Rival blasts New Haven mayor for ‘secret plan’ on safe-injection site

— Democratic mayoral challenger Tom Goldenberg accused Democratic Mayor Justin Elicker this past week of formulating a “secret plan” to put a medically controlled safe-injection site downtown without public input and said such facilities don’t always work out in the wrong neighborhoods.

Elicker responded that there’s no “secret plan” and the city has appropriated no money toward the idea but is simply bouncing ideas around to cope with a very vexing problem and keep people alive. Goldenberg is playing politics with a serious health issue, Elicker said.

Goldenberg, who previously criticized the location of an APT Foundation methadone clinic across the street from a school, said he was resigning his position as a member of the board of the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen, which he said has been chosen to be the city’s nonprofit partner.

He said he assumes that DESK would run a safe-injection site within property it owns along State Street.

Goldenberg would not say exactly how he knew that, but said it was not information he got as a result of being a board member.

“I acknowledge that opioid addiction is a public problem ... and we need to do more,” Goldenberg said.

But an appropriate location for something like that might be in an industrial area away from residential or educational uses, such as the APT Foundation’s West Haven clinic in an industrial area on Front Avenue, he said.

“I’m pro-treatment” and “I come from a place of empathy,” but only under the proper circumstances and if the public is fully informed, Goldenberg said at a news conference.