Can Bridgeport City Council overcome turmoil?
It’s been a rough couple of months with members stepping down or being removed from assignments
BRIDGEPORT — Typically, fall is when the 20person City Council, after a reduced summer schedule, returns to business as usual.
But the current all- Democratic legislative body has had a rough couple of
“We all have our differences. But I’m really hopeful we can get it together and move the city forward.”
Avelino Silva
months.
Member Eneida Martinez was recently arrested and stepped down from her committee assignments, though some colleagues want her resignation; Council President Aidee Nieves kicked Maria Pereira,
perhaps the body’s most outspoken member, off of her committees and removed another sometimes independent voice — Michael DeFilippo — from his role as budget committee co- chair; and several members spent the summer in- fighting over the future of the Christopher Columbus statue in Seaside Park.
And while all of that has been happening, the council has mostly been meeting through teleconferences to avoid the possibility of spreading COVID- 19 during the current worldwide pandemic.
“We all have our differences. But I’m really hopeful we can get it together and move the city forward,” said Avelino Silva, who is the newest member, having been sworn- in in early March to fill a vacancy.
Silva admitted he had not expected the level of divisiveness when he joined: “I just didn’t think it was going to be this politicized.”
Council President Aidee Nieves insisted that the council will be able to get its work done. One major goal of hers in the coming months is to pursue local policing reforms.
“The council is not based on individual actions. It’s based on the body’s actions,” Nieves said. “And the body itself, though there is dysfunction with individuals ... there is a majority that, regardless of differences of opinion, are still willing to put in the work.”
She also said individual members are quietly effective in their neighborhoods, but those efforts do not draw the same attention as the controversies.
But at the committee level, where much of the discussion and debate on topics occurs ahead of full council votes, that work will be shared by fewer members.
In late September, Nieves removed Pereira from her committees after the latter refused to agree with a request to place all electronic devices in a paper bag before the council tried meeting privately and in- person about issues within the police department. Pereira can still attend committee meetings but not as a voting member.
Pereira in a public statement immediately afterward said, “I made it clear that my cellphone would remain in my possession as it was my personal cellphone and no one had the authority to demand or take any city council member’s phone.”
Elected last November, Pereira, as a new councilperson and former Board of Education member, has a reputation as a thorough researcher and advocate for clean and open government, but critics complain she is a bully. At the time of the argument over her cellphone, Pereira’s colleagues were already weighing if and how to punish her for calling a Black school board member’s actions “ghetto” on social media.
Nieves this week stood by her decision to remove Pereira from committees: “As a council president, I do have powers and I exercised my powers as I saw fit when a council member continues to drive conversation to be chaotic and disruptive.”
Pereira on Tuesday said she is considering legal action against Nieves and the council for abuse of power. She said she feels Nieves retaliated against her because she is independent and cannot be controlled: “I don’t just go to my committees. I go to every committee meeting. I have the best attendance record. Nobody is more well- read, prepared and researched with questions.”
Nieves also removed DeFilippo as co- chairman of the budget committee. She had acknowledged when appointing him last year it was a risk — DeFilippo had a generally poor attendance record — but had expressed faith he would rise to the challenge.
“He really wasn’t doing a good job,” Nieves said this week. “I just felt his performance was not effective and efficient enough.”
DeFilippo on Monday, like Pereira, said he feels Nieves has a problem with his independence: “You know who I belong to? Nobody. ... I didn’t join the Mafia — ‘ Vote with us or against us.’ ”
Then last week, Martinez announced she would temporarily step aside from her committee assignments while the police investigation continued into a fatal Sept. 27 shooting at the Keystone strip- club- turnedsocial club she managed. Two days later on Oct. 7, Martinez was arrested and charged with second- degree reckless endangerment and 10 counts of illegal sale of alcohol.
Martinez has a court date scheduled for Oct. 20. She has referred all questions to her attorney, who has declined comment.
Two council members — Scott Burns and Matthew McCarthy — have since called for Martinez to re
sign.
“We’ve got one distraction after another,” Burns said Monday. “And these are serious charges related to a very serious incident where a 21- year- old died. ... We’ve got to clean house a little bit and that would be a step in the right direction.”
Nieves said she would await the outcome of Martinez’s case: “We must allow for her to have due process.”
There has also been a bitter council debate this summer over whether the mayor should restore the Columbus statue to Seaside Park. Installed in the 1960s, Mayor Joe Ganim suddenly placed it in storage July 6, citing unspecified threats of vandalism against the monument. The 15th century navigator is viewed by some as a hero to Italian Americans and by others as a symbol of racism and colonization.
The city hired a contractor last week to put Columbus back, but at the last minute the order was canceled.
“The Columbus statue incident took a lot of time away from the council over the summer,” Nieves acknowledged.
Burns, DeFilippo and Silva all suggested that some of the council’s problems stem from the fact members are no longer, because of COVID, able to get together face to face, and their digital interactions have diminished their ability or willingness to be civil.
“We don’t talk about people as if they are people,” Burns said.
Silva said joining the council right before the pandemic has proven particularly difficult: “I don’t get to really know individuals and work with them. It’s tough.”