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Laying Down the Law
Last month attorney Carl Amento upset Republican incumbent Barbara DeNicola in the Hamden mayoral race. He discusses his plans with BNH.
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Business New Haven
12/13/1999
By: Michele Beck
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What made you decide to run for mayor?
I've been involved in community service in Hamden for the last few decades. A couple of years ago I thought I would get more involved and make more of a difference by being on the [town] legislative council. From there, I just saw a lot of problems and a lot of issues that I thought and I hoped I could address. Particularly, there seemed to be a lot of problems with the way the departments of government cooperated, especially the council and the mayor's office. I thought I could bring a more cooperative attitude to that office.
What sort of problems did you see, specifically, that needed to be addressed?
We've had about two years of constant battles. We have a two-branch system of government, with the mayor and council system. The mayor and the council have been sort of bickering for most of the two years of the [DeNicola] administration. I just felt I could bring a more cooperative spirit to that.
What's going to happen to your law firm once you take office?
Well, I have been in the process of just referring out files. I was expecting that to happen. There is a possibility that one firm might take it over. That might give me the availability of at least keeping my name on a door some place so that I can
refer clients, as mayor. My existing clients wouldn't present conflict. They're mostly family kind of work - wills, probate, real estate closings, and some small
businesses. Whatever happens in the future, at least I'll have some remnant of a law practice left.
What's the first issue that you will tackle once you take office?
We're organizing a transition team now. We're forming little study groups in six areas of government. We want to use volunteers that have a particular expertise in those areas and have them report to me over the next couple weeks as they review the status of operations in the town government now and as they look to some of the initiatives that I had proposed during the campaign. It's a pretty ambitious set of programs that we set forth. One whole portion of the campaign
had to do with opening up the decision-making process - basically running a more open government. That was a problem in the past administration. There was one particularly egregious example with the [Police] Chief [John] Ambrogio pension. A retirement package was put together for him and paid with taxpayers' money, but the administration refused to divulge the details of
it until forced to do so two months later by the Freedom of Information [FOI] Commission. It just showed either an unwillingness or a lack of understanding that when you're dealing with taxpayers' money, you have to do it all in the open. You have to explain to taxpayers what has happened to their money. So now, we're looking into opening up the decision-making process so that people
can have meaningful input at an earlier point - broadcasting our town meetings on local citizens television instead of asking people to come to town
hall for special meetings.
How will you approach relations with the legislative council?
As far as the council and the mayor having an adversarial relationship, I'm off the council now. That's where I've been. I will meet with them regularly and I plan to address them at their first meeting and set a tone of cooperation. I intend to regularly attend meetings of the council, which no mayor has done before. I also want to encourage the print media to put agendas of meetings in the paper and to cover things that are happening. I want to encourage public debate and
public input. I know that we intend to get the Web site up and running pretty soon so that people can e-mail comments as well as call or send letters. Also
on the Web site I want to post all the important documents - like the charter and agendas - so that people know what's going on.
What about other sources of friction?
The town side and the board of education have some friction as they fight over scarce dollars. We want to encourage more joint meetings between the council and the board of education to allow them to understand the problems that both sides are having. They can come up with joint strategies that will help out both sides of government. We have a growing enrollment in Hamden schools. What we would like to do is fix up and renovate the existing middle school and also look into the feasibility of a second middle school. It's a real bottleneck, because there are 1,000 kids in a school that's only supposed to hold 800. My proposal is to make both middle school grades six, seven and eight.
When do you think you would begin that project?
The project would take about three years. People want us to look into it. Of course the economics of it are going to be difficult, but it's the kind of thing that if people want it, we'll figure out a way to save for it - belt tightening in other areas to make it happen. It's very important that we have the proper space for our kids. We have to get ahead of the enrollment curve instead of constantly chasing it. One of the other major initiatives we've gotten into is an anti-litter beautification effort.
A lot of the town's tax based comes from small businesses along Dixwell and Whitney avenues. What can they expect from your administration?
What we have to do is not only attract new businesses, but retain and grow the existing businesses. First, I think we need to stabilize the finances of this town. It's been against the trend that we've had a growing [state and national] economy and Hamden has been doing terribly the last couple of years. Our fund
balance has been eroding and we've been having budgets that run in deficit for several years now. We need to get control of our finances. We need to bring in
top-notch people. We need people who can get a handle on things because we have a very high tax rate, which is a discouragement to a lot of these small businesses. The attractiveness of the town is important. The stability of the government is important. Those qualities will make a business climate that is more conducive to people wanting to stay here and grow here. We have to target a lot of retail areas where there are a lot of vacancies and try to get a handle on what's going on - whether it's infrastructure improvements the town can do, or just see what's causing the areas to not be competitive with other areas. I suspect it's the taxes; I suspect it's the general appearance of the town; and I suspect
it's the instability of the finances of the government.
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