Mayor Justin Elicker: Lessons from New Haven, CT

“It’s clear that so many cities are going through a lot of the same challenges that New Haven is facing right now.”

On December 4th, Asher Ellis was joined by Mayor Justin Elicker of New Haven, Connecticut for a conversation about the Mayor’s priorities for the city, as well as how he sees these issues in the context of ongoing national conversations. Mayor Elicker took office in January of this year, after having served for four years on the New Haven Board of Alders, New Haven’s city council. A former school teacher, Mayor Elicker has sought to make education one of his priorities since taking office. In this discussion, Mayor Elicker shares with Mr. Ellis how New Haven has been responding to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, his thoughts on education and preparing young people for the workforce, and how issues facing New Haven overlap with those facing other cities across the United States.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for speaking with me today.

Thanks for speaking with me.

You have been in office for almost a year now. What accomplishments are you most proud of?

I don’t look at things as what I’m most proud of me doing, but what I’m most proud of as far as our team’s accomplishments and the things that we’ve accomplished as a city. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been so many inspiring examples of people stepping up under intense and incredible pressure to help out their community to assist each other. And there’s been examples of that in very big ways. [I’m] thinking about our firefighters, or our director of the health department, or our school nurses and the way that they have worked non-stop, particularly at the beginning of the pandemic. [They worked] over the weekends, every day very long hours to make sure that we could implement policies, stand up testing sites and facilities to allow individuals experiencing homelessness that were COVID-positive to have the kind of medical support they needed. Those types of examples. And there’s also the little things that make a big difference, like people volunteering at a food drive to ensure that people in the community can get food, or helping their neighbor by going to pick up food at the store because their neighbor may be high risk. Those are the things that make me most proud to be Mayor of New Haven.