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The Worst Was Yet To Come
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Business New Haven
8/10/98
By: BNH
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Just when we thought - or, perhaps, hoped - that the worst of the New Haven City Hall scandals had been aired, along comes a new low.
Actually, it's even lower than low.
On July 30, the New Haven Register reported that politically connected New Haven developer Wendell Harp had been paid $191,624 to keep five Dixwell Avenue apartments available to shelter the homeless over two years.
That works out to $1,596.87 per month, per apartment, for the Harp-owned units at 187 Dixwell Avenue.
Considering that half that sum can fetch a very nice apartment elsewhere, thank you very much, in the rent-depressed Elm City, Harp's apartments must be very luxurious indeed. Nevertheless, during 1996-97, only four people took advantage of the Harp units, and for four months all five were completely empty. During the first six months of the 1997-98 fiscal year, all five units were empty each month save December.
Until a review of the city's shelter system was launched in the wake of Register queries about Harp's shelter contracts, Mayor John DeStefano Jr. said he “assumed” - assumed! - the apartments were being used as intended.
But after the embarrassing truth came to light, it was announced that a city official had recommended altering the contract to pay for just one of the Dixwell units.
Harp, husband of State Sen. Toni Harp, who is often cited as a potential mayoral rival to DeStefano, didn't see it quite that way. Indeed, he had applied to the city to double to ten the number of units for which the city scandalously overpaid him - at precisely double the rent.
Pondering this, we frankly found ourselves at a loss to identify a comparable example of utter venality and cynicism in the conduct of New Haven civic affairs. Large sums of taxpayer dollars, set aside as a last-resort safety net for society's most pitiful, defenseless members, used not at all for that purpose but to line the pockets of a wealthy political crony.
Have you no shame? we wanted to ask.
Then came the kicker.
On August 5, the Register followed up the story with a report that more than $90,000 in current and back taxes were owed by Harp on his luxurious Dixwell digs (we haven't seen them, but for $1,600 a month, they must be very nice indeed). In fact, Harp has failed to pay or underpaid taxes on 187 Dixwell every year since 1992.
Now the city says Harp is on a $1,000-a-month payment plan for the taxes, but he's behind on that, too, according to the daily.
Which leads to the inescapable conclusion that either: 1) Harp has no shame, and the city's monitoring mechanisms are completely ineffectual; or 2) the fix was in.
For now, each reader will have to decide for himself.
At the very least, the city ought to terminate all contracts with Harp immediately, and pursue enforcement of tax-delinquency measures against him to the fullest extent allowed by law.
In a city desperate for economic development, the business community must demand good government from its public servants.
What we are seeing in the case of the city's cozy dealings with Wendell Harp is just the opposite.
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