novelist, Casey has showcased her work and expertise alongside historians, scholars, and writers such as Walter Mosley. As a sought-after writing coach, she assists emerging writers in their efforts to tell their stories. Mom to four daughters, Casey spends her spare time entertaining with her husband and enjoying their empty nest.

Anderson, Brewer, and Nardecchia said they did not know exactly how many people will be using the converted church and when. But they said they are confident that the existing parking lot can accommodate the projected number of visitors.

During the public hearing section of the meeting, Westville/Edgewood/Beaver Hills/Amity/Beverly Hills Alder Richard Furlow and Westville Village Renaissance Alliance (WVRA) Executive Director Lizzy Donius both asked the commissioners to table or turn down the site plan proposal, not necessarily because of any technical concerns with the plans, but because of what they have perceived to be a decadeand-a-half of bad neighborly relations.

Furlow said his complaints with the church relate to its poor maintenance of the 949 Whalley property over the past 15 years.

He said the grass is routinely overgrown.

There are often broken windows and piles of trash about the property, he said. He said no one he has ever spoken to at the church has ever followed through on his persistent requests that they keep the building clean and secure.

“Unfortunately there’s a lot of bad blood in the community with this organization that a little bit of effort would have resolved,” he said.

Donius offered similar concerns.

“I do feel like the community has not been engaged,” she said. She said representatives from the church came to a recent meeting of the Westville Community Management Team, but spoke only about a drug treatment program and spoke nothing about their plans for 949 Whalley.

“The building is genuinely blighted,” she said. “This is our number one economic development issue.”

Ultimately, the commissioners said that they could do little more than sympathize with the neighbors’ concerns and urge the church to be a better neighbor. They said their purview is zoning regulation compliance. Anti-blight concerns would and should still be enforced by the city’s antiblight Livable City Initiative (LCI), they said.

“This is a very difficult problem,” City Plan Commission Chair Ed Mattison said.

“This is quite an impressive demonstration of what could be done” with the property.

Marchand said that he shares the concerns of the community, but that he believes that the application is in compliance with zoning law. The best-case scenario would be the church actually following through on its conversion plans and bringing more foot traffic and activity to that stretch of Whalley, Marchand said.

Nardecchia predicted that the church would begin construction in late January and complete construction by the end of February 2020.

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By Juliet Mitchell Thanksgiving day is one that many of us wait for with bated breath and appetite. I call it “The Big Eat Fest.” Statistically, in America, Thanksgiving and Christmas vie for the number-one spot as the favorite holiday, and Thanksgiving places a close second to Super Bowl Sunday as the day when people eat the most.

As we gather with loved ones and relatives some of whom we may not have seen in years we should give major consideration to “proper behavior” during Thanksgiving dinner. To thank you for your readership and support this year, I offer these Thanksgiving Etiquette Tips.

Tips for guests • Arrive at the designated time • Be prepared to take your shoes off in case it’s requested of you • If you bring a dish, it should be ready to serve or with minimal preparation • Do not taste (eat) directly from the prepared dish. That’s called “double-dipping,” which is considered rude and kind of disgusting • Please be mindful to not call food “nasty.”

The dish may not be something that you care for, but not “nasty.” If you don’t like it, just don’t take any.

• If you venture out and try something new, try a small portion. Some people take a larger portion and then decide they don’t like it. You know where it goes — in the garbage. What a waste! That may have been someone’s favorite dish and now it’s all gone.

• If you really like something, begin with a modest portion; leave enough for other guests.

After everyone has been served, if there is some left, you may help yourself to seconds.

• Speaking of seconds, it’s rude and disrespectful to put aside something just for you to take home before other guests have been served. Now, if you have an IN with the host, the two of you can work that out behind the scenes. But don’t get an attitude if the host wants you to hold off to have enough for every guest.

• If you stay until the end, especially with family and close friends, offer to help clean up.

• Speaking of staying to the end, if the host sets a start time and an end time, say 4-7pm, be prepared to arrive at 4 pm (give or take 10 minutes) and leave by 7 pm.

Tips for the host • Be as prepared as possible; this minimizes stress and allows more time to spend with your guests.

• Make sure you have enough food and enough serving supplies for all. You would

not want to be washing dishes in the middle of your time together.

• If your kitchen is small or you do not have space for dirty dishes, just get a tub of some sort (like Rubbermaid) and just stack those dirty dishes away; they will be there waiting for you after the last guest leaves.

To all of you, take time to express your gratitude and Thanksgiving. Say grace; allow time for each guest to share something they are grateful for. But most of all, enjoy your time together.

If you want to be invited back to gatherings next year, keep in mind that manners are memorable — always put your best foot forward.

This article originally appeared in the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder.

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Airbnb Offers More

chocolate a cold beer or the mouthwatering milk tart.”

Airbnb Experiences also include jazz concerts in London, Seattle and other locations as well as a farm visit in Detroit; history walk in San Juan, Puerto Rico; a city running tour in Philadelphia; a Potter’s Wheel in Brooklyn; lessons on how to make pizza in Atlanta; and a moonlit monuments mysteries hike in Washington, D.C. After a decade in business, whether its hosting, satisfying guests or the wide-variety of Experiences, Airbnb success stories continue to pour in.

Those Experiences also include a photo shoot at the Brooklyn Bridge by Sasha, an Airbnb Experiences host. “We’ll walk the length of Brooklyn Bridge, from Manhattan to the Brooklyn neighborhood known as Dumbo,” Sasha says.

“As a long-time New Yorker and published photographer, we will help you capture your vacation in beautiful, high-res photos.

We will share insider knowledge of New York City while shooting unforgettable photos of you atop the Brooklyn Bridge, and set against the Manhattan skyline,” she said.

“You’ll learn an interesting perspective and we’ll show you exciting angles and spots to get the best pictures with a beautiful New York City backdrop.”

For more Airbnb Experiences, visit https://www.airbnb.com/experiences. For a complete list of accommodations, visit https://www.airbnb.com

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - Noveber 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

NEW HAVEN’S GRASSROOTS COMMUNITY RADIO STATION! www.newhavenindependent.org

JOE UGLY IN THE MORNING Weekdays 6-9 a.m.

THE TOM FICKLIN SHOW Mondays 10 a.m.

MAYOR MONDAY!

MERCY QUAYE

Mondays 11 a.m.

Mondays 1 p.m.

“THE SHOW”

“DJ REL”

MICHELLE TURNER Tuesdays 9 a.m.

“WERK IT OUT”

ELVERT EDEN Tuesdays at 2 p.m.

MORNINGS WITH MUBARAKAH

“JAZZ HAVEN”

Wednesdays 9 a.m.

Wednesdays 2 p.m.

STANLEY WELCH

“TALK-SIP”

LOVEBABZ LOVETALK

Thursdays 1 p.m.

Mondays-Fridays 9 a.m.

ALISA BOWENSMERCADO

FRIDAY PUNDITS Fridays 11 a.m.

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - November 21, 2018 - November 27, 2018

You can’t predict unexpected medical bills.

But you can have a plan.

An injury or illness can have a serious impact on your finances. So make sure you compare the plan options available through Access Health CT. You just may find cost savings, lower monthly payments, and an insurance plan that minimizes your medical expenses – and maximizes your health. We’ll help you find the plan that’s right for you: online, in person, or over the phone. Compare plans at AccessHealthCT.com.

Financial help is still available.

Open Enrollment ends December 15.

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10/17/18 4:36 PM