 |
| Mayor John DeStefano Jr. ’77 (CLAS), left, on the historic New Haven green in the heart of his city and Mayor Bill Finch ’79 (CANR) on Main Street in Bridgeport, near the People’s United Bank tower and the Barnum Museum. |
| Photos by Peter Morenus |
John DeStefano Jr. ’77 (CLAS), ’80 M.P.A. is in his seventh term as mayor of New Haven. Bill Finch ’79 (CANR) was elected last November as mayor of Bridgeport, after having served previously as a member of the City Council and as a state senator. UCONN Magazine brought the two mayors together for a discussion about the challenges they face leading two of Connecticut’s largest and most complex cities.
The Urban Caucus Group was established so you could have political leadership and city leadership trying to help each other. How did that come about and what are the shared issues as you see them?
FINCH: It was kind of a natural thing. We as mayors talk all the time. We’re in a state that is over reliant on property taxes, and both New Haven and Bridgeport have very small land masses.
There are some differences between New Haven and Bridgeport, but very few. Bridgeport may be a little bit more residential, New Haven may be a little bit more commercial, but all-in-all, we’re stuck in this bind of an over-dependent property tax system and not enough property tax revenues to maintain all the requirements of city government.
It’s just natural for us to all sit in the same room and try to work out some of our problems and present them in a more united front.
DeSTEFANO: There are five cities with populations over 100,000 in Connecticut (Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford, Waterbury and Stamford). The one thing we share, however, is we’re the centers of the economies of the regions in which we are.
We each employ tens of thousands of more people that don’t live in our communities. The businesses in the communities around us are dependent upon the core competencies and industries in the center of each of these cities, so there is a mutual interest about how we create not just healthy core communities, but healthy regions.
Each of these cities is the capital of its region, and for Connecticut’s economy to be strong our communities and regions need to do well. We come together out of that mutual self-interest.
What kind of leadership is required for cities in the 21st century?
DeSTEFANO: The fundamental challenge is maintaining social and economic mobility for families and for kids in our communities. Our communities have always been gateway communities.
That’s to say that people arriving in America or arriving in Connecticut tend to first come through the front doors of Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford, Waterbury and Stamford. A key role we’ve always played is seeing that people who are willing to work hard have a chance to do better.
What’s particularly disconcerting now is that in many of our communities you see a dramatic change in the character of work as we transition from a manufacturing economy to service economies.
Some of that manifests itself in our budget issues, but really the challenge is to create economically competitive environments for the people who live and work in our communities.
FINCH: We said this the other day when we testified before the legislative education committee in Hartford. When people are trying to either immigrate into this country or elevate themselves into the middle class, it all starts where housing is affordable.
The problem is that the future of our children is dependent on the wealth of their parents’ land. What we’ve got to do is come to grips with the over-arching question, which is, “Why do we leave the education of some of our most challenged students up to the poorest citizens in the poorest towns?”
It’s not logical. Right now, we are under-educating a significant percentage of Connecticut’s population, and not doing much to change that. We’re going to wake up one morning and see a lot of the opportunity to move into the middle class is gone.
China and India are growing rapidly in terms of their middle class, and we’re still educating people the way we did in the 1700s or 1800s.
To a large extent many mayors don’t have a lot of control over education because the boards of education operate the school systems in most communities. Is that part of the need for change?
DeSTEFANO: I appoint the school board in New Haven and I’m a member of the school board. Over the last 15 years, there’s been a fundamental change in our emphasis.
Eighty percent of our children entering Kindergarten have a pre-school experience. We place a strong emphasis on early reading — first, second and third grade. And at the same time, we’ve moved to decentralize our high schools. We have nine high schools.
They have strong focuses on different kinds of curricula. Lots of mayors — irrespective of how the school boards are appointed—are getting much more involved in what’s happening in public schools, see them as key to workforce development initiative.
For both Bridgeport and New Haven, something that’s happening that’s very important is the role of community colleges. Community colleges are, to my point of view, the fundamental vehicle for workforce development, for training and for people re-entering the workforce who have been out of the workforce for a period of time.
FINCH: Let me just say that John has done a better job reforming his school system than my predecessors have. We’ve definitely got to look at New Haven and Stamford to see what other school systems are doing to improve, because we’re behind. There’s no doubt about it.
Both cities have been undergoing transformations over the last 20 or 30 years in terms of where the economy is based, downtown revitalization and other areas. What are the major changes planned in the near future?
DeSTEFANO: The area that is most dramatic is how we’re going to make our cities the green places to live because we’re going to have to — we need transit-oriented development.
Our zoning board recently created zones around the harbor where you can go up 50 stories. Whether or not that will happen or not remains to be seen, but I think we’re going to go up quite a bit higher than we normally would have.
As the price of oil rises, there will be a greater need for centralization, for environmentally compatible development that requires less petrochemicals and less distance between people.
So, I think that both New Haven and Bridgeport—not only do we have deep water ports, but we’re in transportation intersections. Both of our cities have tremendous transportation resources.
FINCH: John, if I could add one other thing. I’m new to the whole business of being mayor, but the amazing thing about the U.S. Conference of Mayors — John’s been involved for many years — is that you have no clue what somebody’s party is.
Mayors are all in this at the same level. I get so frustrated sometimes that I can’t change a lot about Bridgeport, but then I think back at being a state senator. I can change the state of Connecticut a lot less than I can change Bridgeport.
Where is change coming from? It’s coming from mayors. What is the change that’s coming? It’s the new green revolution — the next great industrial revolution in the United States is going to be a green revolution.
It’s going to create millions of jobs and add billions of dollars to the U.S. gross national product. Green roof tops, solar energy, changing your vehicle fleet to hybrid, collecting rain water run-off, doing something about storm water run-off and making sure that we continue our investments in the Clean Water Fund, and changing building codes so that people can get quicker approval ratings, quicker approvals on top of the pile or density considerations or tax consideration.
We need to bring people closer to the urban core and develop the land much more intensely. This is not a new concept. The theory of concentric rings is something John and I both studied in our UConn classes.
DeSTEFANO: Our core responsibility is to make these places safe. I don’t think anyone is going to live in a place or locate a business to where they do not perceive it is safe. The second thing is to have public schools that work for people.
Our major investment when I took office was in our schools. We didn’t build a baseball stadium and a hockey arena. We’ve re-built or built 30 new schools, and we’ll have 42 done by 2014. We’re spending $1.5 billion dollars doing this.
I think that’s part of the reason why we’ve seen the school drop-out rate cut in half, why 80 percent of our kids go on to two- or four-year colleges.
Is there anything that UConn can do to help improve cities?
DeSTEFANO: Frankly, it’s more of what the state can be doing to help UConn to promote the economic well-being of the state, including our cities.
The state ought to properly fund the University so that they’re able to do what Yale is moving to do, which is to make a tuition-free environment and to provide greater access for kids coming out of our communities who may face barriers of tuition.
We’re not going to compete in Connecticut with the muscle in our arms. There will always be cheaper labor, but our competitive advantage is going to have the best-trained workforce and the best educated workforce.
And to the extent we make investments in things like infrastructure—the state university and community college system — those are investments that are going to pay dividends for years.
Every taxpayer in Connecticut contributed to Bill’s education and to my education. I like to think we add value back to the communities in which we’re respectively a part of. It seems to me, that’s about the smartest investment that the State of Connecticut and all of us as residents can make.
FINCH: If I really dream about what I’d like to see for my city, I would love to have a branch of UConn in Bridgeport. People wanted to put a casino in Bridgeport, but I want to look for an economic engine that would give us the credibility, the respect and the economic driver. I’d want to have UConn here.
Mayor DeStefano, is there any advice that you would give Mayor Finch in his early days in office right now?
DeSTEFANO: Bill’s been around for a while and he has the benefit of having stood in other places that will help him, help me and help our colleagues become better mayors.
The large issue here is we go through life looking at a zero sum game, which means to say that in order for me to put bread on my table, I’ve got to take it off yours. When you’re a mayor, you learn pretty quickly the distinctions of class and race and political party are really meaningless. What’s important are the values we share as residents of our community and of the state, and to act on those values in service to one another and become a whole that’s more than sum of the part.
FINCH: I had a phenomenal experience being a member of the state Senate. It’s certainly one of the most enjoyable political experiences you could ever have.
But there’s a disconnect between the levels of government. It shouldn’t be the state blaming the localities and the localities blaming the state. We’ve got to make government more seamless.
I think one of the things that I have to try to do is to continue to work with the General Assembly to get them to understand how difficult it is being a First Selectman or a mayor in Connecticut.
The buck always stops at the local government level. They didn’t call me when there was a fire when I was a state senator. Now they call me. They want action. They want something fixed.
It’s a great feeling, but it’s also one that I think other levels of government need to be reminded of and, like John said, not look at it as a zero sum game.
Discussion moderated by Kenneth Best. Special thanks to the UConn Oral History Program for transcription services.