Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Become a Lobbiest for New Haven & Yourself

Last night Mayor John DeStefano gave his annual State of the City Address. In it - he spoke about a number of important issues and outlined his priorities for the next few years. The top items that I took out of it were:

  1. Public Safety
  2. Property Taxes
  3. Economic Development
  4. Unified City

These are all important issues and over the next few days I will be posting about them.

Regarding the public safety issue - JD focused on the new cops that are coming online and the changes for the up tier of police management.


From the Chief to the new assistant chief and the 2 civilians that are due to come on as well. This means that 3 out of the 4 top police officials will be new within the year. I hope this is good and works out for the best.


A bright point was when the Street Outreach workers stood up and told us what they are up to. They do good work. I hope we can find the funding to keep them going (currently they are funded from grants and nothing from the PD general budget).

The fact is that we need to create a city where the average citizen is not afraid to walk down the street or be afraid that your home will be broken into. I know that we are not at the low point we were at in the early 1990s but we must always try to become better.

The Mayor also spoke about the reentry of criminals into our back yard (literally) from all around the State to the Whalley Ave Jail. JD says that we need to push our delegation and Jodi Rell to get some action.

To that point I can tell you that the WEB Management Team is working on this issue and I am personally involved with State Rep Toni Walker and working with her on the issue as well.

That is all for now I will post more later.

You can read the New Haven Independent coverage here and the New Haven Register's coverage here.

Yours,

Moti


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