Author Archives: Alyssa Rosenberg

Last week brought the welcome news that Yale University has started negotiations with Mayor John DeStefano Jr. to increase the payments it makes to New Haven to compensate for the tax revenue the city loses because of Yale’s nonprofit status. After a year in which New Haven ran a $3 million budget deficit, the University’s »

Now that you, the class of 2008 have arrived, unpacked your bags and boxes, transformed your Blue Book selections into classes and large piles of books, and been welcomed by President Levin and Dean Salovey, there’s only part of your orientation left. It does not appear on any schedule, and in fact, is entirely voluntary. »

Tax Day in New Haven has come and gone again this year, as it always does, mostly without comment. Returns have been filed, post offices across the United States have served up late-night donuts and coffee, and tax firms can look forward to a year off before the rush begins again. And all across America, »

When Locals 34 and 35 signed new contracts with Yale in the fall, it might have seemed like the major complicating factor in the relationship between Yale and New Haven had been resolved. In recent months, though, discussions about Yale’s Homebuyer Program and tax contribution to New Haven have all revealed that the relationship between »

It is infuriating to pick up a copy of the New Haven Register to read that Ben Hunter, an associate principal at Hillhouse High School may have stolen more than $5,000 from a city-run youth basketball league last summer. There are so many reasons that this story is maddening: the defendant earns $92,477 annually already, »

She immigrated to the United States the day after her 21st birthday, and she voted in every election, she told me, until she lost her house. When she was evicted, she went looking for the people she had voted for — her alderwoman and then-Mayor John Daniels — and found that her vote didn’t count »

I didn’t realize until the end of the hour that the four boys sitting across the table from me were all juvenile offenders who had been given the afternoon off to attend a small anti-violence community meeting at the Stetson Branch Library on Dixwell Avenue. None of them could have been older than 13; all »

It had stopped snowing in Dixwell by 5 p.m., but according to the man digging out his car out on Admiral St., the plows wouldn’t get there until 2 in the morning. The delay wasn’t caused by snow so deep that it would take nine hours to clear streets in other parts of the city, »

If “The Twelve Days of Christmas” told the story of the last year in New Haven, the final chorus might sound something like this: two strikes by locals 34 and 35, one savings bank robbery, 13 new Aldermen, a sixth term for Mayor John DeStefano, two neighborhoods now covered under Yale’s Homebuyer Program, thousands of »

Whether Elm City Congregations Organized intended it or not, the choice of Reverend Kathleen McTigue from the Unitarian Society of New Haven to lead the congregation in an opening prayer at ECCO’s 10th anniversary last Sunday raises an interesting question for the city’s largest faith-based community organization: what is ECCO’s position on equal rights for »

Anyone who was harboring misguided doubts about the health and vitality of New Haven’s Democratic Party can probably relax after the Nov. 4 elections. Much attention has been lavished on the further consolidation of Democratic power in town; 28 of the Board of Aldermen’s 30 seats are now held by Democrats, many of who were »

When Ward 1 voters head to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 4, to choose between the two candidates for the Board of Aldermen, we will be voting on a question that has implications far beyond the two-year term that the winner of the election will earn. Almost every conceivable organization and public figure in New »