Borer jump-starts defunct Fair Rent Commission

WEST HAVEN, July 11, 2024 — West Haven was ahead of its time in the early 1970s when it was one of the state’s first municipalities to establish a fair rent commission. After two decades of service, however, the commission became defunct in the early 1990s.

In 2022, the General Assembly passed legislation requiring each municipality with a population of at least 25,000 to enact an ordinance creating a fair rent commission.

According to the Fair Rent Commission Act, the commission “shall make studies and investigations, conduct hearings and receive complaints relative to rental charges on housing accommodations.”

Rental units include apartments, mobile homes and houses. They do not include accommodations rented on a seasonal basis, such as through the vacation rental website Airbnb.

Upon taking office in December 2023, Mayor Dorinda Borer breathed new life into the city’s Fair Rent Commission, appointing individuals with a wide range of backgrounds, including property management, business and civil service, to the refreshed panel.

“COVID-19 exacerbated the challenges regarding the rental process, and this resets the process to allow for a fair approach,” Borer said. “This commission is not a nice-to-have. It is law, and we needed a well-rounded commission in place to ensure the city is abiding by the rules and regulations set forth. This new group is both professional, dedicated and hardworking.”

“The Fair Rent Commission will be receiving complaints from tenants regarding what they believe to be unfair or unreasonable rent increases or unacceptable accommodations,” said Chairman Steven R. Mullins after an organizational meeting of the commission in the Harriet C. North Community Room at City Hall.

“At our last meeting, the commission adopted bylaws and procedures and created an application questionnaire that will be used to file a claim,” Mullins said. “These forms are available in Mayor Borer’s office and on the city website. An application in Spanish will be available in due course.”

Mullins, a former chairman of the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission, worked in residential property management for more than 20 years.

He is joined on the commission by Vice Chairman Cristian Sanchez, a paralegal; Secretary Jaime Connellan, a property manager; Colleen O’Connor, a former Republican councilwoman at large; Killian Gruber, a former executive administrative assistant to former Mayor Nancy R. Rossi; and Effie Prokopis, a businesswoman. Rich Deso, West Haven’s municipal veterans representative, is an alternate.

Connecticut General Statutes require that in addition to Democrats and Republicans, the commission is composed of homeowners, landlords and tenants.

“This is to ensure fair hearing procedures,” Mullins said.

Mullins, Sanchez and the city’s legal team have met with city building, health and fire officials to inform them of their potential roles in the commission’s work. The departments will make proper inspections of rental dwellings, depending on the nature of complaints reported.

The Fair Rent Commission meets the first Tuesday of each month at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 355 Main St. Meetings are open to the public. Only called witnesses of the complainant or landlord are allowed to testify during proceedings.

Social workers, guidance counselors from Bailey and Carrigan schools receive ‘Way to Go!’ award

WEST HAVEN, July 11, 2024 — (Pictured): Social workers and guidance counselors from Bailey Middle and Carrigan Intermediate schools receive West Haven Youth and Family Services’ “Way to Go!” award from Director Diane Dietman, center, on Monday.

From left, Kara Kaczynski, Maura Izzo, Alexis Stewart and Kate Scalesse.

Dietman presented the award certificates “in recognition and appreciation for your ongoing commitment and dedicated service to Bailey and Carrigan students by collaborating with Youth and Family Services in offering an after-school social-emotional team building group in the 2023-24 school year.”

The program reached 76 students collectively, Dietman said.

(City Photo/Alyssa Maddern)

American Honey playing country, rock hits on July 19

WEST HAVEN, July 11, 2024 — The city's Summer Concert Series will continue at 7 p.m. July 19 in Old Grove Park, 1 Palace St., with a mix of modern country hits and ’90s pop rock favorites performed by American Honey.

The two-hour concert is free and presented by the Department of Parks and Recreation. The rain date is July 22.

To check if a concert has been rescheduled because of rain, go to Park-Rec’s website at https://westhavenct.myrec.com/info/default.aspx.

Join us July 19!

July 3 fireworks light up West Haven shoreline

WEST HAVEN, July 5, 2024 — Longtime Westie Lois Doerr and her 8-year-old helper, Logan McCauley, flipped a light switch to launch the Savin Rock Fireworks Spectacular on Wednesday.

The moment Doerr and McCauley flipped the switch, fireworks blasted off Bradley Point and exploded over Long Island Sound, dazzling thousands of patriotic revelers, many wearing red, white and blue, along West Haven’s 3 miles of public beaches with a display of brilliant lighting and booming sound effects.

The 20-minute pyrotechnic show, presented by the Savin Rock Fireworks Committee, was held on July 3 for the first time since 2019. Last year’s display was postponed from July 3 to July 5 because of thunderstorms.

Doerr, 90, a West Haven Historical Society board member and an ardent fireworks supporter, and McCauley were joined onstage in front of the city’s prominent Savin Rock landmark by Mayor Dorinda Borer and radio personality Brian Smith, the master of ceremonies.

Doerr recently won the committee’s “Light Up the Night” raffle fundraiser to flip the switch to set off the fireworks, billed as “They Will Be Heard on the 3rd.”

Before turning it over to Smith, Doerr and McCauley, Borer welcomed the Savin Rock crowd and thanked the city’s Public Works, Police and Fire departments, as well as fireworks committee members, including co-Chairwomen Sandy McCauley and Marianne Drapeau, for helping to organize the large-scale event.

Smith then led the crowd in a spirited countdown before Doerr and Logan McCauley, who is Sandy McCauley’s grandson, flipped the switch and triggered an assortment of rockets that flew and burst over Bradley Point in a shower of colored sparks.

Before the fireworks went off with a bang, families and friends danced to party rock hits performed by Absofunkinlutely on the Savin Rock stage.

As the music played, seven food and dessert trucks dished up eats and sweets on Captain Thomas Boulevard, near Dyke Street, and Ocean Avenue, near Dawson Avenue.

Police closed Captain Thomas Boulevard and Ocean Avenue, from Kelsey Avenue to South Street, for several hours to give the festivities a block party vibe.

The fireworks show is the city’s largest one-day event, attracting tens of thousands of residents and visitors to the West Haven shoreline each year.

See the photo gallery at 2024 Savin Rock Fireworks Spectacular.

City hopes to detect remains of British war ‘hero’

WEST HAVEN, July 3, 2024 — A state-contracted archaeologist and his two-person team used a ground-penetrating radar on July 2 to determine if the centuries-old remains of British Adjutant William Campbell are buried in a hollow on “Monument Path” near Wade Street in the city’s Allingtown neighborhood.

David E. Leslie, the principal of TerraSearch Geophysical LLC of Berlin, used the radar, which resembles a baby stroller, to scan the wooded path for Campbell’s remains.

Geophysical specialist Fiona Jones and summer intern Ayden Child took turns pushing the GPR back and forth and collecting data as Mayor Dorinda Borer and West Haven Historical Society President Susan Walker gazed intently at the team’s painstaking survey of the grounds.

Borer and Walker were joined by retired city Human Resources Commissioner Beth A. Sabo and author Peter J. Malia, a native of West Haven and an authority on the community’s history.

Nearly 245 years to the day, Campbell, a Scotsman serving in the British army, died hours after saving the Rev. Noah Williston of West Haven’s First Congregational Church from certain death at the hands of British soldiers and Hessian Jager mercenaries during the British invasion of Colonial New Haven.

On the sultry morning of July 5, 1779, the British army invaded New Haven Harbor in an amphibious assault from a fleet of 48 ships, with 1,500 troops coming ashore at West Haven’s “Old Field” under Maj. Gen. George Garth and 1,100 troops landing in East Haven under Maj. Gen. William Tryon.

The survey work is being funded by a $5,000 nonmatching grant from the State Historic Preservation Office, said Sabo, now a volunteer in the mayor’s office who is coordinating the effort for the city.

The high-tech GPR technology helps archeologists uncover buried artifacts without breaking through soil, said Leslie, who has a doctorate in anthropology and is a research scientist at the University of Connecticut Department of Anthropology.

Leslie said preliminary results from his team’s three-day radar and metal detection scans are forthcoming.

“Anything that’s found would be huge,” Sabo said.

If Campbell’s remains are detected, Borer said she’ll commission an archeological dig, most likely conducted by experts from Southern Connecticut State University.

The sliver of property is owned by the Historical Society and is maintained by the University of New Haven, which skirts the burial site.

On June 8, 2023, Campbell descendants George F. Campbell, then 70, and his daughter, Miriam Campbell, then 17, of the Pollokshields suburb of Glasgow, Scotland, paid their respects at the final resting place of their revered fifth- and sixth-generation grandfather at the summit of Monument Path, just off the north side of Route 1 and up the hill from the hollow.

According to a mayoral proclamation presented to the Campbells in June 2023: “William Campbell is one of the first true ‘American’ heroes and is revered by West Haven. To this day, the adjutant is the only known enemy combatant recognized by the very American town he invaded with both a monument and principal avenue named in his honor. Campbell Avenue runs through the heart of our community and has been a vital commercial and transportation artery since it was christened by townspeople in 1874.”

As Leslie’s team scanned for any anomalies in the ground, including human remains, Malia talked about the invasion and some of the actions that occurred on that fateful day.

“We’re not only known as a city of rich history but as a city of rich historians who have the knowledge to share the story of West Haven with future generations,” Borer said.

Hours after sparing Williston’s life, Campbell was shot in the chest atop Milford Hill in present-day Allingtown on his way to New Haven by a local farmer turned defender, according to Malia.

According to oral traditional, Campbell’s body was wrapped in a blanket, placed on a sheep rack, and transported to a hastily dug grave on the north side of the Post Road in a hollow by the edge of the woods. An adjacent strip of land was donated by resident John Prudden.

In October 1831, a small stone bearing the inscription “Campbell, 1779” was erected by resident John Warner Barber to mark the adjutant’s approximate gravesite, but it was destroyed by vandals on Oct. 22, 1872.

The stone was followed by the existing memorial to Campbell, a gray granite monument that was erected by the New Haven Colony Historical Society on July 4, 1891.

The memorial is surrounded by a black wrought-iron fence and is adorned with a wreath and a Union Jack, the national flag of the United Kingdom. The path is bordered by a stone wall.