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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - December 23, 2025 - December 30, 2025

Vigil Honors Immigrants “Kidnapped” By ICE

by Laura Glesby

The New Haven independent

Standing in a circle of 100 people outside the Church Street federal courthouse, 4-year-old Joshua and 6-year-old Patricio used their red whistles to let out two sharp blasts — demonstrating a signal to let others know if immigration agents are nearby.

Then, the two boys showed the crowd what to do if immigration agents are actively arresting someone, using the whistle to make a long, loud, continuous sound.

The whistles were an effort to resist the very agency that had separated Patricio and Joshua from their mother, Gladys Tentes-Pitiur, for over four months this year.

The children stood with their mother, from time to time taking her hand, at a vigil held a block and a half away from the very spot where federal immigration agents had seized Tentes-Pitiur in July.

After obtaining asylum status in an increasingly rare outcome, Tentes-Pitiur was able to return to New Haven and reunite with her children in late November.

The three of them now sleep in a nearby church, according to Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA) organizer John Lugo, who helped her fight to get home and is now working to find her housing.

The family of three joined about 100 others outside the U.S. District courthouse at 141 Church St. to honor all those detained and deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The vigil was organized by an interfaith group of clergy and advocates as well as by ULA, Connecticut Students for a Dream, and New Haven Immigrants Coalition.

A press release sent out in advance of Thursday’s gathering described the vigil as local clergy and immigrants rights leaders standing in solidarity to “honor the kidnapped and deported.”

“In these dark times, we gather to name and honor the people who have been kidnapped by ICE and torn from their families,” Connecticut Students for a Dream Executive Director Tabitha Sookdeo is quoted as saying in that press release.

“These are our members and their loved ones. By coming together in candlelight, we are saying clearly that our communities will not accept a system that thrives on fear and family separation.”

Shortly after sunset, across the street from the multicolor glow of the Christmas tree on the Green, each attendee received a candle. A flame spread from candle to candle as attendees lent their flames to light their neighbors’ wicks. Soon, everyone held a piece of a collective fire.

The moment was symbolic of a mentality of abundance, noted Rabbi Daniel Schaefer from Congregation Mishkan Israel. “The beauty of lights is that my ability to light your candle doesn’t diminish my light… There is enough for all of us.”

Schaefer connected the vigil and its meaning to the story of Chanukah, in which ancient Israelites fought the persecution of an “evil tyrant” and sustained themselves through light that at first appeared to be to scarce to last.

Schaefer wasn’t the only spiritual leader on Thursday to find sacred parallels between immigrants in ICE detention and a variety of holy religious figures.

Imam Omer Bajwa invoked the story of Yusuf in the Qu’ran, a man who was imprisoned even when his captors “knew he was good.”

“Even when he was alone, Joseph never accepted his powerlessness,” said Bajwa.

Like Yusuf’s captors, he said, “ICE may claim custody over these bodies, but they do not gain guardianship” over the people themselves.

Bajwa then quoted another teaching connected to the spiritual power of those in

Rev. Brundige: “No human being is illegal.”

Pastor Josh Williams of Elm City Vineyard offered a prayer for God to “be a presence for those aching for people they lost or almost lost or maybe they fear they will lose.”

ICE custody: “Beware the prayer of the oppressed, for there is no distance between it and God.” And Rev. Ally Brundige observed that “Jesus and his holy family had to flee the policing agents of Herod.”

Meanwhile, speakers highlighted a few specific actions for interested attendees to take in support of local immigrant advocacy efforts.

Brundige called on the vigil’s attendees to advocate for Gov. Ned Lamont to issue an executive order that would try to restrict the president’s use of Connecticut’s National Guard without the state’s consent.

Pastor Jack Perkins Davidson of Spring Glen Church called on attendees to boycott Avelo, an airline operating locally out of Tweed New Haven Airport that has contracted with the Trump Administration to conduct deportation flights.

Lugo invited the crowd to a fundraiser for Tentes-Pitiur’s family this Saturday starting at 6 p.m. to help them gather enough funds for rent and a security deposit now that Tentes-Pitiur has come home.

And the organizers handed out red whistles to use upon witnessing ICE presence, a tactic that has taken hold in cities like Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis, and New York.

Together, the candle holders sang “This Little Light of Mine,” “Oyé, Mi Gente,” “When The Spirit Says,” and more. They held two separate moments of silence. For a few minutes, the only audible sounds in that corner of Downtown were the soft roar of city buses and the occasional crunch of a child’s foot in the snow.

During the silence, Tentes-Pitiur closed her eyes and whispered what seemed to be a prayer. Beside her, the two boys lifted their candles with gusto.

Soon,

Just Kidding: Schools Will Be Closed On Jan. 2, After All

by Maya McFadden

The New Haven independent

The Board of Education voted Friday to close New Haven public schools on Friday, Jan. 2 — after hearing from the state that the city was the only district in Connecticut scheduled to come back from winter recess for a one-day school week.

The school board voted 6-0 to amend the district’s calendar that previously would have had students and staff return to school on Friday, Jan. 2 after being out from Wednesday, Dec. 24 through Thursday, Jan. 1.

New Haven’s Board of Education took that vote during a special meeting held via Zoom.

New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) Supt. Madeline Negrón recommended the calendar change at Friday’s meeting. She cited concerns about attendance as well as feedback from the state.

“Through our engagement with the State Board of Education, we learned that we

Supt. Negrón (right), with Mayor Elicker on Thursday: “Through our engagement with the State Board of Education, we learned that we were the only school district planning to be open on Jan. 2.”

Credit: Thomas Breen file photo

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were the only school district planning to be open on Jan. 2,” Negrón told board members.

The district will maintain its previously planned closure for Tuesday, Jan. 6, to mark Three Kings Day. That means students will be out of school from Wednesday, Dec. 24 through Friday, Jan. 2.

They’ll come back to class on Monday, Jan. 5; have Tuesday, Jan. 6 off; and then return again on Wednesday, Jan. 7.

Negrón explained that the district initially built its calendar with 182 instructional days for students, exceeding the state-mandated minimum of 180 days.

The extra days were intended to account for two potential snow days. With the board’s vote to close on Jan. 2, the district will now factor in only one snow day — bringing the total number of scheduled instructional days to 181.

“We do have to ensure that by the end of the year, we have a total of 180 days for

students,” Negrón said, noting that the calendar still meets state requirements.

She added that district staff have been hearing concerns about potentially high student and staff absences if schools reopened on Friday, Jan. 2, prompting her recommendation to close.

Board of Education member Edward Joyner, who made the motion to approve the change, emphasized that no other parts of the school calendar will be changed as a result of the decision.

Negrón also said the district reviewed the potential calendar change with the teachers union during a recent monthly meeting.

In response to Friday’s vote, Board of Education student representative and Career High School student Abdellah Aly — who had argued in this article that NHPS should be closed on Friday, Jan. 2 — told the Independent, “ENJOY YOUR BREAK PEOPLE!!!!

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - December 23, 2025 - December 30, 2025

Housing Authority Nears Clock Shop Purchase

by Dereen Shirnekhi

The New Haven independent

The Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH) is one big step closer to acquiring the dilapidated former Hamilton Street clock factory — after the agency’s board took two key votes to support financing the future acquisition and renovation of that industrial property into roughly 130 new homes.

The housing authority’s board took those votes Tuesday during its latest monthly meeting at the agency’s headquarters at 360 Orange St. The board voted unanimously to authorize a $1 million predevelopment loan for the clock-shop project to the Glendower Group — the housing authority’s nonprofit development arm. It took a separate unanimous vote to commit $21 million in tax-exempt bonds towards that same development, which is expected to cost $70 million to complete.

Board Chair William Kilpatrick and commissioners Danya Keene, Elmer Rivera Bello, and Kevin Alvarez were all present at Tuesday’s meeting, and all backed the two clock-factory-focused resolutions.

HANH President Shenae Draughn said that the housing authority intends to close on the 133 Hamilton St. property’s sale in January.

The housing authority plans to transform the historic industrial complex into an approximately 130-unit residential community, where all units will serve low-income or moderate-income households. The project is expected to cost around $70 million, financed through a combination of tax-exempt private-activity bonds, 4% Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, federal and state Historic Tax Credits, and other public-private funding sources.

The property itself is still owned by a company called Taom Heritage New Haven LLC, which bought the clock shop in 2018. At the time, that company was controlled by Scott Reed of the Oregon-based Reed Community Partners. Over the years, Taom Heritage — under Reed’s leadership — failed to follow through on plans to redevelop the industrial property

into 130 apartments, letting it fall instead into tax foreclosure and sustained decay.

HANH first announced its plans to buy the long-vacant New Haven Clock Company property in 2023, when the clock shop was in the midst of a city tax foreclosure.

The auction date for that foreclosure kept getting pushed back, as Taom Heritage and the housing authority tried to salvage a 2024 purchase and sale agreement that would see the housing authority buy the ex-factory for $4.5 million. The deal had been held up by Taom Heritage’s failure to complete environmental remediation at the site; the building was beset by squatters and fires and anti-blight and safety notices from the city.

Then, in September of this year, a group of clock shop creditors succeeded in stripping Reed of decision-making authority at Taom Heritage. Now Bill Kraus, a longtime clock shop redevelopment advocate who led a push to force Reed’s holding company into involuntary bankruptcy, has control over the holding company that owns the Hamilton Street property.

The $1 million predevelopment loan approved at Tuesday’s meeting will fund environmental testing, architectural and engineering review, historic preservation review, financial modeling, and more.

“We think this million dollars will get us to closing,” said Ed LaChance, vice president of development for the Glendower Group, at Tuesday’s meeting. “We know it’s a property we can’t let sit there long.

It’s a sensitive property and we’re all concerned about its physical condition.”

LaChance said that the loan will be paid back from development funds at the closing of the sale, through means like tax credit equity, Department of Housing capital funds, and Connecticut Housing Financing Authority construction financing.

“Is there any high risk that we won’t close?” asked Kilpatrick.

No, said LaChance. “We’re already talking and planning on it, but we haven’t been accruing funds. So we’re ready to hit the ground running.”

Draughn agreed. “We do not see this as a risky deal for us in terms of development,” she said. “This is our traditional way by which we do a tax credit deal.”

HANH Board Chair William Kilpatrick: "Is there any high risk that we won't close [on the property]?"

Credit: Dereen Shirnekhi photos

HANH Prez Draughn, confident that housing authority will close on clock shop property.

Draughn also noted the agency’s ability to access the tax credits available for the rehabilitation of historic buildings, which will bring additional equity into the development.

“We don’t see any challenges with the actual closing,” Draughn said. She noted that in all of the housing authority’s developments, “we’ve never not closed

a deal.”

The board then authorized the loan.

Later in the meeting, the housing authority board approved a separate resolution “to declare the official intent to issue tax-exempt multi-family housing revenue bonds for the clock factory redevelopment project” to the Glendower Group to finance no more than $21 million of the

project — or 30 percent of the estimated total development cost.

“Our intent is to issue our own bonds for the clock factory project,” said LaChance.

“It’s basically us going on record saying, ‘We’re going to use our bond funds, so we’re letting you know any costs we incur can be paid back from those bond funds.'”

The resolution states that this declaration of intent, known as an inducement resolution, signifies the housing authority’s “good faith and reasonable expectation” to issue those bonds but is not a “binding agreement.” The inducement resolution is required for federal tax purposes to allow Glendower Group to continue with predevelopment and financing activities that might be reimbursed from future bond proceeds.

The state allocates bonds to HANH for affordable housing projects, according to Draughn. The housing authority then issues the bonds on behalf of the project for the Glendower Group, which will then do the actual development.

In line with federal law, to issue the $21,000,000 in tax-exempt bonds, the housing authority is required to host a public meeting and publish a notice at least seven days in advance. The board also approved that action.

As for the actual sale of the clock shop factory complex by Taom to the housing authority, Draughn said that HANH is wrapping up “final due diligence items.”

When the sale is complete in January, HANH will undertake a year of architectural work. The plan is to begin construction in 2027 and complete the project in 18 to 24 months.

Reached for comment, Kraus, the current manager of the clock shop property, said, “I and all the creditors are looking forward to moving toward closing and getting the building in the capable hands of the housing authority as soon as possible.”

“We basically have done what we needed to do,” he said about Taom’s work at 133 Hamilton St., which has included repairing the roofs, repairing deteriorating brick work on the building, and conducting some non-regulated environmental cleanup.

One-Day School Week To Be Reconsidered

by Maya McFadden

The New Haven independent

Unlike in Hartford, Waterbury, East Haven, Hamden, New Canaan, Westport, Branford, and North Haven, New Haven’s public schools will return from winter break on Friday, Jan. 2.

At least, that’s the current plan. The Board of Education will be hosting a special online meeting Friday afternoon to consider closing down classes on Jan. 2, after all.

The city school district’s winter recess runs from Dec. 24 through Jan. 1, as it has in recent years.

Because of the way the calendar shakes out this year, that means that New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) students and staff will have only one day of school that week.

All of the other Connecticut public school districts mentioned at the top of this story resume school after winter break on either Monday, Jan. 5 or on Wednesday, Jan. 7.

None of these school districts — including New Haven’s — are open on Tuesday, Jan. 6, which is Three Kings Day. In the past three years, Jan. 2 fell on a day earlier in the week. “This year’s challenge

School board student rep Abdellah Aly: "[H]ave Friday off, have Monday off as well, and let my students whom I represent get a well deserved break." Credit: Maya McFadden file photo

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was that to avoid bringing folks back to school on Jan. 2, the school year would have extended past Juneteenth,” NHPS spokesperson Justin Harmon told the Independent. “In either case, you end up with a situation in which folks come back for a single day before going out again.”

He added that the school calendar each year is created between the district and the teachers union. Teachers union President Leslie Blatteau declined to comment for this story.

Meanwhile, the Board of Education has announced plans to hold a special meeting online at 1:45 p.m. Friday. One of the

items on that agenda is: “Discussion and possible action on proposal to close New Haven Public Schools on Friday, January 2, 2026.”

Reached for comment Thursday, Board of Education student representative and Career High School student Abdellah Aly urged the district to be closed on Jan. 2.

“If you want students to actually want to come to school, you are not to stress them out, you are supposed give them time to regenerate, or they will experience constant burn outs (if that is not happening already),” he wrote. “So in short, have

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - January 23, 2019 - January 29, 2019

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - December 23, 2025 - December 30, 2025

Trump Cuts Gut Grant For Fair Haven “Community Schools”

by Mona Mahadevan The New Haven independent

on’s sudden funding cuts to groups that support school-based social services in low-income communities has imperiled after-school sports, reading help, and mental health services at two Fair Haven schools.

Those wraparound services have been provided by Clifford Beers Community Care Center, a local nonprofit, at Fair Haven School since August 2024 and at the Family Academy of Multilingual Exploration (FAME) school since August 2025.

Clifford Beers is one of 70 recipients of a five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Full-Service Community Schools (FSCS) program.

The FSCS program is designed to support the “community school” model, which calls for turning schools into neighborhood hubs. In addition to traditional enrichment activities, community schools typically offer mental health counseling, career guidance, meals, and similar services to low-income students and their families.

On around Friday, Dec. 12, the Trump administration sent letters to 12 FSCS recipients informing them that their projects would not receive federal money on the scheduled payment date of Dec. 31.

Education Week quoted one such letter from the federal Education Department as stating that the grant has been deemed “inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, the best interest of the Federal Government and will not be continued.”

For Clifford Beers, that means losing out on the remaining $1.75 million of their $2.5 million grant, which was supposed to be disbursed annually through December 2028.

In a statement emailed on Thursday, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro condemned the cuts.

“The Trump administration’s sudden termination of funding for programs that provide children with the resources to succeed is cruel,” wrote DeLauro.

“Our most vulnerable children will lose

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Contributing Writers Fair Haven School first and eighth graders, reading together in January. Credit: Maya McFadden file photo

access to tutoring, athletics, health care, and other essential programs for families in as soon as two weeks.” She promised to do “everything” in her power to “fight against these dangerous cuts.”

According to a press release from DeLauro’s office, Clifford Beers served 310 students at the Fair Haven and FAME schools over the last year.

“It’s taking away our entire ability to be physically present at schools,” said Cara Klaneski, the director of community support and engagement at Clifford Beers.

The funding “allowed us to make the school almost a one-stop shop for families, to get anything that they need.”

Because most families live within walking distance of the Fair Haven and FAME schools, Klaneski said they’re convenient places to access critical services and en-

richment activities. School is also “where kids are spending most of their time,” she added, so providing social services can help make campus “the safest place” for families.

Due to the cuts, beginning Jan. 1, Klaneski expects ending many after-school programs — including math and reading support, a fencing club, and career training for families — and reassigning two on-site coordinators to different projects.

“We’re gonna try to do what we can to support the schools with the staff and resources that we have at Clifford Beers,” said Klaneski. But it’ll still be a major change for families, who will no longer be able to access those resources at school.

Ilaria Filippi, the executive director of Clifford Beers, said the group is doing what they can to stop the cuts and find

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alternate sources of funding.

“We submitted a request for reconsideration” to the U.S. Department of Education, said Filippi. “I don’t know how successful we will be,” given the Trump administration’s “absurd” conclusion that “equity” and “anti-racist practices” should “no longer be a priority.”

While the group will apply for multiple grants to replace the loss, Filippi said across-the-board cuts to nonprofits have severely constrained their funding opportunities. “We try to not let go of employees,” said Filippi. “We try to move them into open positions when we can, but it’s getting harder and harder.

Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller, who previously managed strategy and planning for Clifford Beers and whose ward includes the Fair Haven School, shared Filippi’s disappointment with the cuts.

“It’s taking away a set of resources that were not adequate on their own anyways,” said Miller. “It’s very, very upsetting.”

She suspects that care coordination services will be especially missed.

“Just imagine: Your family is struggling with housing, with addiction, with your kid misbehaving at school, with just trying to cover your bills, and there’s somebody that’s been helping you access” supportive services, said Miller. And “suddenly, that person loses their job.”

She said after-school programming was particularly valuable for middle-school students, who, without a school-sponsored activity, may spend their afternoons “on the street,” watching television, or playing on their phones.

“We have to do more of what community schools do,” said Miller. That means “bringing in resources to schools and connecting families with resources outside of schools.”

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - December 23, 2025 - December 30, 2025

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - December 23, 2025 - December 30, 2025

Amid Contract “Impasse,” Teachers Union Readies For Arbitration

by Maya McFadden

The New Haven independent

The city’s teachers union warned that it is prepared to go to arbitration — a step that hasn’t been taken in a quarter century — as contract negotiations with the city and Board of Education stall over educators’ healthcare costs.

Union leaders, educators, and supporters made that announcement Tuesday afternoon during a “stewards assembly meeting” and press conference held on the second floor of City Hall.

The presser took place roughly a week after more than 100 educators and their allies showed up to a Board of Education to back the union’s request for more affordable health care and better pay.

Tuesday’s gathering also occurred the day before Wednesday’s deadline for the teachers union and the school district to reach a tentative agreement before an arbitrator will step in and make a decision.

“Dr. Negrón, Mayor Elicker, and the New Haven Board of Education have forced us to declare impasse and prepare for arbitration after close to three months of contract negotiations,” said New Haven Federation of Teachers (NHFT) President Leslie Blatteau.

Blatteau said the move means that instead of spending the holiday season resting with family, union members will likely be preparing for arbitration hearings to secure what they describe as necessary proposals like wage increases that meet inflation and a shift to a state health insurance plan.

“This is the first time in over 25 years that the New Haven Federation of Teachers will prepare for arbitration,” Blatteau said. “Our members will be in an arbitration hearing to ensure that our working conditions and our students’ learning conditions can actually meet the moment we are in.”

In a separate interview with the Independent, Mayor Justin Elicker — who attended Tuesday’s press conference said that he was disappointed by some of the language used by speakers, and emphasized again that city leaders value educators.

“We’re not sitting in some dark room trying to scheme on how to give teachers bad health care or pay teachers as little as possible,” Elicker said. “That’s just not who we are.”

Elicker said he agrees teachers need higher pay and better health care, but said decisions must be grounded in what the city and school district can afford. He raised concerns that switching teachers to a state health insurance plan — one of the central requests by the union — could increase costs not only for the city but also for other municipal employees, since New Haven is self-insured.

Elicker estimated that switching teachers to the state health insurance plan would cost approximately an additional $10 million — about $7 million due to changes in the risk pool for other employees and $3 million related to healthcare rebate costs.

That estimated incurred cost is in ad-

NHFT President Leslie Blatteau: "December break be damned, we will be ready for arbitration because we aren’t backing down."

Credit: Maya McFadden Photos

New Haven Academy’s Fana Hickinson: “I have felt both extremely proud and also extremely disrespected by the process.”

dition to the one reported by Blatteau at last week’s Board of Education meeting.

At that meeting, Blatteau said that the city currently pays $40.8 million for its health insurance plan for teachers, compared to an estimated $41.1 million for the state plan. Elicker said the city was very open to the healthcare switch for educators if it only meant this slight increase, but there are in fact additional costs.

In attendance Tuesday to show support for the teachers union were members of AFSCME Locals 884 and 3144, the city nurses union, and the paraprofessional union, as well as Alders Ellen Cupo, Caroline Tanbee Smith, Sarah Miller, Anna Festa, Angel Hubbard, and alder-elect Elias Theodore.

The teachers union’s current three-year contract expires on June 30, 2026.

Under the arbitration timeline outlined by the union, both sides have five days to submit arbitrator names, with a hearing date expected to be set by Dec. 22. Hearings could take place during the holiday

Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) professor John O’Connor.

break, with a decision expected by late February. A deal could still be reached before the first arbitration hearing.

“If You Kick Teachers, You Kick Students” As has been the case week after week at Board of Education meetings, union leaders at City Hall on Tuesday emphasized concerns about salaries, health insurance costs, and persistent staff shortages, which they say consistently affect educators’ ability to meet students’ needs.

Blatteau noted that only 95 of the district’s approximately 1,770 teachers — about 5 percent — have worked in New Haven for 25 years, pointing to high turnover and challenges retaining veteran educators.

“We brought real solutions and a clear vision to the negotiating table,” Blatteau said. “And what the Board of Education brought was a commitment to the status quo that is no longer working.”

She said the district rejected proposals

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to lower class sizes, expand support for special education and English language learner students, ensure teachers have a role in decision-making that affects safety and working conditions, and shift educators to the State Partnership Plan for health insurance.

Speakers at Tuesday’s event described these demands as inseparable from student outcomes. “Better working conditions for educators and better learning conditions for students — and affordable health insurance — would be a win for all of us,” Blatteau said.

She also challenged past statements by Mayor Elicker, who is also a member of the Board of Education, that New Haven is “booming.”

“Is the city booming for the students who have to wear coats in their classrooms because the heat is broken?” Blatteau asked. “Is it booming for the teachers who skip therapy appointments and buy supplies for our own classrooms? Is it booming for families who have to seek legal counsel because New Haven Public

Schools is failing to meet the requirements of their children’s IEPs?” Wilbur Cross School counselor and union secretary Mia Comulada Breuler said she has watched “valuable” colleagues leave the district, including a STEM educator who recently told her they plan to leave New Haven at the end of this month for a district that offers the state health insurance plan.

She questioned the city’s priorities, pointing to investments in bike infrastructure and a proposed Long Wharf Park buildout while Wilbur Cross’s pool has remained out of service for five years.

“The city has found money to make a pathway for bicycles in our city, but not a pathway for our students to succeed,” Comulada Breuler said.

She also cited overcrowded classrooms, delayed supply orders, and long-standing building maintenance issues. “The idea that our city’s young children and teenagers matter does not hold up when the city is not investing in the work of its frontline workers,” she said.

Comulada Breuler urged city and district leaders to reach a contract that includes wage increases and affordable health insurance to avoid arbitration.

Paraprofessionals union President Hyclis Williams echoed those concerns, describing educators as mentors, advocates, counselors, and stable figures in students’ lives.

In response to the mayor’s argument that the city cannot afford a shift to the state health plan, Williams asked, “Is the city not able to do that because they would lose the kickback they get from Anthem?

Or is it because teachers are not valued?”

Betsy Ross Arts and Design Academy (BRADA) art teacher Ramzie Highsmith, a 2013 graduate of Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School and a former Betsy Ross student, said watching veteran teachers struggle has shaped his outlook on the profession and its longevity.

“Teachers who taught me 20 years ago should be thriving, healthy, saving money and stable,” Highsmith said. “Instead, I’ve seen them barely surviving as salary increases don’t keep up with inflation and the cost of living. Am I supposed to look up to that?”

Highsmith said he regularly buys classroom supplies out of pocket while also struggling to pay his electric bill. He also noted he has skipped doctor’s appointments because he cannot afford the copays.

“If you give the best construction worker no tools, how can they build a house?” he asked.

Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) professor John O’Connor attended Tuesday’s press conference to show support for the city’s teachers union. He called arbitration “a roll of the dice.” He further asked, “Why is the mayor and the Board of Education rolling the dice with the future of students?”

“The demands of New Haven teachers are not the problem,” O’Connor said.

Read More at www.theinnercitynews

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - December 23, 2025 - December 30, 2025

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - December 23, 2025 - December 30, 2025

Sober Studio Celebrates Decade of Music Intervention

by Jisu Sheen

The New Haven independent

Swedish pancakes and poetry saved Adam Christoferson’s life.

A child of two parents with schizophrenia, he was in the foster care system when his grandmother took him in. He remembers the smell of pancakes from the kitchen as his grandma shared poems, solidifying early connections between artistic expression and vital nourishment.

Christoferson told that story on stage Wednesday night at Toad’s Place, speaking in between songs as a headliner for nonprofit community music organization Musical Intervention’s birthday extravaganza. The sober studio, which has sat between Crown and George Streets in Downtown New Haven for the last 10 years, is known for its weekly drum circles and open mics at its Temple Street studio space; the celebration at Toad’s was a combination of both.

When I entered the venue a little early for the show, the drum circle was already going. In front of the stage, right in the middle of the floor, hands activated tambourines, maracas, and a variety of drums led by Musical Intervention’s Moises Vasquez. The sound was hypnotic, with no beginning or end, just an endless flow of rhythm.

Wilhelmina McNeill, also known as Aphroditee, slipped out from the drum circle and made her way on stage. As the instruments quieted down, she prepared to show the crowd exactly why she was named after the Goddess of Love.

She backed up Christoferson on vocals before stepping into her star power as a solo singer. Musicians still near their drums added light percussion as McNeill leaned into a moody power ballad calling out to a lover. “Just come to me/ It’ll be okay,” she sang, hitting edgy high notes that accented the controlled vibrato of her melodic lines. She exuded cool in her long black jacket and red hat.

“Saved my life” is a phrase I heard many times that evening, not just about pancakes and poetry but about Musical Intervention itself. Jeremiah Brown, another headliner with a gorgeous voice, was an adolescent who had just lost his mother and was shuffled back and forth between homes when he met Christoferson, who taught him guitar. Music became “a coping skill that I can say literally saved me,” Brown said.

Christoferson told the story in his own way, saying he just “taught him a couple chords” before Brown started writing songs, letting natural talent lead. On stage, the two performed an original song they wrote together centered around the message: “The world needs you.” Brown hit ethereal high pitches, his clear voice ringing out and carrying the audience on every shimmering word.

Then Brown dived into the most dramatic of Christmas songs: “Mary Did You Know?”

I had forgotten how deep that song goes, with lyrics like: “This child that you’ve

Jeremiah Brown: Musical Intervention is an “environment where people get to be themselves.”

Aphroditee singing, with Fred "F#" Billups on bass behind her. Posted inArts & Culture

Adam Christoferson, ten years after first getting the Temple Street studio’s keys.

Billups on bass (left) and the night’s Inspiration Award honoree, Kevin “11” O’Brien (right).

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delivered/ Will soon deliver you.” Brown brought all the emotion and glam the tune needed, tapping into Christianity’s more suspenseful tendencies and making the stage feel like a production of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Brown ended his set with a crowd-pleaser: U2’s 1987 “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” The audience was lively, dancing along to Brown’s powerful voice and the house band’s generous instrumental breaks.

Ten years ago, in December of 2015, Elinor Slomba’s Project Storefronts handed Christoferson the keys to 2,300 square feet of space at 23 Temple Street in Downtown New Haven. Over the following decade, Christoferson and his growing band of friends created what board member Grady Bohen described as “safe, sober, and inclusive environments” for the celebration of music.

Another thing to celebrate? Each other. Woven within the pre-song banter and lyrics of each original track were repeated reminders to give others grace and acknowledge the accomplishment of being alive.

Christoferson took a treble-clef-shaped object out of a brown mailer bag. It was Musical Intervention’s own Inspiration Award. The crowd, well-equipped with its circle of percussive instruments, provided a drum roll. Christoferson looked to his left; the award went to Kevin “11” O’Brien, who had been on guitar, keys, and bass this whole time.

Before bringing O’Brien onto the Musical Intervention team, Christoferson was, in his words, “running on fumes.” He was trying to do it all at once. Then (he turned to O’Brien), “you came along with your talent, your kindness—” “My tart attitude,” O’Brien supplied.

The house musician got his turn in the spotlight as he teared up, accepted his award, and made sure to shout out the hard work of everyone on the Musical Intervention team.

Headliners gave way to a collection of supporting acts for the rest of the evening, crossing genre lines but staying on theme.

“Are you ready to thrive?” one performer, Dom DeGennaro, asked the crowd.

As if one night of music and raucous fun wasn’t enough, the musicians invited the audience to Musical Interventions’ Temple Street studio the following day (Thursday, Dec. 18) for their weekly open mic.

Attendees in their tinsel, Santa hats, and thick sweaters clapped along to the beat.

Performer Patrick Escandon, who goes by Flow Like Water, walked around offering tambourines and maracas to the crowd. It was a thoughtfully crafted event, emerging from a tight-knit community with roots reaching even farther back than the decade the studio has been open. I could almost smell the pancakes.

Musical Intervention holds songwriting sessions on Tuesdays from 2-4 p.m., open jam Wednesdays 1-3 p.m., drum circle Thursdays 5-6 p.m., and open mic Thursdays 6-9:30 p.m.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - December 23, 2025 - December 30, 2025

Ribbon Cut On Athletic Center Renovation

by Thomas Breen

The New Haven independent

Dozens of student athletes, school district leaders, city and state officials, and high school sports fans gathered at the Floyd Little Athletic Center Thursday to celebrate the completion of a state-funded, $8.77 million renovation.

They also marked the dedication of a new basketball court in honor of two local legends — former school district athletics director Robert “Bob” Laemel and the late former Hillhouse principal and celebrated basketball coach Salvatore “Red” Verderame.

That ceremony took place on the second floor of the 480 Sherman Pkwy. “field house,” which hosts athletic practices and competitions in indoor track and field, basketball, and wrestling for New Haven public school students. The athletic center is also regularly used for sports competitions involving young people from throughout the region.

As explained by Mayor Justin Elicker, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) Supt. Madeline Negrón, City Engineer Giovanni Zinn, and NHPS Athletics Director Erik Patchkofsky, among many others, the athletic center — which first opened in 2002 — has a new basketball hardwood court, new running surfaces for the track, and a new four-sided digital score board.

Phase two of the athletic center’s renovations will include upgrades to the foyer and concession area, restrooms, and bleachers.

This is the largest high school athletic facility in New England, Elicker said. The building is 105,000 square feet, and has a capacity for around 3,000 people.

Thanks to these state-of-the-art renovations, Negrón said, this venue “now stands ready to serve the next generation” of student athletes. “But of course, we have to take care of it.

That is one lesson I have learned.”

She framed this renovation as an investment in opportunity, health, and community connection. She also promised to make sure that similarly significant renovations take place at buildings across the district, so that all students — and not just student-athletes — benefit from this level of infrastructure attention and upkeep.

“I can’t explain what this building means to our young people,” Patchkofsky said while looking at a group of Hillhouse student athletes who

Bob Laemel (right): "To have my name on a court while I'm still alive, that is really a blessing." Credit: Thomas Breen photos

Board of Education member Ed Joyner: Grateful to have lived long enough to “immortalize the right people.”

State Rep. Al Paolillo, Jr.: “We need to unite. Athletics does that.”

NHPS Athletics Director Erik Patchkofsky (right) with student athletes Chauncey Caver, Deanna Moore, and Gerome Barnes.

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joined Thursday’s presser. “It’s for you guys,” he said to the teens. “So, thank you.”

Much of Thursday’s event was split between praising the court renovations — and heralding the men whose names are now written on the court.

Board of Education member Ed Joyner, who led the way in getting the court named after Laemel and Verderame, said, “I never a got a chance to know Garibaldi, but I knew Red Verderame. I never got a chance to know Abraham Heschel, but I knew Bob Laemel. I never got a chance to know Frederick Douglass, but I knew Floyd Little.” Joyner spoke about growing up in the South and regularly passing buildings and monuments honoring Confederate generals like Robert E. Lee and Nathaniel Bedford Forrest. He described how meaningful it is to honor men like Verderame and Laemel — who dedicated their lives to helping so many young people in New Haven — by immortalizing their names on the new basketball court.

Verderame worked for 21 years as an administrator — including as vice principal and then principal — at Hillhouse High School. He also served as Wilbur Cross’s basketball coach from 1953 to 1966, winning five district championships, among other accomplishments. According to Verderame’s 2008 obituary, he also “undertook many foreign coaching assignments as a foreign service officer with the U.S. Dept. of State between 1963 and 1983, including Africa and the Middle East. His love for Africa inspired him to establish The International Ambassadors For Education program which enabled high school students the opportunity to travel the continent.”

While Verderame’s son Jeff represented his family at the podium Thursday, Laemel — who flew up from Florida to attend the event in person — was able to take the mic himself.

He spoke about stepping into the role of NHPS athletics director in 1977 — while still staying connected to students in each public high school by teaching a course called “Career in Sports.” He also helped found the high-school-athletics-focused Southern Connecticut Conference.

“To have my name on a court while I’m still alive,” he said, “that is really a blessing.”

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - December 23, 2025 - December 30, 2025

In Winter Concert, Cross Choir Pays Tribute To A Student Gone Too Soon Lucy Gellman

it was enough to make a person’s heart tighten in their chest for just a moment.

They pushed forward, voices soaring by the time they reached the chorus. I'll fly away, fly away, fly away, fly away home, they crooned. As they split into a lush, layered harmony, Storey somehow kept it together, her right hand floating through the air as she nodded in time with the music. From far enough away, it looked as though she was praying.

The New Haven independent

The last time Danielle Storey saw Janese Mabel Espinoza, it was a school day in early November, just like the ones that had come before it. Espinoza twirled into the choir classroom, all smiles, with a bounce in her step and coiffed, feathery hair that reminded Storey of Farrah Fawcett. She beamed at herself in the mirror, ready to morph into the songbird Storey knew she could be. "Fit check," she joked with Storey. Then she was gone.

It was the last time the choir director, and many of her friends, would see Espinoza alive. Weeks after her sudden passing, student vocalists took the time to honor her in song, holding her memory close during a season of where loss can feel especially difficult.

That tribute came to Wilbur Cross High School Tuesday evening, as the choir performed Pinkzebra's "Fly Away Home" during the school’s annual winter concert.

The brainchild of longtime choral director Storey, the selection offered a rare moment of peace and reflection for students, who are learning to make sense of a world in which a classmate and fellow singer is no longer physically with them.

“There’s not a day that I don’t walk through those double doors and think about her,” said Storey, who has spent two decades teaching at Cross, and felt as if her world had collapsed when she learned of Espinoza’s death. “She was so loved by all. She is not here with us anymore, but she is with us spiritually.”

Espinoza, a 16-year-old senior who was an alto in the advanced choir, passed away on November 11 of this year, after a motor vehicle accident on the Merritt Parkway. While she grew up in New York until high school, she was quick to make friends at Cross, warm and magnetic in a way that endeared her to many of her peers. She died less than two weeks before her 17th birthday.

Cross Principal Matt Brown, who has led the school since 2023, remembered her as “really clever and very funny with a dry wit,” with an ability to build relationships with teachers through short, quirky interactions like the ones she had with Storey. The two saw each other every morning before school, when Espinoza arrived at Cross’s Mitchell Drive building, and lingered outside so she

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“The wonderful thing is that these children, they are resilient and they are so supportive of one another,” she said afterwards. “And not only are they supportive of one another, they are supportive of me. I feel like they’re the best students in the world.”

Choir Director Danielle Storey, a 25-year veteran of the New Haven Public Schools who has been at Cross for two decades, with the choir. Lucy Gellman Photo.

could use her cell phone for a few extra minutes.

Each day, without fail, Brown would start urging students to move inside for class, and Espinoza would slip behind one of the school’s pillars, a joke that she knew Brown was in on. He’d shepherd more students into the building, and she’d pop back out—then disappear for another moment. Eventually, she would emerge with a smile, ready to put her phone in the magnetized pouch where it would remain for the rest of the school day.

“That was our daily ritual,” Brown said in a phone call. “She was very sweet.”

In the wake of her death, the school brought in crisis counselors, social workers, and extra service dogs (a yellow lab retriever named Finn, the New Haven Police Department’s first “comfort canine,” comes to Cross every day, as he

has since 2023). The district, meanwhile, covered the cost of school buses to ferry classmates to her funeral, held exactly a month before what would have been her final winter concert.

But when all of that had quieted, Storey wanted to do another kind of tribute, to give students the space to grieve and remember through the arts.

Tuesday, a listener could hear that care in real time, as Storey turned toward the audience, and began to describe the loss she has felt acutely since November. Behind her, over three dozen students filled in a set of three risers, making the stage glow with the red and white of their robes.

Already, they had moved members of the audience with “Sanctus,” from Gabriel Fauré’s “Requiem in D Minor,” and David Foster and Linda Thompson-Jenner’s “Grown Up Christmas List,” on which several of the seniors shared a solo.

But as Storey spoke about Espinoza,

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something seemed to shift on the stage.

Students, some of whom had been fidgeting moments before, stilled, their robes almost regal under the stage lights. In the third row, student athletes still in their gym clothes and cheerleading uniforms seemed to stand up a little straighter. A few fought back tears.

By the time accompanist Jungmin Yun began to play the piano, there was a kind of reverence among them, as if they could feel the spirits of their loved ones there in the room.

I'll ride with the horses/I'll swim through the sea, they sang. I'll climb to the mountain tops/Won't you come follow me?

In the audience, half a dozen parents raised their phones and cameras to capture the moment. Vocalists, seeming to understand the weight of what they were doing, moved in closer to Storey, until they had nearly formed a half moon. Somewhere in the background, a baby squealed, and

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Long after they had left the stage, several choir members said they planned to hold on to the moment—and the sound— as a way to recognize and celebrate their classmate's too-short life and to grieve her absence.

As he packed up for the night, senior Jaylon Blatche remembered Espinoza as a warm and ebullient presence, as sharp and witty in English class as she was spirited in choir. “She was always asking me for snacks,” he added with a smile—that kind of detail that doesn’t seem endearing until suddenly it does.

Two weeks or so before her death, the two checked in on each other, just to make sure the other was alright. That was just the kind of friends they were.

Daylin Calderon, a junior who knew Espinoza through the choir, added that for many students, the song became a needed and overdue form of release. Last summer, Calderon lost her uncle, but “I didn’t properly grieve” immediately. When Espinoza died, she didn’t know how to express everything she was feeling. Then she started singing her way through it.

“After we started singing the song,” something in me kind of shattered, she said. “She [Espinoza] didn’t deserve that … Singing the song accessed some deep emotion.”

Back in the hallway, paraprofessional Lindsay Kirwin had come to check on Storey, and the two wiped away fresh tears from their faces. While Kirwin was not close with Espinoza, she said, “any loss that we have is a huge loss.”

“It affects all of us,” Kirwin said. “We are a family.”

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - December 23, 2025 - December 30, 2025

With An Assist From The Bard, The Kids Are All Right Lucy Gellman

Arts Council of greater New Haven

The king was dead, but the porter didn’t know that yet, and the knocking all seemed like a bit much this early in the morning. On stage, actor Max Hoffman glided towards a door frame, with a kind of campy air that brought Chappell Roan to Inverness. He sighed, exasperated, and the sound was enough to break the suspense.

“Here's a knocking indeed!” he said. “If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key.” He turned back to the audience, a glint in his eye. “Knock, knock, knock!” A beat, then a few hesitant giggles. He smiled tightly, then tried it again.

“Knock knock?”

“Who’s there!” five dozen voices shouted back, and he raised his chin at the exchange. “I, the name of Beelzebub?” In the audience, the laughter became more pronounced, expectant even.

Friday night and again on Saturday, that spirited back-and-forth embodied the third annual Youth Festival of Shakespeare, a love letter to New Haven youth, sixteenth-century prose, and the enduring spirit of the Bard from Elm Shakespeare Company and several teaching artists across New Haven. A collaboration with New Haven Academy, Common Ground High School, the ACES Educational Center for the Arts and Elm Shakespeare’s Teen Troupe, it showed the transformation that can happen when students suspend judgement, stop competing, and celebrate each other instead.

All performances took place at Naugatuck Valley Community College in Waterbury. In total, 65 students participated, with an additional seven from Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School who came out to watch, and several Naugatuck Valley students and Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) alumni who helped run tech.

“Students are consistently in competition to have the best grades, to get into the best college, to have the most Instagram followers … we just have enough of that in this town,” said Sarah Bowles, director of education at Elm Shakespeare, as she made the 45-minute drive from New Haven to Waterbury Friday. “I think it’s a revolutionary act to truly celebrate someone else’s success. Our success does not depend on someone else’s failure.”

The festival’s growth has been years in the making. Like Producing Artistic Director Rebecca Goodheart, who has led Elm Shakespeare since 2015, Bowles previously worked at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass., under the mentorship of Education Director Kevin G. Coleman. Coleman, a founding member of that company, has led a youth Shakespeare festival for years; it currently reaches 10 schools and hundreds of students in Massachusetts.

When Bowles left Shakespeare & Company for New Haven in 2017, she knew she wanted to recreate the program.

Coleman, who is all about Shakespeare

being performed instead of presented as dust-covered, history-drenched literature, gave it his blessing. So when a grant from the Seedlings Foundation allowed Elm to expand its footprint in the schools a few years ago, that vision suddenly became possible.

“I was hoping that it would catch,” and it did, said Bowles, the emotion audible in her voice. After the festival’s first year, New Haven Academy joined a roster that included Common Ground, ACES ECA and Elm’s Teen Troupe. Next year, the organization is hoping to bring on four more high schools. “It’s the most meaningful thing to me that I do for my job. I take the festival with me in everything I do.”

So, it seems, do the dozens of young people and educators who are now part of its merry and poetic (and sometimes macabre) scaffolding. As they piled into vans behind the John Lyman Center for the Performing Arts on Friday afternoon, a few students chatted with each other, trading anecdotes as they shook off pre-performance jitters and prepared to slip into character.

Some, like ECA’s Rowan Simonelli, weren’t performing that night at all, but had come to support their peers before their own time in the spotlight. Others, like Common Ground’s Tiffany Scott and Leila Breland-Shinn, tried to get into the zone. That’s part of the festival’s code of honor: you show up for other students, just as they show up for you.

Breland-Shinn, a freshman who played Aemilia and Dr. Pinch in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, later said that the role helped her learn “how to be quick on my feet,” and make the mental switch from one character to another quickly.

“I think it’s a nice idea,” Scott chimed in of the festival. “You can, like, make new friends without getting judged. I’m nervous, but kind of not nervous too.”

Elsewhere, actors worked together to problem solve as castmate Wesley Bianchine called out at the 11th hour, incapacitated not by stage combat or witchy predictions, but by cold and flu season.

From her seat, 12-year-old Anna Oppenheimer—already playing Fléance and one of the witches in Macbeth—ran the lines for Macduff's son, a minor but endearing character who lays bare the sheer cruelty of Macbeth’s quest for the throne.

By the time she stepped onstage two hours later, she was off book, with an understanding of the child’s chirping, sweet-voiced reasoning that made it seem like she’d been cast for the role weeks before. In the play, it is the murder of Macduff’s family that sets into motion the long-awaited undoing of Macbeth, who has gone on a power-hungry rampage from which no one is spared.

“It kind of taught me to be more confident in myself,” Oppenheimer said after the show. “I was really stressed out but I did it.”

“It was insane, and it was incredible,” chimed in Hoffman, a senior at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, who watched Oppenheimer take on the character in under two hours.

Cast members in The Comedy of Errors.

New Haven Academy freshman Molly Davis who played one of four Hamlets in the eponymously named play.

Students including Emely Lebron made the trek out to Waterbury

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That was fully on display for all of Friday evening, with back-to-back homages to the Bard that kept audiences out well past 10 p.m. As Macbeth’s opening hour drew closer, students streamed into the lobby of the college’s Fine Arts Center, nibbling on pizza as Bowles announced each group, and students burst into undulating, thunderous drumrolls for each other. As over 120 hands eagerly beat the tables, the sound bloomed into cheers and applause.

As Macbeth’s cast slipped backstage to get into costume, other students formed a long, misshapen oval in the lobby and began by passing around the word “Forsooth!” like a verbal wave. As they gradually added more commands (credit to educator, actor and director Ben Curns, who teaches at ECA) the circle became a space of giddy laughter, students bouncing back and forth as they got to know their neighbors from other schools.

“It’s like an awesome and weird space,” said Glow Torres, a senior at Common Ground who joined Teen Troupe after doing Much Ado About Nothing at school last year. By the end of the night, Torres had appeared in two shows, stepping in for an actor who was sick in Common Ground’s Comedy of Errors. “It’s a place for me to get away from reality. I get to step into the shoes of another person, and I’ve learned a lot of team building.”

“I think it’s [the festival] a wonderful thing,” they added. “It seems to be an extra welcoming space. It feels like a family reunion.”

That translated to the stage—and the audience—where students laughed, shrieked, gasped, and talked back to their peers for the next three hours, most of them sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in rows at the front of the house. As the Teen Troupe kicked off the evening with Macbeth, the cast took a moment to introduce itself with no words at all, stepping toward the lip of the stage as actors’ faces caught in the light.

Hoffman-as-Duncan, chin up at a slight angle, seemed to foreshadow his own imminent misfortune. Half cloaked in shadow behind him, Banquo (Sebastian Bianchine) got into the zone, ready to deliver a performance that was as sharp and punchy as it was poetic. The witches, getting spooky somewhere in the wings, waited to creep and cackle onstage and set the play into motion.

As they did, a change came over the theater, as if a person could hear attendees holding their breath, and scooting forward to the edges of their seats. For a moment, audience members may have thought they were seeing double: Goodheart cast the show with two Macbeths (Keldon Aronsen and Emma Kreidler) and two Lady Macs (Isonnette O’Brien and Fiona Donahue), in a move that has become common in Elm’s work with youth.

It made Shakespeare’s language, for which there is almost always a mental onramp, feel accessible, crisp and suffused with more emotion that Elm’s professional actors sometimes bring to the stage. As the Weïrd Sisters appeared from the mist

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - December 23, 2025 - December 30, 2025

Pizzeria-Hosted Exhibit Pairs Painters, Rappers, Poets HBCU and New Haven Native President receives life-saving kidney transplant

by Lisa Reisman

The New Haven independent

For nearly eight minutes straight at Nolo’s Pizza, DJ KamaKaze manipulated records and turntables, scratching, cutting, and backspinning, all the while transfixing the roughly 100 in attendance.

“You’re not listening to a laptop,” DJ Marcus “Marc Mecca” Carpenter told the crowd after the performance. “The scratches, the skips, the flaws, that’s what makes it alive. What he’s doing is an art form.”

Those skips and flaws, it seemed, were the theme of “Re-Imagine,” an interactive art exhibit pairing painters, rappers, poets, and photographers.

“I believe that within all these artists is excellence, an excellence that has been frustrated because it has not been afforded the resources and opportunity to be fully appreciated,” host and organizer Marcus Harvin told the guests, dressed to the nines, as they enjoyed pizza, appetizers, and specialty drinks in the mellow-lit space at 687 State St. last Tuesday night.

The black-tie affair, which was sponsored

by Phil Bartels, a member of the University of New Haven’s Board of Governors, benefitted Newhallville Fresh Starts. According to Harvin, its founder and president, the nonprofit in 2025 delivered a projected 56,000 meals to homeless and domestic violence shelters, a complex that houses formerly homeless veterans, and warming centers.

“This is about re-imagining a world where everyone has enough to thrive instead of just survive,” Harvin added, before introducing the legendary rapper, producer, and artist DJ Dooley-O. “I am Dooley-O. I am New Haven,” he began, standing beside a canvas of his art showing an abstract cityscape. “I am a DJ, a graffiti artist, a recording artist, and I can put your windows in your house if you let me.” He started doing graffiti at 13. “Certain art schools wouldn’t let me in, so I said ‘okay, the streets of New Haven can become my art gallery,” he said.

At a certain point, he started doing more work on canvas.

He gave a shout-out to B*WAK, otherwise known as the Edmund “B*WAK” Comfort, who was perched on a stool working on an air-brushed portrait of the event. “If you remember the old Lee High School, that was our playground, that’s the Yale Nursing School now, and that’s where we started way back in the day,” he said.

Comfort nodded with a smile. An artist, playwright, and teacher, he’s known for his color-saturated murals and vibrant tapestries on New Haven buildings, as well as an art business, Whalley Avenue’s B*WAK Productions, a neighborhood hub specializing in custom-designed creations.

He knew he was an artist in seventh grade. “It was in art class,” said Comfort, who went on to intern at Long Wharf Theatre building set designs; that led him to the Yale Repertory Theatre and, after a short stint at the Cornerstone Theater in Los Angeles, to Lyric Hall and the Broken Umbrella Theater company. “Art is how I

Dooley-O: “I am a DJ, a graffiti artist, a recording artist, and I can put your windows in your house if you let me.” Credit: Marcus Harvin photo Livingstone College President Dr. Anthony J. Davis

Courtesy of HBCUNEWS.com

B*WAK at work. Credit: Lisa Reisman photo.

express who I am.”

With that, Harvin welcomed to the stage Patrick Stenson, otherwise known as Off Brand Budd.

“I ain’t gonna lie, this moment is different,” Stenson said. “It’s my first time performing in front of this type of crowd, with everybody looking so good, in a place like this. I pour my heart and soul into my music, it’s not about fame for me, it’s about the passion.”

He then performed a song about his experience with epilepsy: At 17 I lost 20 seconds of my life A grand mal showed a brotha what the heavens looking like At first I was skittish from the feeling I’m alive Then I started talking bout it Putting rhythm in my lines . . .

The crowd burst into applause and whoops.

On the upper level, visual artist Hector “Bori” Rodriguez was showing a triptych of surreal botantical forms in luminously tropical colors. Rodriguez served 27 years and two months in New York State Prison. While there, he took a visual arts

class, which led him to detail his early life in the Puerto Rican countryside with his mother.

“Art became a way for me to escape into nature,” said Rodriguez, who enrolled in the Bard Prison Initiative during his 18th year in prison, finding inspiration in Salvador Dali and Jean-Michael Basquiat, before transferring to the Yale Prison Education Initiative on his release in 2023.

Back on the main floor, Jade Streater, otherwise known as Lady J The Artist, was discussing one of her paintings. In it, a one-way sign, reads SUCCESS!! Beneath it another sign, red and white: Tunnel Vision. “I have to have tunnel vision to do this,” she said, adding her weekdays begin at 2:30 a.m. for her 4 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. shift as a member of Yale’s custodial staff. It’s when her three kids, ages 11, three, and one are asleep that she gets out her palette.

For Lady J, who credited her two art teachers at Co-Op High School for encouraging her to paint—“it was freeing,” she said—the dream is to be a full-time artist with a walk-in studio. For now, she said, “I feel like I’m showing my kids that there’s always a way out, especially being African American with the odds against you, and this is my way out.”

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Livingstone College President Dr. Anthony J. Davis is celebrating a renewed lease on life after receiving a life-saving kidney transplant, months after publicly sharing his need for a donor during the college’s spring commencement ceremony. Davis’s emotional appeal resonated across the campus and beyond, sparking an outpouring of support that ultimately led to a successful transplant and a powerful story of faith, community, and hope.

Before receiving this miracle transplant, Dr. Davis battled stage 5 kidney disease, spending nearly 18 months on dialysis. On days when the illness took its toll, he relied on golf carts to navigate the campus and continue fulfilling his duties. At the time, Davis had no idea that a compassionate stranger— moved by his story—would ultimately become the answer to his prayers and change his life forever.

“How do you ask somebody to give something as vital as a body part?” he told HBCU Gameday. “It was humbling. The hardest season of my life.”

In addition to expressing gratitude to his anonymous donor, Dr. Davis also thanked HBCU Gameday for amplifying his story, crediting the platform with helping connect him to his life-saving donor. “Had you not pushed it out,” Davis said, “I wouldn’t be sitting here today on the other side of a transplant.”

In a powerful full-circle moment, Dr. Davis—the 13th president of Livingstone College—underwent his transplant surgery on November 13, which also coincided with National Day of Giving. Just one week after the procedure, his new kidney was already showing signs of normal, healthy function, marking a hopeful new chapter in his recovery and leadership journey.

Dialysis can be an intense and physically demanding process for those

diagnosed with kidney disease, often bringing side effects such as fatigue, nausea, anemia, and weight gain. Dr. Davis endured all of these challenges while continuing to lead the North Carolina HBCU. Throughout the ordeal, he praised the Livingstone College community for their unwavering support, crediting students, faculty, staff, and alumni for helping carry him through one of the most difficult chapters of his life.

“Students would stop me, circle the golf cart, and pray for me,” Davis said. “Young brothers grabbing my hands in the cafeteria… bishops in the AME Zion Church—everywhere I went, people were praying.”

Now back in good health, Dr. Davis is focused on continuing his work as president of Livingstone College, reaffirming his commitment to service and leadership. He has shared that leading and serving others is not just a role he holds but a calling—one he is grateful to return to with renewed strength and purpose.

In addition to this growth, Livingstone has received multiple multimillion-dollar donations from an anonymous donor, including a $10 million gift in February.

According to Dr. Davis, the funding will support a $225 million campus infrastructure project, featuring a new 350-bed residential quad, a four-star, college-operated hotel, expanded solar energy initiatives, and a comprehensive modernization of the campus. Together, these developments signal a period of renewed momentum and long-term transformation for the historic HBCU. “Livingstone College will not look the same,” Davis said. “We will be a different HBCU—still affordable, still mission-driven, but competitive with the higher-echelon schools.”

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - December 23, 2025 - December 30, 2025

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - December 23, 2025 - December 30, 2025

Galasso Materials LLC,

Maintainer II The Town of Wallingford is accepting applications for Maintainer II. Wages: $26.52 to $31.53 hourly. For additional information and to apply online by the January 7, 2025 closing date please visit: www.wallingfordct.gov/government/departments/human-resources/. Applications are also available at the Department of Human Resources located in Room #301 of the Town Hall, 45 South Main Street, Wallingford, CT 06492.

Phone: (203) 294-2080; Fax: (203) 294-2084. EOE

a quarry and paving contractor, has positions open for the upcoming construction season. We are seeking candidates for a variety of positions, including: Scalehouse Dispatcher/ Equipment Operators and Laborers.

NO PHONE CALLS. Please mail resume and cover letter to “Hiring Manager”, Galasso Materials LLC, PO Box 1776, East Granby CT 06026.

Galasso Materials is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.

ELM CITY COMMUNITIES Invitation for Bids Unit Upgrades- Scattered Site West Side

Looking for a full-time welder in our shop-Skills include but not limited to MIG/TIG welding, plasma ARC-Structural steel and miscellaneous metals. Please send your resume to: Jillherbert@gwfabrication.com

The Housing Authority of the City of New Haven d/b/a Elm City Communities is currently seeking bids from qualified firm to complete projects that include various architectural, structural upgrades. A complete copy of the requirement may be obtained from Elm City’s Vendor Collaboration Portal https://newhavenhousing.cobblestonesystems.com/ gateway beginning on

Listing: Laborers/Helpers Immediate opening for full-time Laborers/Helpers for a fast-paced, growing HVAC/Petroleum company. Position requires flexible work schedule, days and weekends. Some heavy lifting required. Must have a valid driver’s license to run errands. Computer knowledge a plus. Send resume to HR Department, hrdept@eastriverenergy.com, 401 Soundview Road, Guilford, CT 06437.

Monday, December 22, 2025 at 3:00 PM.

Recreation Program Specialist

****An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer, including Disabled and Veterans****

The Town of Wallingford is accepting applications for Recreation Program Specialist. Wages: $74,236.00 to $93,900.00 annually. For additional information and to apply online by January 2, 2026, or the date the 50th application is received, whichever occurs first, please visit: www.wallingfordct.gov/government/departments/human-resources/. Applications are also available at the Department of Human Resources located in Room #301 of the Town Hall, 45 South Main Street, Wallingford, CT 06492.

Phone: (203) 294-2080; Fax: (203) 294-2084. EOE

Request for Qualifications The South Central Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG) seeks the services of one or more consultants for the following transportation planning studies during the 2026 and 2027 Fiscal Years (July 1, 2025- June 30, 2027): Congestion Management Study, Scenario Planning Study, and Ridge Road Safety Study. Responses are due by January 7, 2026 (12 noon local time). The full RFQ document can be viewed at the Council’s website: www.scrcog.org or can be made available upon request. Contact James Rode at 203-466-8623 with any questions.

ELM CITY COMMUNITIES

Building Maintenance Technician

Request for Proposals

Communication Media Consultant

The Town of Wallingford is accepting applications for Building Maintenance Technician. Wages: $31.21 to $37.09 hourly. For additional information and to apply online by the December 28, 2025 closing date please visit: www.wallingfordct.gov/government/departments/human-resources/. Applications are also available at the Department of Human Resources located in Room #301 of the Town Hall, 45 South Main Street, Wallingford, CT 06492. Phone: (203) 294-2080; Fax: (203) 294-2084. EOE

The Housing Authority of the City of New Haven d/b/a Elm City Communities is currently seeking Proposals for Communication Media Consultant Firms. A complete copy of the requirements may be obtained from Elm City’s Vendor Collaboration Portal https://newhavenhousing.cobblestonesystems.com/gateway beginning on

Monday, December 15, 2025 at 3:00PM

Mechanic III The Town of Wallingford is accepting applications for Mechanic III. Wages: $35.42 to $43.00 hourly. For additional information and to apply online by the December 28, 2025 closing date please visit: www.wallingfordct.gov/government/departments/human-resources/. Applications are also available at the Department of Human Resources located in Room #301 of the Town Hall, 45 South Main Street, Wallingford, CT 06492. Phone: (203) 294-2080; Fax: (203) 294-2084. EOE

14

Looking for a full-time welder in our shop-Skills include but not limited to MIG/TIG welding, plasma ARC-Structural steel and miscellaneous metals.

Please send your resume to: Jillherbert@gwfabrication.com

THEINNER-CITY INNER-CITYNEWS NEWS -- November November20 13,,2024 2024 -- November November26, 19,2024 2024 THE THE INNER-CITY NEWS December 23 December 30, 2025 July 2016 THEINNER-CITY INNER-CITY NEWS February 05 2025 February 11, --August 02, INNER-CITY NEWS INNER-CITY NEWS July27, 27, 2016 THE NEWS - -November 13 ,, 2024 -- November 19,2025 2024 August 02, 2016 2016

Garrity Asphalt Reclaiming, Inc seeks: VERSIÓN REVISADA

NOTICE Construction DE Equipment Mechanic preferably experienced in Reclaiming NOTICE AVISO AUDIENCIA PÚBLICA PARAand NOTICE Road Milling Equipment. We offer factory training on equipment we operate.

LA AUTORIDAD DECTVIVIENDA DE NEW HAVEN Location: Bloomfield We offer excellent hourly rate &(ECC/HANH) excellent benefits

VALENTINA MACRIDE RENTAL HOUSING PRE- APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE INFORME ANUAL TRABAJO (MTW) DEL AÑO FISCAL 2024

VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL HOUSING PREAVAILABLE VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL HOUSING PRE-APPLICATIONS APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE Contact: Tom Dunay Phone: 860243-2300

Email: tom.dunay@garrityasphalt.com behalf ofVII Columbus House the New Housing Authority, La HOME SecciónINC, II y on la Sección del Acuerdo de and Trabajo de laHaven Autoridad {el "Acuerdo") HOME on House and Authority, INC, onbehalf behalf ofColumbus Columbus House and the NewHaven Housing Authority, Women &laof Minority Applicants arethe encouraged toHousing apply is HOME accepting pre-applications for studio and one-bedroom apartments at this develexige que INC, antes de que Agencia pueda presentar suNew Plan yHaven Informe Anual de Trais accepting pre-applications for and one-bedroom apartments atat this development located at 108 FrankAction/ Street, New Haven.

Maximum income limitations apis accepting forstudio studio and one-bedroom apartments this develbajo Aprobado al pre-applications Departamento de Vivienda yOpportunity Desarrollo Urbano de los EE. UU. (el Affi rmative Equal Employer opment located atat108 Frank Street, New Maximum income ap"HUD"), debe realizar una audiencia pública, considerar los beginning comentarios del público ply.

Pre-applications will be available from 9AM TO 5PM Monday Ju;y opment located 108 Frank Street, NewHaven.

Haven.

Maximum incomelimitations limitations apply.

Pre-applications will from 9AM 5PM beginning Monday Ju;y sobre las enmiendas propuestas, obtener aprobación de la(approximately Junta de Comisionados y 25,ply.

2016 and ending when sufficient pre-applications 100) have Pre-applications willbebeavailable availablela from 9AMTO TO 5PM beginning Monday Ju;y 25, and when (approximately have presentar las enmiendas HUD. been received atending thealoffices ofsufficient HOMEpre-applications INC. Applications will be mailied100) upon re25,2016 2016 andending whensufficient pre-applications (approximately 100) have been atHOME HOME INC. Applications will bebe upon reEl período decalling comentarios de (30) días comienza el viernes 1mailied de noviembre de quest byreceived INCtreinta atofof 203-562-4663 during hours.

Completed preReclaimer Operators and Milling Operators with those current and clean beenreceived atthetheoffices offices HOME INC. Applications willlicensing mailied upon re2024 y finaliza el sábado 30 de noviembre de 2024.

Se pondrán a disposición copias quest by calling HOME INC at 203-562-4663 during those hours.

Completed preapplications must be returned to HOME INC’s offices at 171 Orange Street, Third driving record, be willing to travel throughout the Northeast & NY. prequest by calling HOME INC at 203-562-4663 during those hours. Completed delapplications Informe Moving toCT Work (MTW) del año fiscaloffices 2024 at en 171 el sitio web Street, de la agencia must totoHOME Orange Floor, New Haven, 06510.

We offer excellent hourly rate &offices excellent benefi ts Street,Third applications mustbe bereturned returned HOMEINC’s INC’s at 171 Orange Third www.elmcitycommunities.org o a través de Twitter, www.twitter.com/ECCommunities Floor, New Haven, CT 06510.

Floor, New Haven, CT 06510. o a través de Facebook www.facebook.com/ElmCityCommunities.

Contact: Rick Tousignant Phone: 860- 243-2300 Se le invita a enviar comentarios por escrito dirigidos a: ECC/HANH, Moving to Work FY2024 Annual Report, Attn:rick.tousignant@garrityasphalt.com Evelise Ribeiro, 360 Orange Street, New Haven, CT Email: MACRI DE ALQUILERarePRE-SOLICITUDES DISPONIBLES 06511VALENTINA o por correo electrónico a: eribeiro@elmcitycommunities.org.

Women &VIVIENDAS Minority Applicants encouraged to apply De conformidad con las Secciones II y VII mencionadas, se ha programado una audiVALENTINA MACRI VIVIENDAS DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDES DISPONIBLES Affi rmative Action/DE Equal Opportunity Employer DISPONIBLES VALENTINA MACRI VIVIENDAS ALQUILER HOME INC,enenlanombre la Columbus House y de New Haven Housing está encia pública que se de aceptarán y registrarán loslaPRE-SOLICITUDES comentarios públicosAuthority, para el lunes aceptando pre-solicitudes para estudios y apartamentos de un dormitorio en este desarrollo 25 HOME de noviembre de 2024 a las 3:00 p. m. a través de RingCentral: https://v.ringcentral.

INC, en nombre de la Columbus House y de la New Haven Housing Authority, está HOMEenINC, en nombre de la Columbus House y de Se la New Haven Housing Authority, está com/join/185686287?pw=d7db4e4f735df6289ed5adfb24f3f113 ubicado la calle 109 Frank Street, yNew Haven. limitaciones ingresos aceptando pre-solicitudes para estudios apartamentos deaplican un dormitorio en estededesarrollo aceptando pre-solicitudes para estudios y apartamentos de unp.m. dormitorio en esteMartes desarrollo máximos.

Las pre-solicitudes estarán disponibles 09 a.m.-5 comenzando 25 ubicadoTrailer en la calle 109forFrank Street, New Haven.

Se aplican limitaciones ingresos & Highway Equipment.

Mustde have a100) CDL IDTractor de la reunión: ubicado en laDriver calle185686287 109 Frank Street, New Construction Haven.

Se aplican limitaciones de ingresos julio, 2016 hasta cuando seHeavy han recibido suficientes pre-solicitudes (aproximadamente máximos.clean Las driving pre-solicitudes estarán disponibles 09heavy a.m.-5equipment; p.m. comenzando Martes 25 License, record, ofdisponibles operating willing to travel Contraseña: enmáximos. las oficinas depre-solicitudes HOME INC.capable Las pre-solicitudes serán enviadas porbe correo aMartes petición Lasyaw6Zk28PK estarán 09 a.m.-5 p.m. comenzando 25 julio, 2016 hasta cuando se han&recibido suficientes pre-solicitudes (aproximadamente 100) throughout the Northeast NY. We offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefi ts llamando a HOME INC al 203-562-4663 durante esas horas.Pre-solicitudes deberán remitirse julio, 2016 hasta cuando se han Las recibido suficientes pre-solicitudes (aproximadamente 100) en las oficinas de HOME INC. pre-solicitudes serán enviadas por correo a petición O marque: a las de HOME INCINC. en 171 Street, tercer New Haven , CT 06510 . en oficinas las oficinas HOME LasOrange pre-solicitudes seránpiso, enviadas pordeberán correo a petición llamando a HOMEdeINC al 203-562-4663 durante esas horas.Pre-solicitudes remitirse +12679304000 Estados Unidos (Filadelfia, PA) llamando a HOME INC al 203-562-4663 durante esas horas.Pre-solicitudes deberán remitirse Email: a las oficinas de HOME INCde endana.briere@garrityasphalt.com 171reunión: Orange Street, tercer piso, New Haven , CT 06510 .

Código de acceso/ID la 185686287 a las oficinas de HOME INC en 171 Orange Street, piso, New & Minority Applicants are tercer encouraged toHaven apply, CT 06510 .

ContraseñaWomen de acceso telefónico: 9296952875

Garrity Asphalt Reclaiming, Inc seeks: NOTICIA NOTICIA NOTICIA

Union Company seeks: Contact Dana at 860-243-2300

Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer

Números internacionales disponibles: https://v.ringcentral.com/teleconference

NEW HAVEN Construction

Cualquier persona que requiera una adaptación razonable para participar en la audienciaSeeking puede llamar al Gerente de adaptaciones razonables (203) 498-8800, ext.and 1506 o al to employ experienced individuals in the labor,Ave foreman, operator teamster 242-258 Fairmont número (203) 497-8434. trades TDD for a (203) heavy 497-8434.mber outside work statewide.

Reliable personal transportation and a valid 2BR Townhouse, 1.5Fairmont BA, 3BR, 1orlevel , 1BA drivers license required. To242-258 apply please call (860) 621-1720 send resume to: Personnel Ave All newP.O. apartments, new appliances, new carpet, 242-258 Fairmont Aveclose to I-91 & I-95 Department, Box 368, Cheshire, CT06410.

NEW NEWHAVEN HAVEN

Listing: Mechanic

2BR Townhouse, BA,&3BR, 1 center level , 1BA highways, near 1.5 bus stop shopping 2BR Townhouse, 1.5Opportunity BA, 3BR, 1close level , 1BA All new apartments, new appliances, new carpet, to I-91 & I-95 Affi rmative Action/Equal Employer underfor40lb allowed.

Interested parties to contact Maria @M/F/V 860-985-8258 ImmediatePet opening a full-time mechanic; maintenance be done on commercial diesel&trucks All new apartments, new appliances, new carpet, close to I-91 I-95 and Drug Free Workforce highways, near bus stop & shopping center trailers. A valid driver’s license is required in order to run company errands efficiently and safely. Send highways, near busCTstop & or shopping center resume to:Pet HRunder Manager, O. Box 388, Guilford, 06437 email hrdept@eastriverenergy.com 40lbP.allowed.

Interested parties contact Maria @ 860-985-8258 CT. Unified Deacon’s Association is pleased to offer a Deacon’s underThis 40lb allowed.

Interested parties contact Maria @formation 860-985-8258 Listing: Commercial CertificatePet Program. is a 10 month program designed to assist in the Driver intellectual of Candidates

Town of Bloomfield

Salary Range:

$87,727 to $136,071 TheDeputy Stateof ofConnecticut, Connecticut, Officeofof The State Office Finance Policy Policyand andManagement Management is is recruiting recruitfor Director/Controller ing foran anInformation InformationTechnology Technology

Senior(Information Policy Advisor to the Manager Technology Pre-employment drug testing.

Secretary Finance.

Manager 1) in in the the Office Office of of Finance.

AA/EOE.regarding the Furtherinformation information Further regarding the Details go to duties,For eligibility requirements and duties, eligibility requirements and www.bloomfieldct.org application instructions are available at: application instructions are available at: https://www.jobapscloud.com/CT/ https://www.jobapscloud.com/CT/ sup/bulpreview.asp?b=&R1= sup/bulpreview.asp?b=&R1= 241015&R2=5571MP&R3=001 250105&R2=1561MP&R3=001

QSR STEEL The State of Connecticut is an equal opportunity/ The State of Connecticut is an equal affirmative action employer and opportunity/ strongly affirmative action employer andofstrongly encourages the applications women, encourages the persons applications women, minorities, and withofdisabilities. minorities, and persons with disabilities.

CORPORATION

APPLY NOW!

WANTED

Steel Fabricators, Erectors & Welders Top pay for top performers. Health Benefits, 401K, Vacation Pay. Email Resume: Rose@qsrsteel.com Hartford, CT AFFIRMATIVE ACTION/EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

TRUCK DRIVER Construction

LEGAL ADVERTISEMENT CHIEF NOTICE OF STOCKPERSON PUBLIC HEARING ADVERTISEMENT FOR BIDS FOR THE ELM CITYCOMMUNITIES, HOUSING AUTHORITY OF NEW HAVEN (ECC/HANH) REVISED VERSION

The Town of Wallingford Electric Division is seeking a highly motivated individual to MOVING TO WORK (MTW) FY2024 ANNUAL REPORT supervise the Redevelopment Division’s perpetual and real-time material inventories, including various The Milford & Housing Partnership (MRHP) is seeking sealed bids for records and reports pertaining to inventory control, material usage, workCT. orders. the following Fire Alarm Upgrades at Catherine McKeen Village in and Milford Bids Section II and Section VII of the Authority's Moving to Work Agreement {the "AgreeApplicants shoulduntil possess a H.S.5,diploma equivalent, and 3 yearsRedevelopment of experience in will be received December 2024 ator2:00 pm at the Milford & ment") requires that before the Agency can file its Approved Annual Moving to Work storekeeping, materials management, and/or inventory control.

1 year of supervisory Housing Partnership offi ces located at 75 DeMaio Drive, Milford, CT 06460.

All bids Report and Report to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (the experience is preferred.

Must possess and maintain a valid Connecticut Driver’s Liwill be opened and read aloud. pre-bid walk thru will be held on November 18, 2024 "HUD") that it must conduct aA public hearing, consider comments from the public on cense.

Wages: $41.63 to Drive, $43.92Milford, hourly. The Town offers an excellent fringe benefits at 2:00 pm at 95 Jepson CT, Catherine McKeen Village – Community the proposed amendments, obtain approval from the Board of Commissioners, and subpackage that includes pension plan, paid sick and vacation time, individual and family Room.

Contract documents mit the amendments to HUD.including plans & specifications can be viewed on-line and medical insurance, life insurance, 13 paid holidays, and voluntary deferred compenpurchased from Digiprint’s website November 11, 2024.

Visit www.diThe thirty (30) days comment periodbeginning begins on on Friday, November 1, 2024 to Saturday, sation plan.30, To 2024 apply online

by Security the December 6,$25K 2024 closing pleasePerformance/ visit: www.

- Join Our Head Start Team -date, giprintplanroom.com.

5%copies Bid (Over ONLY) and 100% November and of the Moving to Work (MTW) FY2024 Report, will Elm CityONLY) Communities esta actualmente wallingfordct.gov/government/departments/human-resources/.

Applications also Payment Bonds (Over required. Bidders will noteorrequirements be made available on the$100K agency websiteare www.elmcitycommunities.org viaare Twitter, aceptando aplicaciones para la lista de available at the Department of Human in Room #301 of the Town of minimum wage rates, nondiscrimination/equal opportunity rules (Executive Order www.twitter.com/ECCommunities or viaResources Facebooklocated www.facebook.com/ElmCityComespera de Crawford Manor Hall, 45 South Main Street, Wallingford, CT 06492.

Phone: (203) 294-2080; Fax: (203) 11246) and related provisions in the General Conditions. No bid shall be withdrawn for munities.

294-2084. sixty (60) EOE days. Complete bidding requirements are noted in the Contract Documents.

Crawford Manor, ubicado en un vecindario bienmust establecido, estáthe following This project is federally assisted. with You are invited to provide writtenTherefore, commentsbidders addressed to:comply ECC/HANH, Moving to aceptando solicitudes para suDevelopment lista de espera.

Esta oportunidad de Open Positions: requirements: Housing and Urban Act of 1968; Equal Opportunity proviWork FY2024 Annual Report, Attn: Evelise Ribeiro, 360 Orange Street, New Haven, vivienda es exclusivamente para personas mayores y con discapacidades. sions of Executive Order 11246; Non-Discrimination provision of Title VI of the Civil CT 06511 or via email to: eribeiro@elmcitycommunities.org.

Family Advocate La comunidad ofrece apartamentos tipo estudio y de una habitación Rights Act of 1964; Labor Standards provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act and related acts con diseños espaciosos, que incluyen dormitorios más grandes y Compliance and Contract Work HoursIIStandards Act; prevailing wage determinations as issued by Pursuant said Sections andManager VII),Division a public where public comments willfor be The Townto of Wallingford ishearing seeking skilled applicants balcones privados.

LosElectric residentes disfrutan de un highly acceso conveniente a the Unitedand States Department of Labor; and all applicable provisions under Title I of the accepted recorded is scheduled for Monday, November 25, 2024 at 3:00pm via Full-Time Assistant Teacher First Class Lineman.

Applicantsmédica, must be atransporte H.S, trade school, or yvocational high school instalaciones de atención público entretenimiento Housing and Community Development Act of 1974.

RingCentral: graduate with https://v.ringcentral.com/join/185686287?pw=d7db4e4f735df6289ed5ad 4 de years’ experience in electric line construction/maintenance en el centro la ciudad, además de servicios de mantenimientowork de with Part-Time Assistant Teacher MRHP is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer and Housing Provider. fb24f3f113 experience working with energized 13,800-volt equipment. Must possess and maintain emergencia las 24 horas.

(Hourly Rate: $16.35) Any individual with a disability who needs special assistance to participate should cona valid Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) to operate equipment. Wages: $51.88 to tact Cheryl Giers at Town cgiers@mrhp.org at least five (5) days before the bid opening.

Meeting ID: 185686287 $57.67Apply hourly.

The offers an excellent fringe benefits package that includes penonline Password: yaw6Zk28PK REQUIREMENTS: sion plan, paid sick and vacation time, individual and family medical insurance, life inLos ingresos no deben superar el 80 % del ingreso Anthony J.Scan Vasiliou, Executive Director or13 surance, paid holidays, and voluntary deferred compensation plan. To apply online medio del área (AMI).& Consulte laPartnership tabla a Or dial:Redevelopment Milford Housing FAMILY ADVOCATE PART TIME FULL TIME code bycontinuación theQR December 6, 2024 closing date, please visit: www.wallingfordct.gov/governpara conocer los límites máximos por JOB ID: 5918 de ingresos TEACHER TEACHER +12679304000 (Philadelphia, PA)familiaresJOB 75 DeMaio Drive United States COMPLIANCE MANAGER ID: 3724 ment/departments/human-resources/.

Applications are also available atlathe Department ID: 6183 en tamaño de familia. La inclusión en la lista de espera seJOB basará fecha www.NHPS.net Access Code / Meeting ID: 185686287 JOB ID: 5927 Milford, CT 06460 hora enResources que se reciba la solicitud. solicitudes se sellarán la fecha ofyHuman located in Room Las #301 of the Town Hall, 45con South Main Street, Dial-in password: 203-877-3223 y hora a medida que9296952875 se reciban. ¡Use el código QRL para294-2084. presentarEOE su Wallingford, CT 06492.

Phone: (203) 294-2080; Fax: (203)

WE ARE HIRING

Lineman – Electric Utility

Seeking to employ experienced individuals in the labor, foreman, operator and teamster trades for a heavy solicitud! outside work statewide. Reliable perInternationalAvenue, numbersNew available: 241 Quinnipiac Havenhttps://v.ringcentral.com/teleconference which are two bedrooms and rent from Invitation to Bid: sonal transportation and a valid driv# Personas PLUMBING WORKERS NEEDED. Have you wanted to become a plumber work in off the $1,950-$2,000 and include heat, hot ever water and2 cooking gas, private or entrance, nd 1 enael hogar ers license required. To apply please2 Notice Any individual Reasonable to participate in thejourneymen hearing plumbing field?requiring LBR Mechanical is seeking plumbing mechanics, street parking and onsite laundry.Corp I Accommodation have a couple with washer/dryer which are Invitation to Bid: $74,350 Máximo may call the for Reasonable Accommodation Manager (203) 498-8800, ext. 1506inorplumbat the call (860) 621-1720 or send resume and helpers construction project$65,050 located in LLC, Bridgeport, CT. Experience Invitation to Bid: $2,000.

Pleasea bill 241 Quinnipiac Avenue, 111 Roberts Street, Suite G1, nd TDD Number (203) 497-8434.

Please send resume to: Personnel Department, P.O.to Box2 ndNotice ing/heating, construction and roughing a plus.

Will train the right candidates.

Driver’s East Hartford, CT 06108.

2 Notice CT Solicite en línea en https://ecc.myhousing.com Invitation forcall Bid 368, Cheshire, CT06410. Old Saybrook, license and proof of citizenship required. Please 914-276-1493 for an application attielordan@gmail.com

Truck Driver with clean

CDL license New Emergency Generator at Bonnie Acres

SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE The Housing Authority of the City of Bristol SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE descargue una aplicación en: (4 Buildings,The 17 Units) Housing Authority ofo the City of Bristol (BHA) is seeking sealed bids from a

SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE

to startI your new PJF Construction Corporation AA/EOE Also, a 3 career. bedroomhttp://www.elmcitycommunities.org unit at 254 Fairmont Avenue, New Haven. They rent Old Prevailing Saybrook, CThave Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity qualified contractor for a New Emergency Generator at Bonnie Acres, 59 Vance Dr., Tax Exempt & Not Wage Rate Project for $2,050 and the tenant pays all the utilities. Off street parking and private Old Saybrook, CT Employer M/F/V CT. Sealed bids will berecibir received or before p.m.

(4 Buildings,Bristol, 17 Units) Para unaon solicitud por 2:00 correo, porEST, favorThurs, llame Dec. 475- 19, entrance.

Section 8 welcomed.

Drug Free Workforce (4 Buildings, 17 Units) 2024, and publicly opened, forthwith at BHA’s office at 164 Jerome Ave., Bristol, CT

355-7289 o envíeand una paving solicitud por escrito a Atención: Galasso a quarry contractor, has positions Exempt & NotHousing, Prevailing Wage Materials Rate Project LLC, New Construction,TaxWood Framed, Selective Demolition, Site-work, Waitlist Elm City Communities, Box 1912, 06010.

Sealed bidProject packages must Coordinator, beCastclearly marked “New Generator PO at Bonnie Acres” Tax Exempt & Not Prevailing Wage Rate open for the upcoming construction season.

We are seeking candidates Also, I have a 2Siding, bedroom atNo 248 Fairmont Avenue, Haven. They rent for Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity including veterans*** New Haven, CT 06509 in-place Concrete, AsphaltAttention: Shingles, Vinyl in***An response to the Church’s Ministry needs.

The costEmployer, is $125. Classes start disabled Saturday,and August 20, 2016 1:30Mitzy Rowe, CEO. electronic bids will be New accepted.

3:30Unified Contact: Chairman, Deacon Joe J. Davis, for a variety of including: Scalehouse Equip$1,950.00 and the positions, tenant pays all utilities.

Off street parking private CT. Deacon’s Association is pleased toM.S., offerB.S. a Deacon’s New Construction, Framed, Housing, Selective Demolition, Site-work, CastA pre-bid walk through will be held onthe Thurs., Dec. 5, 2024, atDispatcher/ 2:00 p.m. and Please meet Flooring, Painting,Wood Division 10 Specialties, Appliances, Residential Casework, Full Class driver for aprogram fast-paced forChurch daysof64 and week(203)Time 996-4517 Host,BGeneral Elijah Davis, D.D.petroleum Pastor of Pitts company Chapel U.F.W.B. Brewster Certificate Program.

ThisAssociation is a 10Bishop month designed to assist in the intellectual formation Candidates Las solicitudes se pueden presentaCastCT. Unified Deacon’s is pleased to offer a Deacon’s entrance.

Section 8 welcomed.

New Construction, Wood Framed, Housing, Selective Demolition, Site-work, ment Operators and Laborers.

NO PHONE CALLS. Please email rein front of 59 Vance Dr., Bristol, CT 06010.

Attendance is strongly recommended for all Continuum of Care, New Haven, Connecticut – in-place Concrete, Asphalt Shingles, Vinyl Siding, in response to the Church’s Ministry needs.

The cost is $125.

Classes start Saturday, August 20, 2016 1:30ends.

Previous experience required.

Competitive wage, 401(k) and benefits.

Send Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection.

St.Certificate New Haven, CT • En persona en 356 Orange St, New Haven, CT06511 Program.

This isthe a 10 month program designed to assist in the intellectual formation of Candidates clientsPolice Advertising and cultivation existing and new advertising is key toOfficer the growth and 3:30 Chairman, Deacon Joe J. needs.

Davis, M.S., B.S.of bidders.

TheVinyl deadline for de RFI shall beenFri., Dec. 13, 2024, ato2:00 pm.LLC, Conin-place Concrete, Asphalt Shingles, Siding, sume and cover letter to “Hiring Manager”, Galasso Materials in Contact: response to theManager, Church’s Ministry The cost is $125. Classes start Saturday, August 20, 2016 1:30(a través unquestions buzón ubicado la puerta principal); resume to: HR P. O. Box 388, Guilford, CT 06437 or email HRDept@ Flooring, Painting, Division 10 Specialties, Appliances, Residential Casework, This contract is subject to state set-aside and contract compliance requirements.

(203) Host, General Bishop Elijah Davis, D.D. PastorNews. of Pitts Chapel U.F.W.B. Church Brewster Please bill the por Fairmont Avenue 258 Fairmont Avenue, LLCpurchased continued success of Joe The Inner-City The paper is64delivered weekly to businesses, schools, tract documents 3:30996-4517 Contact: Chairman, Deacon J. Davis, M.S., B.S. including plans &CT specifications can be Haven, viewed online • Enviada correo al PO Boxto1912, New CT 06509and eastriverenergy.com POAppliances, Box 1776, East Granby 06026.

Flooring, Painting, Division 10 Specialties, Residential Casework, full-time (203) 996-4517 Host, General Bishop Elijah Davis, D.D. Pastor of Pitts Chapel U.F.W.B. Church 64 Brewster Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection.

St. New Haven, CT at the same billing address as 241 Quinnipiac Avenue. from Advanced Reprographics website www.advancedplanroom.com or by calling shopping outlets and wherever newspapers can be found. This is a remote sales position.

Electrical, and Fire Protection.

St. New Haven, CTINVITATION TO BID: CONTINUUM OF CARE, NEW HAVEN Bid Extended, DuePlumbing Date: 5,compliance 2016 usted acomodación para completar su aplicación This contract isMechanical, subject to state set-aside andSi August contract requirements.

I410-1020. willnecesita be the contact personrazonable for them to call at 860-231-8080, ext.llame 161.al LEGAL NOTICE (860) *****An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer including Disabled and Veterans***** Galasso Materials is an Affirmative Action/Equal 203-498-8800 ext. 1507 Opportunity Employer.

This contract is subject to state set-aside and contract compliance requirements. is requesting licensed and insured contractor bids for their property located at 979 QuinA 5% Bid Security and 100% Performance/Payment Bonds are required.

Bidders will Anticipated Start: August 15, 2016 All applicants will considered for employment attention to race, color, Work closely with Publisher and editor toofcreate a successful sales strategy.

Lasbesolicitudes estarán disponibleswithout el 31/01/2025 Sealed bids New are invited thethe Housing Authority of the Town Seymour nipiac Avenue, Haven. by Complete first floor kitchen renovation.

Scope to include note requirements of minimum wage rates,national nondiscrimination/equal opportunity rules Project documentsDue available via ftpsex, link below: religion, orientation, gender identity, origin, veteran or disability status.

Bid Extended, Date: August 5, 2016 Las solicitudes debenprovisions presentarse del 07/03/2025 until 3:00layout. pm onOwner Tuesday, August atScope its office 28 Smith Street,motivated. new kitchen to Must supply new to alsoatinclude new flooring (Executive Order 11246) and related inantes the General Conditions. No bid shall be2,cabinets. a2016 self-starter and highly http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=sayebrookevillage BidAnticipated Extended, Start: Due Date: August 5, 2016 August 15, 2016 of Seymour, area. Job also includes complete first floor bathroom renovation.

This includes a be withdrawn for sixty (60) days. Complete bidding requirements are noted in the Con06483 for by Concrete Sidewalk Repairsofand at the Sealed bidsCTare invited the Housing Authority theReplacement Town of Seymour August 2016below: complete gut (down to studs) of theLiving bathroom.

Environmental testing will be conducted ProjectAnticipated documentsStart: available via 15, ftp link tract Documents.

Smithfield Gardens Assisted Smith Sealed are invited byAugust the Housing Authority of Street the Town of Seymour 3:00bids pm onincludes Tuesday, 2,Facility, 2016 at26its 28Seymour.

Smith Fax or Email Questions & Bids to: Dawn Lang available @ 203-881-8372 dawnlang@haynesconstruction.com byuntil the owner.

Scope supplying and installing newoffice step inatshower stall,Street, vanity, This project is federally assisted. Therefore, bidders must comply with the following Project documents via ftp link below: http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=sayebrookevillage Opening for a and full time HVAC/Oil/Heating Technician forRepairs Bids HCC encourages the participation of all Veteran,requirements: S/W/MBE & Section 3 Certified Businesses until 3:00CTpm onwall Tuesday, August 2016 at office at 28 travel.

Smith Street, Seymour, 06483 forInvitation Concrete and lighting, Replacement at the toilet, tile flooring and finishes, tileSidewalk 4ft2, wainscot is its desired, grab bars by Housing Urban Development Act of 1968; Equal Opportunity proviPotential local http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=sayebrookevillage Haynes Construction Company, 32 Progress Ave, Seymour, CT 06483 A pre-bid conference will be held at the Housing Authority Office 28 Smith toilet and showers, fan Concrete with motion sensor, and baseboard heating.

The scope Apprentice.

Candidate mustfor possess a technical sions of Executive Order 11246; Non-Discrimination provision of Title VI ofschool the Civil Seymour, CT exhaust 06483 for Sidewalk Repairs and Replacement at the and Skills: Smithfield Gardens Assisted Living Facility, 26 Smith Street Seymour.

Senior Sales Representative Qualifi cations City Bristol Invitation BIDS Agency Wide Driveway Repair, Milling, Sealcoating and Striping Fax or Emailof Questions & Bids to: DawnAA/EEO Lang @EMPLOYER 203-881-8372 dawnlang@haynesconstruction.com of Street work toSeymour, include floor for the bathroom.

Scope toJuly include replacement exist- communication CTdrain atAssisted 10:00 am, on Wednesday, 20, 2016.Seymour.

Rights Act ofWide 1964; Labor Standards provisions&ofPreventative the Davis-Bacon Maintenance Act and related acts Agency Plumbing Services Communicates well and has 26 strong written and of verbal skills.

Smithfield Gardens Living Facility, Smith Street

Senior Sales RepresentativePortland Wanted

LEGAL NOTICE INVITATION TO BID SEYMOUR HOUSING AUTHORITY SEYMOUR HOUSING AUTHORITY

Sales 360 MANAGEMENT GROUP, CO. Go to www.portlandct.org for details

POLICE OFFICER ENTRY LEVEL Salary (base pay) + Commission to beRepresaentative discussed

SEYMOUR HOUSING AUTHORITY 360 Management Group

Wanted

Listing: Technician Apprentice

certificate in heating, encourages the&participation of all Veteran, S/W/MBE &dawnlang@haynesconstruction.com Section 3 Certified Businesses ventilation, air conditioning, FaxHCC or Email Questions Bids to: Dawn Lang @ 203-881-8372 ing windows, entry doors. Owner to select tile style, colors, and style of faucets and and Contract Work Hours Standards Act; prevailing wage determinations as issued by Knows effective ways to market products and services and learns offerings quickly.

3A 60pre-bid Management Group is currently bids from qualified contractors to about new Haynes the Construction Company, 32 Progress Ave,&Seymour, CT 06483Businesses will be held atseeking the be Housing Authority Office Smith HCC$78,813/yr. encourages participation of all Veteran, S/W/MBE Section 3 Certified light fixtures. conference Further detailed information will given on the scheduled site28 visit.

GC oil, propane andCo.ofnatural Send resume to: the United States Department Labor; andgas. allseeking applicable under TitleHR I of the 360 Management Group, Is currently bidsprovisions for Agency Wide PlumbBiddingDriveway documents areindependently available the Seymour Housing Authority Ofperform Repair ,Milling,from and striping on ourmanagement property’s Works well and has advanced time and organization AA/EEO 32 EMPLOYER Haynesskills.

Construction Company, Progress Ave, CT 06483Development Act of 1974 price include dumpster and permit feeds.

Minority/women’s business enterRequired testing, general Ashould pre-bid conference will beam, held atWednesday, the Housing Authority Office 28 Smith Street Seymour, CT at 10:00 onsealcoating July 20, 2016.

Housing andSeymour, Community ing Services & Preventative Maintenance.

A complete copy of the requirements agency wide.

A complete copy of the requirement may be obtained from Elm Manager, P. O. Box 388, Guilford, CT 06437 or email Potential manage sales has good leadership skills. fice,are28encouraged Smith Street, Seymour, CT 06483 (203)representatives 888-4579. prises to Ato bidding meeting will be held at 979and Quinnipiac Street Seymour, CTapply. at 10:00 am, onsite Wednesday, July 20, 2016. info, and apply online:AA/EEO EMPLOYER may be obtained from 360 Management Group’s vendor Collaboration Portal.

City’s Vendor Collaboration Portal. https://newhavenhousing.cobblestonesysBuilds relationships customers coworkers and The Housing Authority ofHRDept@eastriverenergy.com the City of Bristol is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. SBE, MBE, Avenue, New Haven on 11/22/2024 atwith 1pm.

All bids are and due by 12/6/2024 at 10 has am. strong interpersonal skills.

Bidding documents are available from the Seymour Housing Authority Ofhttps://newhavenhousing.cobblestonesystems.com/gateway beginning on tems.com/gateway/ beginning Wednesday, www.bristolct.gov An associate or bachelor’s degree in marketing, business, or a related major is a plus but not required.

W/DBE, and Section 3 businesses are encouraged to respond.

AllThe bids,Housing W9, work scope timeline andthe copy of license andor questions should bebids, submitAuthority reserves right to accept reject any or all to 28 Smith Street, Seymour, CT 06483 (203) 888-4579.

Bidding documents are available from the Seymour Housing Authority OfAt least [number] years of sales representative experience is preferred. tedfice, in writing to Monica O’Connor via email moconnor@continuumct.org or delivered reduce the scope of the project to reflect available funding, and to waive any DEADLINE: 12-07-25 **An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity 23, Employer including DisabledPM. and Veterans** to 109 Legion Avenue, New Seymour, Haven. CT 06483 (203) 888-4579.

Monday, September 2024, at 3:00 fice, 28 Smith Street,

Weekly Print Publication

Call John

203 435-1387

Interested should apply totheJohn Thomas, eldcomm.com informalities incandidates the bidding, if5, such actions are bestpm interest of theJThomas@penfiEOE November 2025 atin3:00 The Housing Authority reserves the right to accept or reject any or all bids, to Housing Authority. reduce the scope of the project to reflect available anyto The Housing Authority reserves the right to acceptfunding, or rejectand anytoorwaive all bids, informalities in theofbidding, if such actions are infunding, the bestand interest of the reduce the scope the project to reflect available to waive any

19 15 22 23 20

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - December 23, 2025 - December 30, 2025

One Big Beautiful Bill Act Complicates State Health Care Affordability Efforts

by Bernard J. Wolfson, KFF Health News

As Congress debates whether to extend the temporary federal subsidies that have helped millions of Americans buy health coverage, a crucial underlying reality is sometimes overlooked: Those subsidies are merely a band-aid covering the often unaffordable cost of health care.

Connecticut, California, Massachusetts, and five other states have set caps on health care spending in a bid to rein in the intense financial pressure felt by many families, individuals, and employers who every year face increases in premiums, deductibles, and other health-related expenses.

Hospitals and other health care providers are citing Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Donald Trump in July, as one more reason to challenge those limits.

The law is expected to reduce federal Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion over a decade, which mathematically should help the overall health care system meet the caps. But the law is also expected to increase the number of uninsured Americans, mostly Medicaid beneficiaries, by an estimated 10 million people. Health care analysts predict hospitals and other providers will raise prices to cover the double whammy of lost Medicaid revenue and the cost of caring for an influx of newly uninsured patients.

Whether regulators in some states will allow providers to justify higher prices and exceed the spending caps is unclear.

Only California and Oregon can penalize providers financially if they fail to meet targets.

“Are we going to say, ‘That’s OK’? Or are we going to say, ‘Well, you exceeded the target. We’re still going to penalize you for that’?” said Richard Pan, a former state lawmaker and a member of the California Office of Health Care Affordability’s board. “That has not yet been decided.”

The California Hospital Association, the industry’s main state lobbying group, filed a lawsuit in October asking a state court to strike down the spending caps, which it argued fail to account for all the cost pressures hospitals face. Those pressures, it said, include an aging, sicker population; the rising cost of labor; expensive advances in medical technology; large capital outlays on required seismic retrofitting; and changes in federal policy, including the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The hospital group’s lawsuit also asserted that the state affordability office, by hastily imposing ill-considered cost-cutting targets, was undermining its other key mission of improving health care access, quality, and equity.

California’s affordability office last year set a five-year target to cap statewide spending growth, starting at 3.5% in 2025 and declining to 3% by 2029. The annual caps apply to a wide range of health care entities, including hospitals, medical groups, insurers, and other payers.

Earlier this year, it imposed much lower spending growth caps — starting at 1.8%

with his kids, because he was constantly working to pay off the hospital bill.

Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, where Rodriguez had his surgery, is one of the seven hospitals identified by California’s affordability office as high-cost. A study by the office attributed high hospital prices in Monterey County to a lack of market competition “rather than higher operating costs or superior quality of care.”

The Monterey hospital referred a request for comment about its “high-cost” designation to the California Hospital Association. CHA spokesperson Jan Emerson-Shea declined to comment beyond the language of the lawsuit and Coyle’s press release statement.

Credit: cottonbro studio / Pexels.com

in 2026 and declining to 1.6% by 2029 — for seven “high-cost” hospitals.

“The spending caps set by politically appointed bureaucrats could force cuts that result in many Californians traveling farther for care, facing longer emergency room wait times, experiencing more overcrowding, and losing access to critical services,” Carmela Coyle, the hospital association’s president and CEO, said in an October press release.

The California attorney general’s office, which will represent the affordability agency, has not yet filed a response to the hospital group’s complaint and did not respond to a request for comment.

Hospitals’ Pushback California is not the only state taking a close look at hospital prices, which are widely considered a primary driver of health care costs.

“States, armed with information that points to payments to hospitals as a driver of what is way beyond affordable commercial premiums, have begun to take increasingly targeted actions focused on commercial hospital prices,” said Michael Bailit, founder of the Needham, Massachusetts-based consultancy Bailit Health, which has advised multiple states,

including California, on ways to tame health care spending. “It is not surprising that the hospital industry is going to oppose such state actions.”

In its lawsuit, the California Hospital Association said the affordability office’s own report showed that pharmaceutical and insurance companies are largely responsible for high costs.

Hospitals in some states with cost growth limits, including Connecticut and Massachusetts, have expressed objections similar to the ones raised in the California lawsuit. They could follow their counterparts in California if their lawsuit succeeds, said Peter Lee, who led California’s Affordable Care Act marketplace, Covered California, for over a decade and is now a senior scholar at Stanford Medicine’s Clinical Excellence Research Center.

Lee said the work of California’s affordability office and similar agencies in other states is just about the only systemwide effort being made to cut health care costs. They are basically saying, “‘Look, health care is taking money away from education, it is taking money away from the environment, it is taking money away from everything in the public sector, and in the private sector it is taking money

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away from wages,’” he said. “‘We don’t know how you, the health system, are going to do it, but it is your job not just to provide quality but to lower costs. Here’s the target.’”

To be sure, achieving the cost savings that California and those other states are seeking is no easy lift. It will ultimately require persuading large, financially powerful players that compete fiercely for health care dollars to adopt a different mindset and begin cooperating to reduce costs instead. And that, in many cases, will mean lower revenue.

But the status quo, as many people know all too well, means continued financial pain for millions.

In early 2020, Estevan Rodriguez, a bartender at California’s Monterey Beach Hotel, had surgery for a staph infection in his leg. The bill came to nearly $168,000.

His insurance paid most of it, but he still owed $5,665, which took him two years to pay, more than $200 every month. “It may not be a lot to some people, but it was a lot to me,” Rodriguez said.

He said he dropped his Hulu subscription, switched to a lower-cost cellphone, and got cheaper car insurance. He started going to food banks rather than the grocery store, he said, and had a lot less time

Reduced Competition Health care analysts worry the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will reduce market competition even further by stressing already weak hospitals, leading some to shut services, merge with larger health systems, or close. One study estimates 338 rural hospitals are at risk of closing nationwide.

Less competition, in addition to fewer Medicaid dollars and an increase in uninsured patients, will only strengthen the incentive of health systems with the requisite market clout to raise their commercial prices, increasing premiums for employers and individuals.

“We think commercial prices will continue to increase as health care providers, and hospitals in particular, will seek to preserve or increase their revenue,” said Rachel Block, a program officer at the Milbank Memorial Fund, a foundation that focuses on health equity.

That in turn could pose a challenge to state affordability regulators tasked with overseeing compliance with growth targets for health care spending.

California’s affordability office is required to consider mitigating factors, including changes in federal and state laws.

But some of its board members have expressed skepticism about letting hospitals offset Medicaid losses with higher commercial prices.

“There’s a lot of talk about using HR 1 and other federal policies as an excuse to raise prices on commercial payers,” Ian Lewis, an affordability office board member and policy director for UNITE HERE Local 2, a hospitality workers union in the Bay Area, said at the agency’s July board meeting, referring to the One Big Beautiful Bill. “There’s no more blood to be squeezed from this stone.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF. Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - December 23, 2025 - December 30, 2025

The Connection Between Brain Health & Holiday Loneliness

by Fajr Eutsey, BlackHealthMatters.com

The holiday season can be a joyous time, but it can also bring about stress and loneliness, impacting both our brain health and overall well-being. Spotting early signs of mental decline in ourselves and our loved ones can be tricky, and understanding how to manage these feelings is important.

We had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Sharon A. Brangman, who brings a wealth of experience as a Trustee of the McKnight Brain Research Foundation.

Dr. Brangman shares her wisdom on maintaining brain health, recognizing holiday stress and loneliness, and supporting cognitive well-being during this festive season. We all deserve a joyful and mentally healthy holiday season. So, let’s dive into this discussion and ensure we all take steps to support our well-being during this special time of year.

BHM: What were the key findings of the recent study on brain aging in Black communities, and how do these findings impact our understanding of cognitive health?

Dr. Brangman: While our consumer survey was nationally representative, we can break the data down by demographics and learned that more than 75% of the Black American respondents believe they have control over their physical health as they age compared to only 25% who believe they have control over their brain health.

We also found a lack of awareness around the normal changes that happen as the brain ages. For instance, when respondents were asked how they would react if an older person in their life started forgetting things like names or the day of the

week temporarily and remembered them later, the majority (62%), said they'd be concerned about dementia or Alzheimer's as opposed to realizing they were normal changes that can happen with aging. Additionally, over half of Black American respondents said they haven't felt the need to discuss brain health or cognitive aging with their primary care provider.

Our findings were comparable across all demographic groups who responded to the survey, underscoring the need for education and telling us in the field that we have a lot of work to do when it comes to raising awareness around how the brain changes with age and the importance of protecting your brain health.

BHM: What are some common signs of stress and loneliness during the holiday season that people should be aware of, particularly in the Black community?

Dr. Brangman: While we usually think of the holidays as a happy time, it sometimes can be overwhelming, leading to stress. Some common signs of stress we see around this time may include exhaustion, headaches, digestive problems, and anxiety.

Since the holiday season aligns with the darkening winter months, individuals may feel their stress and loneliness coincide with signs of seasonal depression like a persistent low mood, feelings of guilt or despair, lethargy and fatigue, and

trouble concentrating.

BHM: How does stress and loneliness impact cognition, especially within the Black community?

Dr. Brangman: We know that Black communities are already disproportionately affected by stress through continued social bias and generational trauma which is why these factors are particularly important to address. Through my work, I’ve found that people with strong social ties are less likely to experience cognitive decline than people who spend most of their time alone.

BHM: What are some effective strategies for addressing stress and loneliness to support healthy cognitive aging during

the holidays?

Dr. Brangman: Cultivating connections is important for combating stress and loneliness during the holiday season.

While this time may look different for everyone, there are many ways to foster social connection, including volunteering at a food bank, attending community events, or practicing self-care with comforting activities like exercise, cooking, meditation, or exploring nature.

BHM: How can individuals recognize and address their feelings of loneliness during the holiday season?

Dr. Brangman: The darker winter months and holiday season may lead to feelings of loneliness and disconnection from loved ones, resulting in isolation and sadness. If you start to feel withdrawn or uninterested in your regular activities, it’s important to take the time and effort to forge strong social connections with others, whether they be family, friends, or local community members. However, if these feelings reach a low point and significantly impact your daily life and well-being, please speak with a medical professional.

BHM: What signs should families look for in their loved ones that might indicate cognitive decline, and how can they support them?

Dr. Brangman: At the McKnight Brain Research Foundation, we found there is a gap in understanding what changes are normal as you age versus the signs of a more serious memory problem and this lack of understanding often leads to fear. We launched the Brain Works initiative to reassure people that brain aging is a natural process that starts at birth and continues throughout one’s lifespan.

More serious memory problems typiCon’t on page 18

Statue of Black Teen Activist Replaces Robert E. Lee in U.S. Capitol

By BlackNews.com

The statue of Barbara Rose Johns, an African American civil rights leader who led a student strike at her segregated Virginia high school in 1951, now stands in the U.S. Capitol. It replaces a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and honors her fight for equal education and lasting impact on American history.

According to CBS News, the unveiling in Emancipation Hall drew Virginia officials, members of Congress, and more than 200 of Johns’ relatives. The Eastern Senior High School choir performed songs like “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ’Round,” setting a celebratory tone for the historic moment.

At just 16, Johns led hundreds of her classmates at R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia, in a protest against poor school conditions. Their strike attracted NAACP lawyers, contributing to the Brown v. Board of Education case that ended school segregation in 1954.

The bronze statue shows Johns holding a worn book above her head beside a lec-

17

tern. Its pedestal reads, “Are we going to just accept these conditions, or are we going to do something about it?” and includes the Biblical line, “And a little child shall lead them.” It symbolizes her courage and leadership at a young age.

The statue replaces the Robert E. Lee figure, which stood for 111 years before being removed in 2020 amid renewed attention to Confederate monuments. Virginia leaders said the change honors a true patriot who fought for justice rather than a figure tied to slavery.

Sculpted by Steven Weitzman, the statue now joins the National Statuary Hall Collection in the Capitol’s Crypt, representing Virginia alongside George Washington. Visitors can see it as part of a larger display of 35 statues across the Capitol, celebrating influential Americans.

After her activism, Johns became a librarian, raised five children, and continued to make a quiet impact until her death at 56. Her story is remembered at the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial, and her former high school is now a museum and National Historic Landmark.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - December 23, 2025 - December 30, 2025

November Jobs Report Shows Rising Unemployment and Worsening Outlook for Black Workers

By Stacy M. Brown Black Press USA Correspondent

The U.S. labor market showed further signs of strain in November, with new federal data revealing rising unemployment, steep losses in government jobs, and worsening conditions for Black workers, particularly Black men, according to an analysis of the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report and a review by the National Women’s Law Center.

Employers added 64,000 jobs nationwide in November, a modest gain following months of data disruptions caused by the federal government shutdown. The unemployment rate rose to 4.6 percent, up from 4.4 percent in September, the last month for which a full labor force survey was completed. The increase places unemployment at its highest level in four years.

Behind the headline figures, federal employment continued to fall sharply. Since

January, when Donald Trump returned to office, federal payrolls have declined by

271,000 positions. The November report reveals continued reductions tied to deferred resignation programs and layoffs that accelerated earlier in the fall, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The rise in unemployment has been uneven, with Black workers experiencing some of the most severe impacts. Black men ages 20 and older saw their unemployment rate jump from 6.6 percent in September to 7.5 percent in November.

Black women ages 20 and older recorded an unemployment rate of 7.1 percent in November, slightly lower than September’s 7.5 percent but still higher than any other racial or ethnic group.

Long-term unemployment has also become more pronounced for Black workers. Black women who are unemployed are typically out of work for 14.5 weeks, while Black men face average unemployment spells of 12.1 weeks. By comparison, white women experience unemployment lasting about 8.6 weeks, and white

men about 9.6 weeks, according to the National Women’s Law Center’s review of federal labor data.

The November report shows that overall job growth remains concentrated in a narrow set of sectors. Healthcare added more than 46,000 jobs, while construction employment rose by 28,000. Manufacturing lost 5,000 jobs, and transportation and warehousing shed nearly 18,000 positions. Leisure and hospitality also declined, reflecting broader weakness outside a handful of growth industries.

Federal officials cautioned that November’s data carries higher-than-usual margins of error due to the shutdown-related survey delays. Even so, economists reviewing the report noted that revisions to late summer and early fall payrolls showed fewer jobs than initially reported, reinforcing signs of a cooling labor market.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the number of people unemployed for

Frank Grimsley of The Circle on Living With HS During the Holidays Frank Grimsley on navigating his chronic condition during the season of celebration.

by Fajr Eutsey, BlackHealthMatters.com The holidays are supposed to be a time of joy. It is the kind of joy that shows up in coordinated family photos, crowded living rooms, and long-awaited reunions.

For TV personality and hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) patient Frank Grimsley, known for winning The Circle on Netflix, that joy has often felt out of reach. He began experiencing painful, unexplained symptoms at sixteen and was not officially diagnosed with his condition until 2020. In that time, he missed family traditions, skipped holiday games, and learned to move through celebrations with a kind of vigilance most people never have to think about.

The Reality of HS Frank is one of the 1 in 100 Americans living with HS, based on prevalence estimates reported in JAMA Dermatology.

It is a chronic immune-related skin condition that causes painful bumps, lesions, and flare-ups in areas where skin rubs together. These flare-ups can make holiday travel unbearable, turn festive outfits into sources of dread, and transform simple gatherings into moments of physical stress. HS is often invisible to others, but its impact is constant.

How HS Shapes the Holidays “Living with HS has always made the holidays feel different for me,” Frank said. “While others focused on the excitement, I was constantly wondering if a flare-up would hit. I felt pressure to show up looking and feeling fine even when I was not.”

Instead of slipping easily into celebration, he found himself quietly calculating pain levels, comfort, and how much his body could handle.

“So, instead of simply enjoying the moment, I often had to prepare myself both physically and emotionally in ways my peers did not.”

When Joy and Pain Collide Frank remembers one holiday in particular. It was a moment that should have been simple and warm.

“I remember spending parts of the holidays feeling really uncomfortable, even when everything around me was joyful,” he said. “On the outside, I looked fine, but inside, I was fighting through discomfort that made even simple moments feel heavy.”

It is the kind of invisible burden many people with chronic illnesses carry, especially during a season that expects cheerfulness.

Adjusting Traditions and Expectations Over time, Frank learned to adapt holiday traditions in ways that protected his body and energy.

“I choose clothing that will not irritate my skin. I try to avoid long stretches of sitting in uncomfortable chairs or tight spaces. I build in moments to step away and rest if I need to,” he explained. “I enjoy the holidays, but I just participate at a pace that honors where my body is.”

Balancing Participation and Pain The desire to be fully present does not disappear, but neither does the unpredictability of HS. “I had to learn that giving myself grace is not the same as missing out,” he said.

“Some years I could do everything, and some years I needed to move slower or say no. My worth is not tied to how much I can physically do.”

What He Wishes Others Understood Frank wishes that people could see the whole picture.

tecting my peace is another. I stick to a gentle routine that keeps my body supported, even when my schedule gets busy.

And honestly, asking for help or slowing down when I need to has made a huge difference.”

“I wish people understood that even when I look fine, I may still be dealing with real discomfort,” he said. “I am not being distant or disengaged if I need to sit something out. I am still grateful to be there. I am just listening to my body.”

Strategies That Help Managing HS during the holidays often means focusing on what can be controlled.

“I take Cosentyx to help manage my symptoms,” Frank said. “Rest is a big one. Staying mindful of stress and pro-

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The Power of Community “Recently, I was part of a Cosentyx event. That was a turning point for me,” Frank said. “Sitting in a room with people who understood this condition on a personal level reminded me of the power of community. Hearing our stories side by side made it clear that none of us are walking this alone.”

During a season when many people with chronic conditions feel isolated, that sense of connection matters.

A Message to Others Living With HS For people navigating HS or any chronic condition during the holidays, Frank offers a message rooted in compassion and truth.

“You are not behind, you are not broken, and you are not alone,” he said. “Your body may move differently, but your light is still just as strong. Take things at your own pace, protect your peace, and know that there is a whole community of people who understand exactly what you are carrying. You belong in every room you enter, exactly as you are.”

Resources: Frank Grimsley (@franknthecity) • Instagram photos and videos The Circle Netflix (@thecirclenetflix) • Instagram photos and videos Prevalence of Hidradenitis Suppurativa: A Systematic Review and Meta-regression Analysis | Dermatology | JAMA Dermatology | JAMA Network Hidradenitis Suppurativa | COSENTYX® (secukinumab)

more than six months rose to 1.9 million in November, up from 1.7 million a year earlier. Wage growth slowed to 3.5 percent over the past year, the weakest pace since before the pandemic, adding pressure on households facing elevated prices and limited job mobility.

The National Women’s Law Center said it will continue monitoring labor market data by race, gender, and industry to assess how job losses and prolonged unemployment affect women and families as federal employment contracts and hiring remains subdued.

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Between Brain Health & Holiday

cally manifest with more intense symptoms, including asking the same question repeatedly, getting lost in familiar places, developing an inability to follow instructions or directions, or forgetting common words when speaking. Other worrisome symptoms might include becoming confused about time, people, and places and having changes in mood or behavior for no apparent reason. These may be signs of an underlying problem.

Talking with a healthcare professional is the first step to understanding what’s causing their memory loss and how to address it.

For additional information, I suggest checking out the McKnight Brain Works webpage, which we have curated to provide resources on better understanding the brain with age and how to talk with loved ones about concerns with their memory.

BHM: Which lifestyle changes are most effective in supporting brain health and mitigating the effects of stress and loneliness?

Dr. Brangman: Adopting a combination of healthy behaviors, which have been shown to reduce cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, will also help you protect your brain health and mitigate the effects of stress and loneliness. * Connecting with people through social activities and community programs can keep your brain active and engaged with the world around you. Social activities may also lower the risk of health problems and improve well-being. Volunteer at your church or community center or share the activities you enjoy with friends and family. * Managing stress and seeking medical attention for any symptoms of depression, anxiety, or any other mental health concerns * Getting 7-8 hours of sleep per night as recommended * Managing your blood pressure, weight, and cholesterol levels to reduce and manage your risk of cardiovascular disease * Talk with your doctor about your health conditions and the medications and supplements you take, as that may impact your cognitive health.

By following Dr. Brangman’s advice, we can create a truly joyful and cheerful season. Stay connected, look out for one another, and prioritize mental well-being.

Here’s to a holiday season filled with happiness and good health.

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