Lieberman, a practicing Orthodox Jew, was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000, selected to be former Vice President Al Gore’s running mate. He was the first Jewish American to run for the position on a major party ticket. He passed away after complications from a fall in his home in Riverdale, New York, according to a family statement.

Born in Stamford, Connecticut, Lieberman attended Yale College and Yale Law School. During his college years, he served as chairman — now editor in chief and president — on the Yale Daily News Managing Board of 1964.

Neither of the senator’s parents had a college education, according to filmmaker Jonathan Gruber, who said his biographical documentary about Lieberman will be released in May. Gruber, who filmed part of the documentary on Yale’s campus with Lieberman this past summer, said that Lieberman considered his Yale education to be a “leg up.”

Paul Steiger ’64, a childhood friend of the senator, fondly remembered his experiences working on the News’ Managing Board with Lieberman.

“I first knew him in seventh grade,” Steiger said, “and then we were on the YDN together. We called it ‘Chairman’ those days, but he was our editor in chief and I was on his staff.”

After graduating from law school, Lieberman was elected to the Connecticut State Senate in 1970, where he represented New Haven for ten years, including six as Democratic Majority Leader. After losing a race for Connecticut’s 3rd Congressional District in 1980, he served as Connecticut Attorney General from 1983 to 1989.

Lieberman was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1988, where he represented Connecticut for more than two decades. In 1994, he won reelection by the largest-ever margin in a Connecticut Senate race, winning with 67 percent of the vote. 

Gore, who served as vice president under President Bill Clinton LAW ’73, selected Lieberman to be his running mate in August 2000, while Lieberman was campaigning for reelection to his senate seat. The Gore-Lieberman ticket, which won the popular vote by over 500,000 votes, lost the general election to Republican President George W. Bush ’68 and Vice President Dick Cheney after a recount and Supreme Court challenge in the crucial swing state of Florida.

Lieberman briefly ran for the Democratic nomination in the 2004 presidential election but suspended his campaign in early February. 

In the Senate, Lieberman staunchly supported the Iraq War, over which he was criticized by his more liberal Democratic peers. 

In 2006, Lieberman lost the primary for the Democratic nomination to now-Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, who clashed with the Senator over his stance on the Iraq War. Despite this loss, Lieberman ran as a third-party candidate and won the seat with over 100,000 votes more than Lamont.

“While the senator and I had our political differences, he was a man of integrity and conviction, so our debate about the Iraq War was serious,” Lamont wrote on X on Wednesday. “When the race was over, we stayed in touch as friends in the best traditions of American democracy. He will be missed.”

After his reelection as an independent, Lieberman still caucused with Democrats while at the same time shifting away from the party. In the 2008 presidential election, he endorsed Republican nominee John McCain. Lieberman even contemplated running on the Republican vice presidential ticket but was not picked by McCain. 

In his final term, Lieberman became the decisive 60th vote needed to break the filibuster on the Affordable Care Act. At the same time, he blocked the passage of a public insurance option, which then-President Barack Obama — and most Democrats — supported. 

When asked about Lieberman’s legacy, Gruber described Lieberman as a “man of courage” who took his moral cues from his faith. 

“He was a person who, as he said, was stubbornly, at least in the political world, bipartisan,” Gruber said. “I think where it comes from is his being an Orthodox Jew, and how much his religion and his faith guided him in terms of how he dealt with people on an everyday basis.”

In 2012, Lieberman retired from Congress. In recent years, he challenged the Democratic party line and worked as a co-chair of the political group No Labels, which sought to find an independent presidential candidate for the 2024 race. 

Lieberman is survived by his wife Hadassah, four children and 13 grandchildren.

Anika Arora Seth contributed reporting.

A full obituary will appear soon.

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Following the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, some scholars started calling for the “decolonization” of Eastern European studies by centering the experiences and voices of non-Russian nations in the region.

Per the Yale Course Search website, Yale’s academic offerings about Ukraine increased over the last two years from zero in the 2020-21 academic year to eight this semester, as professors in Eastern European studies and other departments started offering classes about Ukrainian history and the ongoing war. Some professors, in addition, added Ukrainian authors to their existing curricula. 

Even then, Edyta Bojanowska, chair of the Slavic Languages and Literatures department, said that the new offerings are consistent with a longtime aim to critically study Russia’s colonialism — an effort that has grown nationally since the outbreak of the war.

“[The] field is really abuzz with decolonial rhetoric. It’s a field in transition,” Bojanowska wrote. “Scholars are responding to the shock of the war by trying to account more fully and more critically for the legacies of Russian and Soviet imperialism and by charting alternative visions of Russia and Eastern Europe, their histories and cultures, that counter those emanating from the Kremlin.”

East European studies during the war in Ukraine

In his teaching, history professor Timothy Snyder focuses on examining the origins of Russia and Ukraine in a manner contrary to what he calls Putin’s “understandable imperial national construction” of the emergence of the two countries. While Snyder has long taught about Eastern Europe, he began teaching “The Making of Modern Ukraine” in the fall of 2022 following the Russian invasion and offered it again this past fall. The class aims to unpack and challenge this “myth” of Russia.

According to Snyder, some historians of Russia have already seen the war as an opportunity to question what they were taught about Russia.

“The Making of Modern Ukraine” considers Ukraine as “an early example of European state formation and an early example of anti-colonial rebellion.” The lectures from the course were recorded and uploaded online to YouTube and as a podcast series, many of which have amassed millions of views. 

Snyder said that he thinks that historical survey courses are especially effective ways to educate students and members of the general public.

“I think the reason that it was popular was that it was a survey [that] gave people a basic structure of knowledge,” Snyder said. “I think we don’t have enough of that at Yale or universities in general, and we feel that lack when we hit a crisis like this.”

Andrei Kureichik is a Belarusian playwright and self-described civic activist who began teaching “Art and Resistance in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine” last fall and “Drama and Russian-Ukrainian Conflict” this semester.

Kureichik came to Yale as a Yale World Fellow in the fall of 2022. Half a year before the invasion of Ukraine, the Artists at Risk program helped him leave Belarus after the government pushed him out for his criticism of President Alexander Lukashenko.

He said that one of the most important aspects of his teaching is creating opportunities for students to have direct contact with people on the ground in Ukraine and Russia, often virtually bringing guest speakers into his class over Zoom.

“Understanding the human side of the war helps you to understand the historical side, political side, or any other side,” Kureichik said. “So this connection to real people on the ground is crucial for me.”

Nari Shelekpayev, another recent hire, focuses on the history of Kazakhstan in his two ongoing works, according to the Slavic department’s website. In the fall of 2022 and 2023, he taught the “Ten Eurasian Cities” seminar, in which he, besides Russian cities, included cities in countries like Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Shelekpayev was not available for an interview. 

Professor of intellectual history Marci Shore said that she long incorporated thinkers from Ukraine in her teaching. This semester, Shore also started teaching a first-year seminar titled “The War in Ukraine and the Problem of Evil.”

“I’ve been so mentally consumed by this war — these are my friends and colleagues being slaughtered,” Shore wrote. “And I believe that students benefit when I can share with them the material I’m intellectually immersed in at a given moment.”

Shore’s class considers questions of evil, historical determinism and individual choice, which she said the “extremity of the moment” brings to the forefront.

Longtime efforts to decolonize Russian history

Bojanowska and Molly Brunson, who serves as a chair of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies program, both highlighted the work of their colleagues in conversations with the News, who, they said, had been doing “decolonial” work for a long time.

“I see the primary task of REEES to support, promote, and encourage the work that [my colleagues] are already doing,” Brunson wrote. “I don’t think it’s always a question of doing more on colonialism in the REEES fields, but more a question of amplifying the excellent work already being done by REEES faculty and students.”

She added that the program hosted numerous speaker events, symposia, conferences, and workshops, most of which were focused on non-Russian experiences and voices in the region. 

Last year, REEES also cosponsored the launch of the Central Asia Initiative, which Brunson wrote “seeks to promote interdisciplinary research on the area and cultivate a new generation of scholars and policymakers.”

Still, Brunson said that REEES has a limited budget, and with more money, the program could start postdoctoral and visiting scholar programs, provide grants for research, or start international partnerships. 

“I would turn this question around and ask what the University can do to help its REEES community support and expand the diversifying efforts in the field,” Brunson responded when asked about REEES efforts on promoting “decolonial” scholarship about the region.

In her own teaching and research, Bojanowska, who works on Russian literature and intellectual history, has been focused on decentering Russian perspectives and studying colonized nations long before the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014 and the full-scale invasion of 2022. 

She added that, with the war, her research, which used to be “on the margins,” is now moving toward the center in terms of its efforts to decolonize Russian history.

In her first book, for example, she highlighted the engagement with Ukrainian nationalist concerns of Nikolay Gogol, a writer who is usually considered to be Russian.

As a department chair, however, she said she does not push her colleagues toward decolonial scholarship or teaching.

“It is not my place to encourage my colleagues to teach anything in any special way. They have the intellectual [and] academic freedom to make those decisions,” Bojanowska said. “The way we constitute ourselves, [and] the colleagues that we hire, speaks to our values and speaks to where … we want to go.”

In the hiring process, according to Bojanowska, the department prioritized interdisciplinarity and a comparative look into non-Russian cultures. Bojanowska also told the News that the Slavic department wants to hire more professors who specifically work on non-Russian Eastern European cultures.

East European and Eurasian languages at Yale

Brunson believes that the key to “genuine decolonizing work” is language study.

While Ukrainian has only been offered as an online course in the past through Columbia University, Yale hired lector Olha Tytarenko, who will spearhead the Ukrainian language program starting next semester. 

“Edyta Bojanowska in Slavic [department] did go to heroic lengths to find a way to get the Ukrainian language taught and that’s very important,” Snyder said. “It was not the result of some kind of general flowing of support from [the] University.”

Bojanowska told the News that her department has long worked on bringing in-person Ukrainian language instruction to the university. Now, the success of this program will depend on whether students demonstrate an interest and take Ukrainian language classes, she said. 

Bojanowska said that the Slavic department also hopes to change its beginning Russian language textbooks. The new textbooks will include interviews with Russian speakers from a variety of ethnic and social backgrounds, which she said “will solidify the idea that the Russian language is not the sole property of the Russian nation.”

“We have become very sensitive, both professors and graduate students, about making a distinction between Russian and Russophone … and making sure that the research and teaching that we do conveys … the Russophone world as diverse, multicultural, and also shaped by imperial legacies,” Bojanowska said.

Yale also moved its Russian summer study abroad program to Georgia starting in the summer of 2023.

During the transition, Bojanowska said that the faculty was careful not to turn the program, which continues to teach Russian, into a “colonial venture,” given the colonial history of Georgia. Thus, students are also required to learn some Georgian and take classes in Georgian culture. 

Brunson wrote that she would like to see the University invest in expanding other language offerings beyond Ukrainian, such as in-person Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian or Central Asian languages classes, all of which have strong faculty and student interest, per Brunson.

Focus on Ukraine across departments, schools

After the Russian full-scale invasion, some professors outside of Eastern European studies started to teach classes on Ukraine or include materials about the country in their curricula across schools and departments.

“What perhaps has changed [since the full-scale invasion] is that students interested in the language of propaganda, in security studies, in intelligence work, in the history of totalitarianism, in European affairs are now focused on Ukraine,” Shore wrote to the News.

In the Law School, professors Eugene Fidell and Margaret Donovan co-teach the course “The Russo-Ukrainian War” on what the war shows about the law of armed conflict and international legal issues. The course, which is law-focused but not limited to law students, is cross-listed with the School of Management and the Jackson School of Global Affairs.

Fidell told the News that he feels a personal connection to Ukraine because three-quarters of his family originally come from the region. He said that he and Donovan also relate to the course because they are both military veterans. 

Fidell said that he wanted to offer the course because he expected it to be “pretty stimulating for us to teach, as well as for students” because there would be “so many potential flashpoints.”

The class brings speakers who talk about legal aspects of the war in Ukraine and cover topics like child abduction, the legality of possible peace settlements and the question of whether Russia commits genocide in Ukraine. 

The other course at YLS that centers on the war is “International Law and War in Ukraine and Gaza,” taught by Professor of law and the humanities Paul Kahn. Lectures in the class, frequently by guest speakers who speak to either the war in Ukraine or the Israel-Hamas war, seek to understand how the wars “are both shaped by law and shape the law.”

Kahn said that he decided to pair the two ongoing wars together because they illustrate two concepts in international humanitarian law and create a “comprehensive approach” to structuring a course about the law of war.

“Anybody who’s going to teach a class on international humanitarian law or the law of war from this point forward has got to address these events. They’re seismic,” Kahn said.

The class this semester has focused more on Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, Kahn said, because Gaza is “absorbing more attention than Ukraine at the moment.” He sees this reflected in a larger number of student questions about the war in Gaza.

Political science professor David Cameron teaches the department’s only Yale College seminar about Ukraine this semester. His course, titled “The War in Ukraine,” covers the historical context of the war, its causes and its developments. 

“The focus of my work has been on the European Union and European politics. Anyone interested in Europe is presumably interested in what is happening in this war,” Cameron said. “But from my perspective, anyone in this world should be thinking about and concerned about what’s happening in Europe, and specifically in Ukraine in the war.”

Nataliia Laas, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, believes that qualified professors can drive interest in Ukraine further. The country, she said, can be an important case study in a variety of disciplines.

This semester, Laas is teaching a history seminar on the Chornobyl disaster. She told the News that students in the class are not only those interested in Soviet history — two-thirds of students in the class are environmental science and engineering majors interested in energy studies, she said.

According to Laas, the demand for the class was large enough for her to potentially teach several sections.

Philosophy professor Jason Stanley told the News that he first visited Ukraine in 2017 and has been closely following its politics since then. 

Together with Snyder, he taught a class comparing Gulag camps and incarceration systems in the United States, which he said are two of the largest prison regimes in world history. 

“I’m … a scholar of fascism,” Stanley said. “I became very interested in how Ukrainians were thinking through this situation where they’re being attacked by a fascist imperialist country.”

Eastern Europe, he said, provides examples that are vital to a full understanding of “the philosophical concept of colonialism, authoritarianism.” 

In his classes, he said, he therefore includes Ukrainian authors and has added more since Russia’s invasion. This semester, for example, one of the first authors his students read in his class “Propaganda, Ideology, and Democracy” was Ukrainian novelist Victoria Amelina, who was killed by a Russian air strike in Eastern Ukraine. 

“It’s the first massive land war in Europe since World War Two, and we had hoped this wouldn’t happen again in Europe,” Stanley said. “Understanding how and why it happened, maybe we can prevent these things from happening again in the future.”

Slavic Languages and Literatures department was founded in 1946.

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After New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker submitted his budget proposal on March 1, the Board of Alders’ Finance Committee held two public hearings and listened to testimony from more than 40 residents. Those who testified mainly spoke in favor of the Livable City Initiative staff increases, expanded Board of Education budget, creation and investments in the Parks Department and the proposed red light and speed cameras program. 

“It’s heartbreaking when I think back on the effect that housing insecurity had on my own childhood and the lasting effects that it has had throughout my life,” Jessica Stamp, a housing organizer and a leader of the Blake Street Tenants Union, said. “I want to encourage the Board of Alders to address our affordable housing crisis in this budget cycle so working people can continue to call New Haven home and not be taken advantage of by mega-landlords or by corporations that don’t pay their share.”

A dozen residents, including New Haven tenant union representatives and tenants, New Haven Rising organizers and a former News staff reporter — Thomas Birmingham ’23 — who reported on LCI’s inability to address residents’ concerns testified in favor of the added housing positions. 

Many renters talked about unsafe conditions, like mold and collapsing ceilings, they experienced in rented properties. They also shared their experiences dealing with LCI, complaining about the long wait times and the inability of LCI to enforce safety standards and hold landlords accountable.

Gary Doyens, who said he was a property manager, asked alders to reject all new positions across all departments, arguing that the city could not afford it and that the running programs, including LCI, were ineffective.

The second most discussed issue during the hearings was the budget for New Haven parks. All those who testified were in favor of increasing funding and staffing for parks and sports fields in the city. 

10 residents, mostly park volunteers and employees, came to the two hearings to describe what they called a “decay” of park infrastructure over the previous decades. Many cited decreased staffing and equipment issues as obstacles to preserving city parks.  

“We need to invest more in our parks so that they can be well maintained, and we can all be proud of that,” Stephanie FitzGerald, who volunteers to clean and maintain New Haven parks, said. “This year’s budget increased the number of park workers, but we still have a long way to go … I implore you to fund parks as generously as you can.”

David Belowsky, the chair of the Parks Commission who has served as a commissioner since 1993, said at the hearing that the merging of the Parks and Public Works departments in 2020 did not work. Because of this, he said he supported separating the two departments, as proposed in the mayor’s budget. 

Six NHPS teachers, including New Haven Federation of Teachers president Leslie Blatteau, and two high school students, one of them being Board of Education student representative Harmony Solomon Cruz-Bustamante, testified in support of the proposed education budget. 

The teachers talked about staffing shortages and the lack of equipment, which they said impedes their work. Melody Gallagher, a visual arts teacher and executive board member at NHFT, said that the school she teaches at has leaks during rainstorms and added that she has to buy art supplies for her students with her own money.

Other teachers who testified spoke about needing more support from the city. 

“Equal opportunity in Connecticut is low. It’s unacceptable,” Blatteau said. “In partnership with our new superintendent, Dr. Negrón, New Haven is making significant progress [in education] as we prioritize our students’ needs. Given the increased and complex needs of our students, New Haven Public Schools need increased resources to do this work.”

The proposed budget includes an additional $5 million for the BoE, compared to last year, a large part of which will go towards increased teacher salaries, per the city’s contract with the teachers union. 

In her testimony, Blatteau said that the city needs to ensure students’ reading competency, protect their mental health and make schools safe. She claimed that the mayor’s proposed increase does not go far enough to achieve these goals.  

Five residents testified about the red lights and cameras program, which has to be approved separately by alders but is also included in the mayor’s budget. If approved, the program will install these cameras in 19 locations, as suggested by the Elicker administration. New Haven would be the first municipality in Connecticut to install red light cameras, which were legalized by the state last year.  

In the budget, Elicker added four positions to manage the project.

“If you go around New Haven and ask anyone what they think of our streets, they will say [that] they are dangerous,” Robert Rock, who worked on the mayor’s group on red light and speed cameras, said, talking in favor of the project. “Lots of people die in our city because our streets are dangerous.” 

Just one New Havener spoke out against the program, citing concerns about normalizing video surveillance and suggesting that the city should deal with traffic through different planning approaches. 
The Board of Alders will hold one more public hearing on the budget on April 18.

The post New Haveners weigh in on proposed budget appeared first on Yale Daily News.

If approved, the proposal will split the Livable City Initiative. The newly created Office of Housing and Community Development will take responsibility for the creation of new housing in the city, while LCI will solely focus on housing inspections. The mayor also hopes to add eight new housing-related positions. 

City activists have critiqued LCI due to delayed inspection and unresolved complaints, often leaving tenants waiting months without receiving support from the city.

“It’s clear every day that housing is one of the biggest challenges that we’re facing as a city,” Elicker told the News. “While we’ve made a lot of progress, we have a lot more work to do, in particular, in two areas. One is increasing the number of affordable units in the city, and two is … improving our ability to inspect existing housing stock to ensure that it is safe.”

In total, these two housing programs will get more than $1.4 million in additional funding compared to the last fiscal year. Elicker’s proposed budget also allocates an additional $300,000 to support unhoused people. 

The proposed Office of Housing and Community Development

Included in the city budget is Elicker’s proposal to create a new Office of Housing and Community Development, which will partner with local organizations to build new housing and administer grants for future housing projects. If approved, the office will be a part of the city’s Economic Development Administration Division.

Currently, the Livable City Initiative is responsible for this work. 

Staff at the LCI who worked on housing development will be transferred to the new office, and an additional position — deputy director of Economic Development Administration — will be created to oversee it, according to Elicker. 

“It’s more appropriate for this work to be done within the Economic Development Administration,” Elicker said. “Economic development is the place [to which] developers first go when they’re wanting to start projects.”

Michael Piscitelli, the head of the city’s Economic Development Administration Department, explained that the new office will distribute funding for ongoing housing projects. According to Piscitelli, there are currently 3,500 new housing units in the city’s development pipeline — about 40 percent of which are affordable. 

Some of these projects are led by the city, such as a new series of townhouses on Grand Avenue, while other units are being built by external housing developers. The new office will support the projects by monitoring construction and providing technical assistance on grant applications.

In addition to supporting housing construction, the office will be in charge of administering grants for construction projects approved by the Board of Alders. Some of these grants include funding from the federal Office of Housing and Urban Development, which annually administers between $3 and $4 million in funds to the city of New Haven. Additionally, the office will draw on funds from the 2021 American Rescue Plan.

Piscitelli noted the need for affordable housing across the state of Connecticut. He said that the city has built 1,900 new affordable housing units in recent years but that the overall gap in affordable housing in Connecticut is upwards of 90,000 units. The new office will help improve housing policy, looking to increase the number of affordable units in the city, Piscitelli said.

Changes and improvements to LCI

The budget proposal will also add seven new staff positions with the Livable City Initiative, the agency that, under the proposed plan, will focus only on enforcing housing code and public space requirements throughout the city.

“I think [it’s] very important for LCI to focus on the core mission, what it was originally created for, which is ensuring our existing housing stock is of high standards,” Elicker said. 

Five of the proposed staff are housing inspectors, who, if approved by alders, will join the current team of 13 inspectors. 

According to Elicker, the attorney employed at LCI will join the Office of Housing and Community Development. The mayor thus proposed adding an attorney who will continue to work with LCI on housing compliance and inspections. LCI will also receive a new administrative assistant.

According to Piscitelli, these new positions will expand LCI’s capacity to engage in on-site inspections of rental units and section eight units on behalf of the city’s housing authority. 

LCI’s work entails a multi-step process of inspecting units, issuing orders based on code enforcement inspection and ensuring that landlords comply with these orders. Piscitelli said that staff expansion would increase efficiency within the agency, allowing LCI to make better use of government resources and increase the timeliness of their work. 

“We’ll be expecting a high level of process improvements such that we’re good on the timelines and we address the issues and make sure that our outcomes are good for the tenant who may live in the unit,” Piscitelli said.

Karen DuBois-Walton, the executive director of New Haven’s Housing Authority, noted the significance of improving LCI’s efficiency. 

“The city must increase its capacity to meet the requirements of the landlord licensing program,” DuBois-Walton wrote in an email to the News. “City resources can be most effective [by diving responsibilities].”

Alder Adam Marchand, a chair of the Board of Alders finance committee, which plays a major role in the budget adoption process, commended Elicker for paying attention to housing in his budget proposal. 

The finance committee will have its first budget public hearing on March 14.

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The budget proposal includes increased funding for education and housing and adds 31 new full-time positions to the city staff, including five housing inspectors. If approved, the budget will also reorganize New Haven housing programs and create a separate Parks Department.  

“He got it right this time … I like it,” Tom Goldenberg, a former mayoral challenger who had previously criticized Elicker’s fiscal year 2023-24  budget proposal, told the News. 

Goldenberg said that he supported the creation of a separate parks department, new housing inspection positions at the Livable City Initiative and a tax increase that is lower than last year’s, which is “encouraging.”

“We are pleased to see the increased investment in housing quality by adding needed positions at LCI,” Karen DuBois-Walton ’89, executive director of the New Haven Housing Authority, who challenged Elicker in the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary, wrote to the News. “Everyday we see the challenges families face seeking quality housing in the private market.” 

DuBois-Walton wrote that the decision to shift LCI’s focus away from housing development and toward inspections is a smart one. She also applauded the additional $300,000 allocated for the services for the unhoused.  

Leslie Blatteau, president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, said that increased salaries, which account for a large part of the increased educational budget, allowed many teachers to stay teaching in New Haven Public Schools. She said that this has made them feel that they are “being compensated fairly.” 

Per the teachers union contract negotiated last year, the salaries of public school teachers are rising gradually over the three years following the contract. Blatteau said that the increases are especially significant for mid-career educators.

“We have to continue to make sure that as many dollars as possible are making it directly to the classroom,” Blatteau said. “That means making sure that we’re paying for highly qualified professionals to support our students and making sure that the resources are in place so that we can do our jobs.”

In Elicker’s budget proposal, an additional $5 million is allocated for the Board of Education. According to Elicker, the city is also hoping to get almost $4 million more from the state for schools. This funding goes to the city’s Board of Education, which then decides how to use it, Elicker said. 

Chris Schweitzer, the head of the New Haven Climate Movement, wrote to the News that he would love to hear more from the city about its environmental investments to reach the Climate Emergency Resolution goals.

“Later is too late for climate change action,” Schweitzer wrote. 

The Mayor’s budget proposal has to be approved by the Board of Alders, who will likely amend the proposal. 

Upon seeing the creation of over 30 new city employment positions allocated across various departments, Ward 25 Alder Adam Marchand told the News he will pay attention to the costs that are going to be used for the new workers’ salaries. 

“At this point, I don’t have a strong feeling one way or the other,” Marchand said. “I’ve done this long enough that I take my time with it. I generally form my opinions slowly over the course of the workshops when I get a better understanding from the department heads about what it is they’re proposing and why they want to do it.”

The Board of Alders will be holding three hearings and six workshops on the budget over the next six weeks to solicit community input.

Marchand commended the Mayor for allocating more funds to the Parks Department and for giving a lot of thought to the housing scarcity around New Haven. 

Ward 27 Alder and majority leader Richard Furlow echoed Marchand’s statement, saying that though he’s only looked at the highlights of the budget proposal so far, he will pay close attention to the new positions created.

“Thirty-one new positions, that’s a lot,” Furlow said. “But the budget process will be for each department to explain why they’re needed, and then we’ll decide what do we believe in.”

Last year, the Board rejected 25 out of the 34 positions Elicker created. 

Fiscal year 2024-25 will start on July 1.

Ariela Lopez contributed reporting.

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Elicker announced his budget proposal in City Hall flanked by Michael Gormany, the city’s budget director, and other city officials. The budget proposal, which has to be approved by the Board of Alders, will restructure the Livable City Initiative, create a separate Parks Department and add 33 new city staff. The new expenditures will be mainly sponsored by increased property tax revenue. 

“This year’s budget is both responsible and responsive,” Elicker said at the press conference. “It’s responsible in that we continue to invest what we need to in pensions and debt … It’s responsive to calls from the community and the needs of a growing city.”

Structural changes, new positions in housing and parks

In this year’s budget, the biggest change Elicker proposed is changes to the Livable City Initiative, which has been criticized for its inability to protect tenants from negligent or predatory landlords.

“If anyone that lives in New Haven will walk around the city, [they] will understand that we have a serious housing challenge,” Elicker said.

The proposed budget includes funding for five housing inspectors to join the current team of 13. It also provides funding for two additional LCI staff workers, including one housing attorney.

LCI will see structural changes as well, Elicker said. 

“We need someone waking up every day that’s focusing on what the original intent of LCI was — inspections, housing, rental housing safety, rental housing accountability,” Elicker said of the change. 

The program’s housing development authority will be delegated to the Economic Development Administration, and LCI will instead fully focus on housing inspections and landlord accountability. 

In the new budget, Elicker also proposes to separate the Parks Department from the current Parks and Public Works Department. The two were merged in 2020. 

“We have heard a lot in these past several years from many community members … about how our parks are one of the most important assets in our city,” Elicker said. “The city needs to do better in ensuring that our parks are well maintained, there’s more responsiveness to community needs [and] the athletics fields are better maintained.”

The city will be divided into three park districts, with one manager assigned to each. These managers will be responsible for communicating with the residents on park-related concerns. 

The new budget also includes four additional staff members in the reconstituted parks department, including a superintendent of fields, a parks foreperson and two technicians who will focus on maintaining the city’s athletic fields.

Increased city expenditures 

The FY25 proposed budget has over $680 million in spending planned, approximately $17.6 million more than last year’s budget, for an increase of 2.66 percent. 

The increased spending is mostly the result of inflation and increased fixed costs, according to Elicker. But there are some new expenditures in the budget.  

In total, Elicker proposed adding 31 full-time and two part-time city positions. Besides new LCI and Parks Department positions, these include four sworn officer leadership positions in the Police Department and three captains in the Fire Department. 

According to Elicker, all new positions will account for approximately $2.97 million in spending — less than half a percent of FY25’s budget. 

Last year, Elicker proposed adding 34 new positions, of which alders approved only nine, citing concerns about the number of city government positions currently vacant.  He said that the only overlap between last year’s and this year’s proposed positions is fire captains, which he is required to add by the memorandum of understanding with the fire department. 

Educational expenses, which traditionally are the largest expenditure in New Haven, increased by $5 million to around $208 million for the fiscal year 2024-25, mostly as a result of increased teachers’ salaries, per the city’s contract with the teachers union. 

Debt service payments and contributions to the city pensions fund will increase by over $2.7 million in a new fiscal year, which Elicker attributed to the city’s financial responsibility.

“We don’t restructure our debt or do any fancy gimmicks to push costs into the future,” Elicker said. 

Financing expanded budget

Under the New Haven Charter, expenditures in the budget must be equal to the city income. 

“One of the hardest parts of my job is balancing the strong demand for more city service and having a tax rate that is something that our residents have the ability to pay for,” Elicker said. “In today’s world, you can’t even do the same without more [money] because of our increased fixed costs.”

Increased tax revenue accounts for most of the city income rise in fiscal year 2024-25. This year, the city will increase its mill rate — the amount of tax paid for every $1,000 in property value — by 3.98 percent, from 37.20 to 38.68. The city temporarily lowered the mill rate from 43.88 in the fiscal year 2021-22 to 37.20 last fiscal year to ease the transition after the reevaluation of the property values. 

According to the budget proposal, the city also hopes to get $2 more million in funding from the state compared to last fiscal year. 

The Board of Alders’ finance committee will hold several public hearings and workshops, and the full Board is expected to approve the budget in May. The Board can, and likely will, amend the budget. In the coming weeks, Elicker will also hold budget town halls to communicate his proposal to the community. 

The fiscal year 2024-25 will start on July 1.

The post ANALYSIS: Mayor’s proposed budget funds housing, parks appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Per the New Haven Charter, Elicker has to submit an annual budget proposal no later than March 1. After that, the budget needs to be approved by the Board of Alders; city alders will likely make amendments to it.

“We spend several weeks examining [the budget], asking questions of [city] staff, hearing from residents,” Alder Adam Marchand, who serves as a chair of the board’s finance committee, told the News. “Then, in May, the finance committee deliberates on the budget and typically makes changes through the amendment process. Then … it goes to the full board of alders for a vote, usually the last week of May.”

The fiscal year 2024-25 is set to start on July 1. 

The Budget adoption process

Over the next two months, the Board of Alders’ finance committee will hold three public hearings to solicit testimony from residents and five workshops with city officials to review the proposed budget in detail.

The committee will then meet to deliberate and amend the mayor’s budget proposal. The first committee vote is scheduled for May 13. 

Marchand said that the board usually passes the final budget with a “large majority” of votes. He attributed it to the prolonged discussions that happen throughout the budget adoption process and said that all alders who do not sit on the finance committee are still encouraged to share their ideas and input. 

Typically, the board adopts the version of the budget that the committee approves, but “every now and then” some amendments are also adopted on the board’s floor before final vote, Marchand said. 

Last year, the Board of Alders adopted the final budget with the same revenue and expenditure numbers that Elicker proposed, although they did change specific allocations of the funding. This means, Marchand said, that for every amended expenditure to the Mayor’s budget, the board needs to also take off some of the Mayor’s spendings.

City income and expenditures 

Property taxes are by far the largest income source for the City of New Haven. Last year, property taxes accounted for 49.3 percent of city income. They have increased due to the bump in property values after the city-wide revaluation. 

This year, the city will not reevaluate its properties, but its planned property taxes income could still be slightly higher, Marchand said, due to new property developments. 

New Haven also largely depends on the state for funding. Last year, it accounted for over 40 percent of the budget, of which 22 were allocated specifically for education. 

“The charter requires us to pass a budget where the revenue is the same number as the expenditures,” Marchand said. “One of our big functions is to be wise fiscal stewards for the city. Each year we try to help the city achieve a stronger financial position.”

Elicker has also regularly stressed fiscal responsibility in his remarks and this year’s proposed budget will likely reflect that commitment. 

Education is the largest expenditure in New Haven’s budget. Last year, education costs rose by $8 million to a record high of just over $203 million, which accounted for more than 30 percent of spending. This increase was largely driven by the New Haven Public Schools teachers’ salary bump, per their negotiated union contract.

In the coming fiscal year, education costs will likely increase further, as teachers’ salary will rise again.  

Another large source of expenditure in New Haven’s budget comes from salaries and employee benefits, accounting for 15.7 percent of the budget last fiscal year. 

In his past budget proposal, Elicker proposed the creation of 34 new city positions of which the board approved only nine — the largest disagreement on the budget. This year, any added or removed positions by mayor or alders will reflect their priorities for the city.

“When the mayor wants to propose new positions, for example, we try to understand if those positions are really necessary, if they contribute to needed services, if they help the city achieve the policy goals that are in our legislative agenda,” Marchand told the News.

The annual spending that will carry into the next fiscal year is debt service and pensions for public employees, which accounted for 10.43 percent and 13.29 percent of the budget, respectively, last year. 

Last fiscal year’s planned spending was $662.7 million. 

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On Saturday, NHSO performed seven pieces in front of the filled St. Mary’s Church, lit with candles. The concert tickets were sold out, and part of the proceeds will go toward the Yale-based organization Doctors United for Ukraine, or DU4U. 

“It was really not so much a fundraising activity but an activity to bring to the forefront what is happening in Ukraine: who is getting hurt, how they are being treated, and what people in the community here can do,” Andrey Zinchuk, professor of medicine at the University and vice-president of DU4U, told the News.

In 2022, DU4U already partnered with NHSO to raise money for medical supplies and training in Ukraine.

This year, NHSO originally planned to host just one candlelight concert on Friday, Feb. 23. When DU4U reached out and asked for help again, the tickets for that first show were almost sold out.

Elaine Carroll, chief executive officer of NHSO, told the News that she was worried there would not be enough seats for all those who wanted to come to support DU4U, and the Orchestra decided to give another concert, which was sold out as well. 

“[DU4U] told us about the work that they were undertaking to bring support to … victims of the war in Ukraine, and that inspired us,” Carroll said, recalling the initial partnership between NHSO and Du4U in 2022. “When they approached us about wanting to do a second event, we were very happy to accommodate them.”

All people who attended the concert on Saturday had the option to donate proceeds from their tickets to DU4U. Concertgoers were also encouraged to make an additional donation to an organization. As of Sunday, Zinchuk does not yet know how much the organization was able to raise that night. 

According to Zinchuk, DU4U will use the raised money to support its efforts in Ukraine, which include delivering the needed medical equipment, providing mental health support for war-affected civilians and training doctors in Ukraine. The organization also previously brought six doctors to study at Yale and hopes to expand this program in the future. After the concert, the organization awarded Yale professor Ilan Harpaz-Rotem for his work teaching mental health providers during his trips to Lviv, Ukraine.

“So much of the success [of the concert] is because of the real passion that the doctors have for what they’re doing,” Carroll said. “They were so generous with their time in promoting the event. They had wonderful suggestions.”

One of the DU4U’s suggestions was to start the concert with the “Melodia” by Ukrainian composer Myroslav Skoryk. After this piece, NHSO, headed by violinist and concertmaster David Southorn, also performed compositions by Felix Mendelssohn, J.S. Bach and “Four Seasons” by Antonio Vivaldi. 

Marc Anthony Massaro told the News he attended the concert because of the “level of musicianship” of NHSO and the professionalism of its performers. 

“Something I was unaware of was how exceptional the acoustics are in St. Mary’s Church. I had no idea it would sound this good,” Massaro said.

Tim Taylor said he was impressed with NHSO’s command of Vivaldi and called the performance “phenomenal.” Similarly, Allen Gibbens came to the event to listen to NHSO performing “Four Seasons.”

Michael Schaffer told the News that he found the piece by a Ukrainian composer to be “fabulous” and said it spoke to the ability of people to be resilient and optimistic no matter what the circumstances are.

St. Mary’s Church is located at 5 Hillhouse Ave.

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In a conversation moderated by history professor Marci Shore, Starr talked about his experience as a Black independent journalist in Ukraine and colonialism and race in Eastern Europe. He also discussed how he believes the United States should support Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia.

“The genesis of my work is really predicated on us better understanding each other, and that we all have to be invested in each others’ safety and security,” Starr said. “The safest, the most progressive thing that we can do for Ukraine is give them guns to fight, because there’s no point of talking about a peaceful Ukraine if they are dead.”

Starr, who grew up in a majority-Black community in Detroit and went to Philander Smith University, an HBCU, said that when he applied for summer abroad programs before his senior year, he picked only African countries as destinations. Nevertheless, he was placed on a trip to Russia. 

That new experience shaped him, he said, and after graduation, he spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in a small Georgian village. There, he said, he started understanding colonialism and race outside of the United States through conversations with Georgians, who shared their experiences of being discriminated against by Russians as “the Black people of the Caucasus.” Inspired by his time abroad, Starr also did a Fulbright exchange scholarship in Ukraine in 2009. Living in the region, Starr learned about Russian colonialism.

“Western hegemony and Western colonialism [are] not the only hegemony … and colonialism that exist,” Starr recalled realizing. 

After returning to America, Starr worked as a national political correspondent for various American outlets, covering both the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections, but traveled to Ukraine every year. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, Starr said he was in Ukraine, staying with his friend, who then enlisted in the army. 

He followed his friend and started covering the war from the ground in Ukraine, where he currently resides most of the time. He conducts his reporting from the war’s front lines and writes about Ukrainian civilians. 

“He is here as somebody who is working outside of an academy and outside of a corporate news agency and has been making his own way with a very creative kind of journalism,” Shore said of Starr.

His mission, he says, has become to help cross the bridges between Black and Ukrainian communities with just a selfie stick, a phone camera, “language skills, street smarts and Black Jesus.” 

Experiences away from home have shaped Starr into an advocate for shrinking the empathy gap across cultures and promoting the idea that the Black community in the United States is in many ways similar to the Ukrainian community in Eastern Europe, he said. 

“White nationalism is putting Ukraine’s security at risk,” Starr said, reflecting on the federal bill that would provide aid to Ukraine currently stalled by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. “This racism that’s targeting us is now being used to weaponize support for Ukraine. Everybody is in this together. So we’re going to have to make a decision about how much care we have for one another.”

Although Starr said that he does not know if his work will inspire people to take political action, he knows that some will trust him better because “he looks like them.”

He added that he also believes Ukrainians feel that he, as a Black man, can understand them better than foreign white correspondents. He said that he does not operate on the idea of “objectivity,” trying to balance opinions as traditional news media outlets do. He described himself as, instead, committed to being truthful and fair. 

“The voice that I’m speaking with … that I communicate with and the honesty and the moral consistency that I bring to the conversation is not something that would pass a lot of editors,” Starr said. “So I don’t need them.”

Claudia Nunes, a visiting fellow in the School of Environment who attended the event, believes that Starr’s reporting brings the aspect of the physicality of the war to communities across the ocean — and across racial, linguistic and cultural barriers. 

“Because he takes the truth this seriously, his reporting appeals to hearts,” Nunes noted. “Our interpretations of what is happening in Ukraine would vary only slightly, not as much as they used to, if we all had access to unfiltered truth. And Terrell gives it to us.” 

The event was sponsored by the Poynter Fellowship; the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Program and the European Studies Council.

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