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Man for All Seasons
CITIZEN OF THE YEAR
Want to get something done in greater New Haven? Then Roger Joyce is your guy
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Business New Haven
1/24/2000
By: Fiona Phelan
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Roger Joyce recently had to sit down and chart out his current commitments. Was there space in his Day-timer to dedicate to yet one more committee? If he agreed to serve, would another of his obligations be short-changed? How would it affect his paid work, and how would it alter his family life?
After determining that his personal, professional and community activities would not be adversely affected by one more undertaking, Joyce happily agreed to serve on another board.
That makes five.
It is Joyce's leadership role with various community organizations over the past few years that have earned him recognition in the greater New Haven area as someone worthy of the title “Citizen of the Year.”
Joyce just completed a two-year stint as chairman of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce. He was recently appointed a director of the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA). In the meantime, he continues his role as chairman of the Tweed-New Haven Airport Authority; co-chair of the Empowerment Zone Application Committee; and chairman of Empower New Haven Inc. He also serves on the Advisory Board for the School of Business at the University of New Haven.
A lifelong Guilford resident, the 49-year-old vice president of engineering at the Bilco Co. in West Haven says he was surprised by the “Citizen of the Year” honor and thought perhaps there was someone more deserving.
“Awards and recognition are not what I'm looking for,” Joyce said recently during an interview squeezed between two other meetings. “What draws me into community involvement are the opportunities that exist in this community. The airport and the Empowerment Zone are two major challenges that offer enormous opportunity to greater New Haven.
“These initiatives are demanding at the beginning,” he says of the boards and committees that he represents. “Once they are established, the demand on my personal time becomes less and less.”
Joyce notes that there are lots of connections and ample “synergy” between and among the various boards he serves. Because the issues he works with affect more than one constituency, he often finds the same faces at a variety of meetings. This can lead to certain efficiencies, he notes. While at one meeting to discuss one issue, members might also take advantage of the time together to work on a separate issue that they are involved with. Often, Joyce adds, the solution for one challenge might also provide useful lessons for another.
It is due in no small measure to Joyce's effectiveness on committees important to the future of greater New Haven that change is finally coming. His perseverance and ability to work with a broad cross-section of grass roots and business groups has helped to bring the Elm City much-needed government and private funding for projects that stand to have a positive economic impact on the New Haven area.
For instance, in 1997 Joyce was appointed to serve as chairman of the Tweed-New Haven Airport Authority. Among the group's first recommendations, according to Joyce, was for the city of New Haven to relinquish control of the airport and turn over operations to a regional airport authority.
Since taking over operations at the airport, the authority has begun work on updating the airport's master plan, which will map out the airport's future, including whether expansion will occur and what shape it might take. This is being undertaken with the aid of a $390,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grant.
The airport authority recently announced $3.15 million in construction projects at the airport over the next year, some of which will be funded by the federal government, some by the state and some by the authority itself, although the majority are privately-funded projects. These improvements will bring new hangars and offices, an improved entrance and landscaping, additional ramp, maintenance and taxiway space, new garages for private planes, and a $1.1 million air rescue and firefighting facility. All will mean additional property taxes to the city of East Haven.
“Tweed-New Haven airport is a crucial piece of the transportation picture for the greater New Haven area,” says Joyce. “Without improvements and changes we will not see the job development or economic development that New Haven needs and wants to see.
“There is a strong interest from the towns surrounding New Haven to work together,” he adds. “They've come to recognize that what happens in New Haven affects what happens in the rest of the towns.”
Despite some neighborhood opposition in East Haven and New Haven, the towns have rallied to the airport's cause, says Joyce. Over the next five years the surrounding towns have pledged financial support for the airport. The town of Bethany, for example, was among the first to pledge support, he notes
According to a 1999 University of Connecticut study, Tweed-New Haven
Airport provides a total economic benefit of $19.4 million a year. However, if airport improvements were made, that economic impact could increase to as much as $302.1 million annually by 2019. The study also indicated that the airport is vastly underused by the area's population but could see an increase in the number of passengers and airlines using the airport if certain improvements are undertaken.
“I believe that the current administration's vision for the city is achievable over the next five years,” says Joyce. “There are going to be dramatic changes in the city of New Haven, coupled with job creation and the ensuing impact that will have on the city's neighborhoods it can only get better.”
Helping even more to make things better is the designation of certain neighborhoods in New Haven and West Haven as a federal Empowerment Zone. The designation comes following close work between city and area congressional representatives to secure federal aid to bring jobs, training, transportation, child care and a host of other initiatives to beleaguered neighborhoods. The zone includes Dixwell, Dwight, Fair Haven, Hill, Newhallville and the West Rock neighborhoods in New Haven, and a portion of West Haven.
The EZ designation was originally designed to bring $1.7 billion in aid over the next ten years to New Haven and 19 other cities nationwide. Of that money, New Haven was to receive $100 million, or $10 million per year. So far, because the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 included tax incentives but not economic development grants as originally proposed, the New Haven EZ has received approximately $6 million.
However, according to Joyce, that funding is being put to good use. Under the direction of Empower New Haven Inc. (which Joyce chairs), proposals are being submitted by neighborhoods for ways to use the money. Proposals include job-training centers, including a retail training center to put qualified applicants in jobs at the proposed Long Wharf shopping mall.
A portion of the original $3 million ($525,000) has been allocated to pay for staff at Empower New Haven, Inc. for ten months. This group will assist each neighborhood in developing plans to help that segment of the community. The only dark cloud in the future is whether Congress will continue to allocate funding each year as originally planned.
“There are people in New Haven who want to work but can't get to the jobs that are available, or they don't have child care, or the right qualifications,” notes Joyce. “The Empowerment Zone funding will allow the city's neighborhoods help themselves by setting up training, day care, transportation - whatever is needed to get people to work.
“Once people have incomes, they can put that money back in to their neighborhoods and I think we'll start to see a positive change.”
Notwithstanding his professional and community commitments, one area that has not changed for Joyce is his home life. He still takes time to travel with his wife Connie and their three grown children. Most weekend mornings Joyce can be found hiking the trails at Westwoods trails in Guilford - an area he fondly recalls helping to create as an Eagle Scout.
And at work he is continuing a tradition of working at the family-operated Bilco Co. The business was founded by Joyce's grandfather in 1934 and is still family-owned and managed (his cousin Bob Lyons Jr. is president).
Joyce is also continuing a family and business custom of helping the community where you work. “I have learned from previous generations of family that what you do for your community helps your employees,” says Joyce. “Community has always been important to the Bilco Company, whether it's our employees' outstanding giving to United Way, or giving time to local issues - these things, in the end, help the Bilco Company.”
For its part, Bilco can stand proud that one of its own is making a difference and meeting the challenges of its environment head on.
“My philosophy is not to dwell on the challenges or the roadblocks of a particular issue,” says Joyce. “I look instead at what we are trying to accomplish and how can we attain that goal.” BNH
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