New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Abdussabur knocks on doors in Ward 28
NEW HAVEN — Shafiq Abdussabur started early. Abdussabur, a former city police officer and owner of a construction company that employs the city’s school custodians, was one of the first three people in the city to file paperwork to run for a seat on the Board of Alders. He has been knocking on doors in Beaver Hills for months, listening to the concerns of the community as he
launches his bid in the 28th Ward of the 30-ward board.
Carl Babb, a former New Haven school principal and a neighbor of Adbussabur, said Abdussabur is known in the community.
“He’s in the neighborhood and he’s been around. He never moved from this neighborhood,” Babb said.
Abdussabur said he has many ideas about how the city could improve its situation and how he could get results for Beaver Hills. He said that, as a runner, he knows “where all the potholes are.”
“It’s time to get off the couch,” he said.
Ward 28 incumbent Jill Marks had not yet filed paperwork to run for a fourth term. Marks did not respond to a request for comment.
Safety
One of Abdussabur’s top issues is community policing. During his department career, he served on a state task force on policing and now believes city police must do better to engage with and familiarize themselves with their communities.
“We are not really practicing community policing in New Haven,” he said. “We don’t have the dialogue with stakeholders.”
Kelly Blanchat, who has lived in Ward 28 for just more than ayear after purchasing a home with her husband and young daughter, said safety has been a concern at times.
“I have a 2-year-old and we hear gunshots sometimes. It’s scary,” she said.
Neighbor Sam McCray, who has lived in Beaver Hills since 1967, said at night there sometimes will be drag racing, with cars loudly speeding through the streets. He’s worried someone will get hurt.
Abdussabur said he believes the city overall has a lack of planning around safety and quality of life issues. He believes that various community issues have become so siloed that it has overall impeded the productivity by which sidewalks can be repaved and trees can have their shedding limbs addressed before they damage homes or vehicles.
Finances
One issue that matters to Blanchat is ensuring that homeownership is incentivized.
“A lot of my neighbors have lived here since the ’60s and I hear stories all the time of what this neighborhood used to be like,” she said. “I see trends in the city where companies buy houses that get flipped and rented to families that could have purchased them. There hasn’t been that opportunity to build equity.”
Abdussabur said “watching the money” would be a priority were he to win the seat.
“The residents want to know what happened to their money,” he said.
He said he wants to know how much Beaver Hills residents contribute to the tax base and where their money goes. He said he does not believe in an “us versus them” mentality, but he wishes to be “respectful to the homeowners.” As the tax rate has been raised nearly annually, Abdussabur said he believes it would be an incentive to local homeownership for information about city spending to be further demystified.
Blanchat said she became more invested in local politics after purchasing her Beaver Hills home, and Abdussabur was a visible community presence almost immediately. Although she supports his candidacy, she has two signs in her front yard: one reading “Black Lives Matter” and the other a green sign urging Yale University to “Respect New Haven.”
The signs, which have been present throughout the city since 2019, were disseminated to residents by Yale union officials and New Haven Rising and originally were tied to tensions around a local hiring initiative promised by Yale.
Marks is married to Scott Marks, director of New Haven Rising, and has been a supporter of Yale union initiatives on the board. In recent years, many of the sitting alders have been endorsed by Yale’s unions; some work day jobs as union organizers for Yale’s unions.
“I don’t think of it as the Yale union sign; it’s like what Shafiq and I talk about: equity for residents,” Blanchat said.
Abdussabur does not work for Yale or for its unions, but he said he is connected through family.
“I have a lot of family members who are not only members of the Yale unions but hold positions in the Yale unions,” he said.
However, he said he believes the Board of Alders has to try a different tactic in negotiating with the university. In the current budget cycle, Mayor Justin Elicker is requesting that Yale increase its voluntary contribution to the city to $53 million. The university, which owns approximately $150 million in tax-exempt property, made a voluntary $13 million contribution to the city in the current fiscal year.
The university also pays about $5 million annually in property taxes on non-academic properties through its community investment program; Yale is among the top three real estate taxpayers in New Haven. Yale also since last year distributed about $3 million to “local nonprofit organizations to support New Haven residents negatively affected by the pandemic,” according to the university.
Alders have used the city’s budget troubles to make the case that Yale must do more, using budget hearings to highlight all the services that might go unfunded if the city were to have to make cuts to spending — this year, proposed cuts include the Westville branch of the public library.
‘I think the conversation that needs to be had with Yale is a different conversation,” Abdussabur said.
Instead of asking for voluntary contributions, Abdussabur said the city should highlight specific programs that could use additional funding. He said youth programs would be a good place to start, such as covering the costs of room and board for scholarship recipients of the New Haven Promise program and funding certification programs for local high school graduates.
“Imagine having them put their money in a place and they know where it’s going. It’s being invested in young people. We need that immediate relief,” he said.