Mayor Elicker Delivers 2026 State of the City Address

(Text below as prepared for delivery | Livestream can be viewed here.)

Good evening, President Walker-Myers, members of the New Haven Board of Alders and fellow New Haven residents.

It's been a stormy stretch for our city, state and country.

This past week, we've been weathering the coldest temperatures and biggest snowstorm our city has faced in years as Mother Nature dumped a foot of snow across the Elm City.

For the last year, we've been weathering the largest super storm our nation has faced in decades with the endless dumpster fire of chaos and cruelty that is Trump Administration.

For the last several years, many working-class families in New Haven and across the nation have been weathering a multi-year storm of inflation and rising costs - and not-so-rising paychecks - making it harder for folks to make ends meet, pay their bills and get ahead.

Whether you're walking outside in the snow, reading the national news or looking at your expenses, for many, it's a stormy and difficult season right now.

Storms are not easy. But one thing that's true, regardless of the storms we face in life, is that the best way to get through them is to get through them together. And that's why, despite these storms that are swirling around us now, I'm confident that the long-range forecast for our city is bright and that the state of our city is strong.

As residents and as a city, we're in this together. We are as united as ever by common purpose, and we are as anchored as ever in shared values.

In fact, in New Haven, we're not shrinking or cowering in the face of life's storms, we're facing them head on.

In New Haven, we're doing big things and bold things. And we will not let the storms of life - whether Winter Storm Benjamin or Superstorm Donald - allow us to shrink from the bigness of our dreams or the boldness of our vision.

We're going big and being bold - in our local economy, housing, public safety, transportation, education, standing up for our neighbors, and continuing to move towards our shared vision of a city where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

So, let's dive in.

Economy & Jobs

When it comes to our local economy, we're going big and we're being bold.

Innovation is happening all over the place in New Haven.

It all starts locally - and we are doing so much to support the heartbeat of New Haven's economy: our small businesses and local entrepreneurs.

The bodega on the corner. The boutique or gift shop that's a go-to spot for birthday gifts and holiday shopping. The local family-owned restaurant that's your own family favorite. Not a week goes by where we don't find ourselves at yet another ribbon cutting for a small local business that's opening up, betting on our city.

Our team, in collaboration with many local partners, is doing so much to support the growth of our small business entrepreneurs. Through city initiatives and in partnership with others like the Community Foundation, we've invested millions in helping small businesses to get that boost they need to start or scale a business and begin to build generational wealth. That's grants to small businesses to support their operational costs, improve their facade or buy equipment like a freezer or a fryer - that initial investment to help their business take those first steps to success. This past year our Small Business Resource Center and partners provided over 200 entrepreneurs with technical assistance, training, access to capital and other business resources.

We've got incredible people with spectacular ideas; entrepreneurs and businesses offering amazing products and services; startups, established companies and educational institutions advancing cutting-edge R & D and state-of-the-art solutions to solve some of society's biggest challenges, all in New Haven.

At the same time that we are helping small businesses, one entrepreneur at a time, New Haven is also a destination of choice for new emerging businesses, a hub for growing industries and a driver of the innovation economy that's powering our future.

New Haven is a national hub for life sciences. The second largest hub in New England and one of the top twenty cities nationwide for National Institute of Health grants.

This past year, transformative investments were made in our city to further accelerate this growth.

New Haven won the State of Connecticut's first-ever Innovation Cluster grant: a $50 million investment that will support new infrastructure, new facilities and new resources in our life sciences industry and the emerging sector of quantum technologies. The effort brings together the public sector, private sector and our academic and research institutions, all working in alignment to help supercharge the next chapter of trailblazing research, innovation, and job growth.

Just like in life sciences, New Haven is also now poised to become a national hub for next generation quantum computing and technology.

Connecticut's new nonprofit QuantumCT and the state's new QuantumCT incubator are going to be based right here in New Haven. This first-of-its-kind, state-of-the-art facility will help build out a new quantum ecosystem. This includes everything from job training for workers to seed grants and incubator space for start-up companies to supporting the development of new discoveries, products and breakthroughs - all powered by quantum super-computing and technological breakthroughs that we can hardly imagine.

We must make sure that as New Haven grows, our residents benefit from that growth.

Biosciences and Quantum are not only creating solutions to some of the world's most challenging problems, but they are creating many opportunities at home. Take Career High School senior Muktadir Chowdhury who is in our first cohort of students participating in New Haven Public Schools' BioCity career pathways program. Working alongside his fellow students and scientists and researchers at some of our leading companies, Muktadir's curiosity for science has flourished, he's already accumulated 30 college credits while at Career and he's now been accepted to Yale University for fall of 2026 and receiving a full scholarship.

Or the fact that $7.8 million is coming into the city budget from taxes from two buildings that wouldn't exist without our bioscience boom: 100 and 101 College Street. For context, $7.8 million is more than our Youth and Recreation Department and Elderly Services Department budgets combined. From jobs to city revenue to inspiring our young people to imagine what they can become, biosciences and Quantum are helping more and more residents thrive.

Housing

Part of serving our businesses, particularly our smaller businesses, is about ensuring there are enough customers - both people who live in our city that are earning more money because we are creating more opportunities, and new people who are choosing to move here because of all New Haven has to offer. Spending power that lives locally is growing power for our small businesses.

When it comes to housing, we're going big and we're being bold.

In my last State of the City address, I announced an ambitious goal of building 10,000 new units of housing over the next ten years - with at least 30 percent of those units affordable.

One year in, we're well on our way to achieving our goal.

In 2025, we brought over 1,500 new housing units online with nearly 19 percent of those affordable units. Altogether, this represents nearly $125 million in investment in housing growth and development.

And guess what? We're just getting started! We have another 5,800 units in the pipeline with over 25 percent of those affordable.

Further, thanks to our new Downtown for All zoning law that was championed by Alders Douglass, Hubbard and Carmen Rodriguez and former Alders Eli Sabin and Kiana Flores - and that I was proud to sign into law - we're now well positioned to help facilitate even more affordable and diverse housing options. This new law increases allowable density, permits taller buildings and removes antiquated regulatory obstacles. Now, in downtown New Haven, the sky's the limit - or at least up to 12 stories.

Building on this success, we are about to embark on a journey with our community to redo our decades-old zoning laws to further encourage the development of affordable housing in a way that works for all in our community and ensures people aren't priced out of our neighborhoods or pushed out from gentrification.

We're also supporting residents in securing and affording their housing too. A resident can start off by finding an affordable unit on our Below Market Rental Registry webpage, which has over 5000 units listed. Then a resident can get a helping hand with our security deposit or downpayment assistance programs, which helped over 400 households this past year. Then a resident can save money on their energy bills with our Energy Efficient Elm City program, which helped over 300 households this past year.

We are also getting better and better at ensuring that all of our residents can live in safe and healthy homes. The Livable Cities Initiative has dramatically increased accountability for bad landlords in our community - ramping up housing code enforcement and ensuring property owners comply with our residential licensing program. In fact, LCI has brought residential license compliance from 35 percent in January of 2024 to over 70 percent today, and that number keeps on climbing. A big thanks goes to the hard work of the team at LCI and the support of our state legislators and alders for giving us new tools to ensure accountability.

Similarly, the Fair Rent Commission has become a model in the state in ensuring residents have fair rents and aren't slammed with excessive one-year rent increases. The FRC has responded to over 400 complaints this past year alone. Thanks to New Haven's leadership, there's now a Statewide Fair Rent Commissions Network of over forty municipalities working together and learning from each other to support residents across the state.

Of course, we know some residents don't even have a place to call home. It's been the coldest stretch in our city for years, and we're working to make sure everyone has a warm and safe place to stay.

That's true on the coldest days of years and all year round. We're working every day with our partners to connect folks to more stable, supportive and long-term housing options.

There is no city in Connecticut that's doing more to create more housing or to connect more people to housing opportunities than New Haven - and we are going to keep at it!

Public Safety

Of course, for every family and every home, we want them to enjoy safe streets and safe neighborhoods.

When it comes to public safety, we're making big gains on crime and being bold with our ongoing commitment to community policing.

Last year, overall, crime went down 23 percent. Violent crime went down by 39 percent. Property crime went down by 22 percent.

Most significantly, gun violence is at the lowest level it's been at any time in the last decade.

Think about why this is and what we have done collectively to provide more resources, new programs, more support to help our community and law enforcement.

A few years ago, we started Elm City COMPASS and the program has grown and grown to ensure our officers can focus on violent and other pressing crimes while at the same time other vulnerable members of our community who are struggling with mental health and substance use challenges can get the appropriate help they need.

We've negotiated a historic police contract and now officers aren't retiring at a fast rate and we're hiring fast too: last month, I swore in the largest class of police recruits we've had since 2018.

We've dramatically increased our use of technology - from installing hundreds of new cameras, to the creation of a real-time crime center, to the purchasing of new equipment that enables us to quickly analyze gun and DNA data, to adopting stop sticks and star chasers and working with our legislators to change state laws - providing us with more tools to hold ATV and dirt bike riders, street racers and people using mega speakers accountable.

Most importantly, we're investing in our young people, which I'll speak more about shortly.

Importantly, we are tackling the challenge of crime head-on by thinking about it holistically - thinking about its roots - and then following through focusing on the details and the big picture.

The men and women of the New Haven Police Department - alongside other city agencies and community partners - are getting the job done on behalf of our residents and we thank them for their service.

That said, we're not taking a victory lap. We have a lot of work to do. One homicide is one too many. One shooting is one too many. And, at this moment, when the police department has faced some unexpected challenges, we have good, strong leadership in Chief David Zanelli. The work goes on, and we have an incredible team that is continuing the work.

Safe Streets

Feeling safe on your street and in your neighborhood also means feeling safe when you're crossing the street, riding your bike or driving your car. And, when it comes to transportation and road safety, we are going big and being bold!

In New Haven, we believe in Safe Streets for All. And we believe in the goal of Vision Zero - where there are zero road-related severe injuries and fatalities.

When I first took office in 2020, there were tragically 21 fatalities from motor vehicle crashes. Drivers, cyclists and pedestrians whose lives were cut senselessly short due to reckless driving. In 2025, the number of fatalities was about half that - which still is far too many and much work remains.

But think about the progress we have made: with increased traffic enforcement by doubling the number of officers in the motor unit, major traffic calming initiatives throughout our city including our Major Corridors initiative and, as I'm sure you've noticed, with speed humps installed on streets all over the city and much more.

What's more, last week, we launched our new school bus safety program to help keep our most vulnerable residents safe: our children. Come March 1^st, every one of our 330 school buses will be outfitted with automated enforcement cameras to identify individuals who are illegally passing stopped school buses and putting our kids at risk.

Every one of our 19,000 students deserve a safe commute to and from school. So, drivers, you are now on notice: if you pass a stopped school bus with its stop sign out and red flashing lights on, there will be a steep price to pay.

Similarly, come later this year, we'll begin to roll out red light and speed safety cameras at fifteen of our most dangerous intersections and corridors. Once again, drivers, be on notice: if you speed by our schools or go through a red light, there will be a price to pay.

Of course, the goal of these measures is not to give out tickets. We wish we never had to issue any fines. Rather, the goal is to encourage responsible driving, keep our kids safe and families safe and help everyone get to their destination.

Transportation

To that end, when it comes to transportation, we're certainly going big and being bold!

New Haven has never been more committed than we are today towards ensuring residents - whether you're a pedestrian, cyclist, public transit user or driver - can get around the city safely, conveniently and affordably.

First, we're providing our residents with more options. Over the past eighteen months, we've introduced three new forms of public transit: our Ride New Haven electric bikeshare program, our ViaNHV rideshare program and our Veo electric scooter program. As thousands of rides and lifts have demonstrated, people can now get around the city like never before - and all three programs are poised to expand in the coming year with more offerings or expanded service areas.

Last week, with the Connecticut Department of Transportation, we shared with the community the initial plans for our new Bus Rapid Transit system. This $300 million investment will provide New Haven residents with faster, safer and more reliable express bus service along our four most heavily ridden corridors of Congress Avenue, Dixwell Avenue, Grand Avenue and Whalley Avenue - with each bus line flowing in and out of downtown.

In addition to more transit options, we're also providing more routes and ways for people to get around. This year we launched our Greenways 2030 initiative, which sets an ambitious goal of completing five major greenways in five years. This will be a 27-mile interconnected network of safe, convenient, arterial routes for walkers, runners and cyclists - separated and protected from motor vehicle traffic - which New Haveners can use for commuting, exercise and connecting to city destinations, neighborhoods, parks and waterways.

Through our Major Corridors initiative, there are many other road and traffic safety infrastructure projects completed or underway: Foxon Boulevard, Quinnipiac Avenue, State Street, Whitney Avenue, Valley Street, and in the pipeline - Howard Avenue, Sherman Parkway, Ferry Street, South Frontage Road, Grand Avenue, Winchester Avenue and more. Street by street, corridor by corridor, we're redesigning and transforming our roads from what used to be thoroughfares designed for suburban commuters to get in and out of the city as fast as possible into safer, multi-modal streets that help our residents get around their own neighborhoods.

Schools & Youth

You know what else makes great neighborhoods? Great schools!

When it comes to our schools and our youth, we're going big and being bold!

Great schools begin with creating the conditions for great teaching and learning and strong school cultures where students and educators can thrive.

That's why we're proud to be the first large urban district in the state to mandate cell phone free schools. Last school year, we mandated it for K through 8. This year, we extended it to all high schools. Now, all our students are enjoying the gift of more focused learning, more in-real-life interactions and more time away from these addictive devices. Also, our educators are now freed up to focus more on actual instruction and not being the "cell phone police."

Strong school cultures are, of course, ultimately driven by the adults in the building: our educators. And we all know that retaining, recruiting and supporting our teachers is essential to student learning and success.

Last month, the Board of Education and New Haven Federation of Teachers finalized a new high-quality contract - now before this Board for final approval - and this contract will help retain, recruit and support our teachers: it provides our teachers with a well-deserved multi-year raise, improved benefits, more preparation days and other important workplace improvements.

While we have a long way to go, our students are also making measurable gains in proficiency and growth in literacy and math, our four-year high school graduation rate is rising, the number of students taking college credit courses is growing, and the number of career pathways and industry certifications completed by our students continues to expand.

We also know that so much happens outside of the classroom and traditional school day with athletics, clubs, afterschool programs and just good old-fashioned play time.

That's why, with the support of our state delegation, we just completed a best-in-class renovation and upgrade of the Floyd Little Athletic Center next to Hillhouse High School. The field house hosts the athletic practices and competitions for basketball, track and field and other indoor sporting events for several of our high schools - and serves as an important recreational space for the community as well.

This coming year, we'll be opening the doors at our new and completely renovated youth and community center in the Hill. After over a decade of being a dilapidated eyesore, the old Barbell Club is going to be reactivated as a vibrant center for free and low-cost activities and programs for children, youth, families and the wider community.

By the way, this will be the fifth renovated youth and community center we've completed so far with two more on the way.

And, thanks to a nearly $7 million grant from the state, we are now poised to activate the long-vacant and dilapidated New Haven Armory and chart its future: a vocational school for New Haven Public School kids, along with new housing and other community uses.

For students who need additional academic help, the New Haven Tutoring Initiative is providing free reading and math assistance to over 1,400 students across 40 sites. Mentors meeting with students multiple times per week helping them with core academics - and, now, afterschool sports programming is being offered to participating middle schoolers. Thank you to the Board of Alders for continuing to support this critical program.

And, by the way, a message to our youth: there may be snow on the ground, but the Youth@Work application for summer jobs is now open! So, if you're interested in a summer job, new skills and a nice paycheck, get your application in!

There is so much good work happening in our schools and in our community - however, there is so much more our children need and our teachers deserve. And, as folks know, we are doing all of this with one hand tied behind our back.

Here's the simple truth: our students, teachers and schools will never get the full support they need until the State of Connecticut updates its education funding formula.

While we in this room have significantly increased the city's annual contribution to New Haven Public Schools every year, we simply haven't seen a comparable increase from the state. That's because the state is using an outdated funding formula that hasn't changed since 2013. You know what else hasn't gone up in cost since 2013? Nothing!

Student needs have far outpaced current levels of state funding and we need a new state education funding formula that's actually tied to inflation and provides additional financial support to our highest-need learners.

Last state legislative session, hundreds of us - students, parents, teachers, community members - went up to the State Capitol to advocate for more funding. The next state legislative session begins this Wednesday and I'm cautiously optimistic that if we advocate and put in the work - and particularly with the help of our hard-working state delegation - that, this year, we're going to see some significant change to how the state funds public education.

Other Challenges

Like school funding, there are other seemingly intractable issues and challenges that have plagued our city for decades. Here, once again, we're going big and being bold.

The English Station power plant: United Illuminating has shamefully left this abandoned site as a dilapidated and contaminated eyesore in our community for over 30 years. Not anymore!

We're going to transform this 8.6-acre waterfront site into one of our city's premier public parks with an aquatic center and athletic courts and fields and make it a recreational destination for our residents. It will also serve as a catalyst for new investment and new housing in the surrounding area - and, together, we will chart a new future for the Mill River district.

The Long Wharf Waterfront: Yes, we love our food trucks! But Long Wharf has also been an unsightly and underutilized waterfront space for decades. Not anymore!

Construction is underway and transforming this 18-acre site into a waterfront gem that our families can enjoy with a promenade, playground, athletic courts, splashpad, urban beach… and, yes, a new and improved Food Truck Paradise and seating area.

Union Square across the street from Union Station: After years of being a neglected property and then being a razed property that lied fallow, not anymore!

Thanks to our partners at Elm City Communities, this 11-acre site is going to be transformed into up to 2,500 new housing units - all powered by a geothermal heating and cooling system that reduces residents' environmental impact and their utility bills. Steps away from the train station, this is the most significant transit-oriented development in the state. And, by the way, there's another 460 unit development slated to be built right up to block too.

Standing up for our Residents, City and Values

As we work to accomplish these big things together, we are doing so while our federal government is cutting funding, slashing programs, attacking the values we hold dear and harming members of our community.

When it comes to standing up for our residents, our city and our values, we will always be bold and we will never back down!

We will continue to stand up for New Haven. For our immigrant neighbors. For our LGBTQ+ neighbors. For our neighbors who are struggling financially. For women and their right to reproductive healthcare. We will continue to stand up for all New Haveners.

When the Trump Administration comes for one of us, they come for all of us - and we will all continue to stand up and fight back together and to defend and care for our neighbors.

I spoke in my inauguration address a lot about our national politics, Donald Trump and the national mess he's making that's impacting our local community. And to be clear, at this moment, we are defending our city from these attacks on our values and on our people.

But let's also be clear of what we won't let Trump do. In our personal lives, we must not let Donald Trump take away our optimism, our sense of justice, our recognition of injustice, our joy for each other and our community. And, as a city, we will not let the Trump Administration distract us from our continued work of improving our city every day, tackling these big problems every day and striving to accomplish great things together.

Conclusion

You see, in order to accomplish great things, we need to have optimism and think big, think bold - set big goals: a thriving and inclusive local economy, 10,000 new housing units, Vision Zero, revitalized public spaces and parks, a balanced city budget we can proudly hand off to our children, education funding that funds the whole child, a New Haven where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

But, in addition to thinking big, and this is something that is often lost by folks that sit on the sidelines, you also need something else that is equally, if not more important than thinking big: you need to do the work.

And doing the work, particularly with problems that have vexed our community for decades and decades, is not easy.

It takes persistence - time and again going after a problem, hitting a roadblock and coming at it from another angle.

It takes creativity - if people say we can't do it this way, then let's find another way to tackle the problem.

It takes collaboration - we've got to work with each other, even if we don't always see 100 percent eye to eye.

It takes making mistakes and learning from them.

It takes understanding that what's politically easy isn't always the right way to confront a problem.

In this building and across our city, we are working together, we are thinking big - and, more importantly, we are doing the work.

Think about what we have tackled and what we are tackling together: English Station, the Armory, Union Square, 240 Winthrop, community centers across the city, the New Haven Green, the lowest level of gun violence in a decade, over $60 million more dollars from state PILOT funds and Yale University, Tweed New Haven Airport, Union Station, Bus Rapid Transit, thousands upon thousands of more housing and affordable housing units, accountability for absentee landlords, ensuring those experiencing homelessness have support, the list goes on and on.

These are tough, big challenges.

And while there are storms swirling around us - whether Winter Storm Benjamin to Superstorm Donald - we got this and we will continue, together, to confront, navigate and solve these big challenges.

We have much more work to do ahead, but I know we're ready to recommit, roll up our sleeves and head into 2026 with energy, enthusiasm and a commitment to ensure that everyone in our city has the opportunity to thrive.

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PRESS CONTACT

Lenny Speiller | (203) 725-4249 ; [email protected]