New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Cohen pushes business-friendly vision for city
WEST HAVEN — Tenth District City Council member Barry Lee Cohen has a vision for the city.
It includes the city being more responsive to potential buyers and developers, Cohen said .
Cohen, nominated to run for mayor by the city’s Republican Party, said he is not a traditional politician, and his journey into city politics was unexpected for him — and also new, his having only held citywide office for one term so far.
He held a town hall event at West Haven High School this week to answer questions and introduce himself to city residents.
“I am not running against anyone. (Democratic Mayor) Nancy Rossi is a good person,” he said to a crowd of nearly 100 people.
However, he said it is his skill set as a marketing and communications professional and his status as a political outsider that makes him better suited to run the city.
“It’s time we stop the finger pointing, stop the blame games, start fresh,” he said.
For almost two hours, Cohen answered questions posed predominantly by his campaign manager, KimMarie Mullin. Cohen said his top priorities as mayor would be “kids, quality of life and economic development.”
When the GOP mayoral candidate wasn’t speaking, sometimes he was moved to song, breaking out into the refrain of Judy Garland’s show-stopping “The Trolley Song” from the musical “Meet Me In St. Louis” when asked about transportation for seniors in the city.
It was his economic development plans he spoke about most.
Cohen said the city must be more accommodating to businesses, not just by delivering incentives but by being accessible.
“Any developer wants to see what tax incentives they can get, but what they also want is ease of business,” he said.
“We currently have economic development a la carte. It’s the same old story of West Haven: West Haven is a city of missed opportunities, we’re hard to do business with, we don’t engage, we don’t return emails,” he said.
Cohen said the Rossi administration does not have a clearly articulated economic development plan. “This administration learned the words ‘economic development’ in the last 90 days.”
Rossi, when asked to comment on claims made by Cohen at the town hall, disagreed.
“The city of West Haven has a comprehensive economic development plan, as well as a Plan of Conservation and Development that was updated in 2017,” she said.
“As a result, the city is now receiving considerable interest in commercial investment and economic development,” Rossi said. “The increased interest is a result of earning the trust and confidence of these investors by getting our financial operations in order and also having a balanced budget.”
She said city officials “hear all the time how much better the business environment is in West Haven and how much easier it is to do business in West Haven.”
Although Cohen does not deny that long-vacant properties recently have been sold, he said there is a lack of cohesion in how the city markets itself to developers and how it positions itself for success.
“They need to have a marketing plan and a branding plan. It’s what I do for a living,” he said.
Cohen said the Rossi administration has taken a hands-off approach to the sale of Savin Rock Plaza, the former Silver’s building on Campbell Avenue is a deterrent to development in the downtown, and the sale of the former Debonair Motel on the shoreline was a “fire sale” at only $1 million.
“The former Debonair Hotel, another private development, was not a fire sale,” Rossi said. “It was sold to an investment group who is interested in our beautiful shoreline because of the $5.2 million dollar Beach Street raising project that is in process.”
Cohen said there also are quality of life issues in the city that go ignored, including illegal dumping around the city. He said the city must hire more police and enforcement officers to ensure compliance with city ordinances.
“Being mayor is more than balancing the budget books,” he said.
Rossi said that in her tenure as mayor, balancing the budget was one of the most important things she could do because of the $18 million budget deficit when she first took office.
“Yes, the budget was our top priority because no investor was coming to West Haven with the financial condition we were in. Now that our fiscal position is good, we are and will continue to address the deferred maintenance issues across the city,” she said.