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"This Place Is Falling Apart, and I'm Upset"
Would-be mayor Schiavone is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore
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Business New Haven
3/5/2001
By: BNH
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What will it cost to run a successful campaign?
You'd need at least $350,000 and a maximum of $500,000.
Now that you have won your lawsuit against the residency requirement, have you begun serious fundraising?
Of course. I have just chosen my campaign staff, so now we're going to go full speed ahead. I can tell you that the bulk of it is not going to come from [New Haven].
Why go through the aggravation of running for mayor - and risk the potentially much greater aggravation should you win?
I'm very good at aggravation, as you know [laughs]. After all I've been through, I thrive on aggravation. But No. 2, I have a sense of outrage about what a mess this place is in - in particular the schools, but also the financial status of the city, the fact that there is no more for-profit sector left. It's almost impossible to start a business in New Haven. Some people are trying, which is terrific, but the rules and regulations and obstacles are just overwhelming. Also, the fact that the population of New Haven shrank significantly over the last 40 years, and over the last ten years is still shrinking. We're seeing more and more abandoned houses, schools that are terrible. The place is falling apart, and I'm upset. I'm a loyal, long-term New Havener, and I think it's time to get mad. This can be a great city.
The population loss is not endemic to New Haven, but has characterized most Northeastern cities.
The people who are leaving New Haven are the middle class. As soon as people have enough money to think of themselves as middle class, they move. For example, the growing African-American population of Hamden and West Haven - they're all New Haven people. And they are middle-class people. They have two jobs - one works for Yale, one works for somebody else - they earn $70,000 between the two of them, they can afford another house - and they can't stand the [New Haven] school system. They cannot stay here; it would be like taking a gun to your kid's head. So they go to the suburbs as quickly as they can. And the more people who leave, the more we lose housing and tax base. So the first problem is to get the population to increase.
How do you do it?
First, we've got to fix the schools. People cannot afford these outrageous taxes and private schools. You and I know lots of people who, when their kids turn five, six, seven, move to Branford. They don't have a choice. They cannot afford $12,000 a year for Foote, or what have you. So, education is not a political issue, it's an economic-development issue.
What to do about? I'm going to go over and talk to the schoolteachers in a few weeks, and I know they are braced for an assault by me on them. But they're going to find that I'm not going to say that at all. I've been in business for 40 years, and you never blame the employees. It's never the employees' fault; it's always management's fault. Any administrator who blames the employees is, I think, sick. So you go after the administration. We need a new superintendent of schools. I like Reggie Mayo, but he needs to retire. We've got to totally decentralize the school system, get rid of all these bureaucrats who send down rules and regulations to bother the teachers.
It is plain to all that this school system is operated for the benefit of the people who work in it, not the students. But administrators, like teachers, are represented by powerful unions.
People can always be fired. Unions can make it difficult, but they cannot prohibit people from being fired or retrained or replaced. A dedicated management team will solve that problem.
Now, my last point: Every study done in ever school system in the United States has proven that new classrooms have no impact on the performance of the students. Studies prove that teacher salaries have no impact, More money for the schools has no impact. They've also proven that class size has no impact on [students]. There is one factor, though, that has been determined to impact student performance: school size. When you think about it, it's perfectly obvious. The maximum they suggest is 350 to 400. In larger schools, they don't know the kids, don't know their names. If you know that a kid's mother is an alcoholic, and he has no father and he's sleeping outside in the spring, do you discipline him and tell him he's suspended from school for two days for bad behavior? In a smaller school, you know all these things, you've dealt with these issues and you have a relationship with this kid. If a kid fails, it's the failure of the school - not of the kid. This school system says [its failure is] the fault of the neighborhoods, the parents, the kids - everyone but them. Good schools say, 'It's our failure.'
So the problem is that [Mayor] John DeStefano is closing down all the small schools and creating monster schools - 1,200 kids. It's a disaster. You cannot supervise 1,200 kids. The test scores? They're not that bad at some schools when you get down to the lower grades in smaller neighborhood schools. Then you put them in Troup [Middle School] and bang - there go the scores. So we have to go after the size of these schools. If I have to put a wall down the middle [of a larger school], I will. Now it's two schools.
What about New Haven's appointed school board?
This is the only appointed school board in the state. Therefore, the mayor is in charge of the schools. And the failure of the schools over the last seven years of his administration is his responsibility. But [an appointed school board] is a wonderful opportunity. You know about the efforts throughout the U.S. by mayors to take back the school boards, because they're just disasters - Chicago, New York. I want that responsibility. This mayor? He doesn't pay any attention, doesn't attend school board meetings.
But now he has a 'plan' for schools.
He's never come up with a comprehensive school agenda until last week. All of a sudden, after seven years, he comes up with a hodgepodge of information from a variety of right-wing think tanks. Where has he been for seven years? Seven years? That's probably 15,000 kids who have been destroyed as a result of that.
With a ten-to-one registration disadvantage, describe a scenario in which a Republican candidate could win the general election.
You're thinking in terms of national politics, which is focused on the right-wing agenda and the left-wing agenda. That's what the battle between Al Gore and George Bush was about, people seizing sides with these polar opposites. In reference to running a city, none of that stuff makes any difference. Running a city is about performance. There have been a number of successful Democratic [mayors] and a number of successful Republicans. It's not a monopoly of either party; it's a monopoly of people who know how to manage, know how to motivate, and care about the city.
What are some steps you would take to encourage businesses to locate here?
City Hall doesn't like the private sector. They don't know us; they don't trust us; they don't understand us. They read a financial statement or balance sheets; they can't evaluate basic performance. So first, we have to change the culture of City Hall, and welcome the private sector. This is a welfare, non-profit town - and they don't want to change that. There are an enormous number of jobs for people who voted Democratic in that welfare, non-profit state. We need more and more money from the state every year just to survive. We're on welfare. Can you name a single person who owns a large business that is located in New Haven and he lives in New Haven?
The mayor says, 'New Haven is booming - look at all the biotech and dot.com companies starting and locating here.'
Look at these corporations, and the number of employees they have. There's a list of about 100 corporations - 97 of which have two employees. Most of them are just ideas - which is great, as far as it goes. But DeStefano doesn't understand these businesses, have any idea what they do, and doesn't know how to keep them here in New Haven. When companies get to a certain size, they leave - because this is an inhospitable place for a corporation.
We need one-stop [business permitting and licensing] shopping at City Hall. We need to close down all these little investment funds; City Hall has to get out of the business of picking winners and losers. What I would do to attract businesses can be summed up in one word: service. The city is in the service business. More advanced cities see themselves [that way]. We'll change all that.
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