Alves wants input from everyday Danburians
Setting up advisory committee to solicit ideas
DANBURY — If you’ve got the way to drain the flooding problem on Kenosia Avenue or the way to unjam the traffic backups on Mill Plain Road or the way to bring life back to the downtown, newly elected Mayor Roberto Alves has a seat at the table for you.
Alves is convening an advisory committee of everyday Danburians to bring their solutions to him about city challenges involving dated infrastructure, overcrowded schools and economic development on Main Street.
“Throughout the campaign we were talking about making government more accountable and wanting the residents to have a say and have access to me,” Alves told Hearst Connecticut Media last week. “We want to come up with ideas and strategies we can implement, and this is how we do it — by bringing residents in and creating an official committee.”
The short version of Alves’ vision is a group of a few dozen volunteers who will work for 12 weeks to come up with policies and programs his administration can implement to improve public health and social services, public safety and emergency services, economic and workforce development, recreation and community services, arts and culture, education and housing.
Although the application deadline for advisory committee volunteers is not until Jan. 31, it is already clear with 100 applications submitted so far that not everyone will be chosen, at least not for this round of the outreach exercise, Alves said. A new advisory committee is expected to be set up in the fall.
“This is a strategies incubator,” Alves said of the advisory committee, which will begin its work on Feb. 15 at a public meeting. “We want to be sure we are not missing anything that could be implemented over the two years, but also anything in the long term as well.”
Alves’ initiative, known as the Mayor’s Community Advisory Committee, comes halfway through his first 100 days in office as Danbury’s first Democratic mayor in 22 years, and is part of a larger vision Alves laid out during his campaign to get more residents engaged in civic discourse through outreach.
After the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, for example, Alves plans to announce the first of at
least seven City Hall forums in each of Danbury’s voting districts. Alves’ office is also organizing two summits — one for nonprofits and the other for the business community.
“This is all about getting in front of the people,” Alves said. “And if the people can’t get to us, we’re going to go to them.”
Voters said as much to Alves and Democrats during the campaign, explaining that residents wanted more of a say in the direction the city is taking, Alves and other top Democrats said.
“That is one of the things we were hearing about when we were knocking on doors,” said state Rep. Bob Godfrey, DDanbury, the dean of the city’s state delegation, shortly after Alves lead a landslide victory in November over the GOP.
So how would Alves’ community advisors affect the decision making of his administration and the Democrats who hold a supermajority over Republicans on the City Council?
“We’re looking for diversity in thought in how the organization is created,” Alves said.
Expect his community advisors to meet three times between Feb. 15 and the May 9 deadline Alves has set for the committee to produce recommendations. Between those meetings of the whole committee, subcommittees will meet to discuss improvements to city services, or programs to enhance economic and housing opportunities. The subcommittees will have subject matter experts assigned to each group as a resource to help guide discussions, Alves added.
“I am not creating a committee to produce recommendations that sit on the shelf and don’t have any action,” Alves said. “We are here to have active real-time participation that produces results.”
Alves, who immigrated with his family from Brazil when he was 5 years old and worked for 12 years as a technical sales engineer for Cartus, has seen the strategy incubator model work on in the private sector as well as in other cities and towns.
“Once people see the value of the exercise, I believe it will be a very popular thing for the residents,” Alves said. “We will look to opening it up again in the fall.”