Blight, another problem
In our last issue, these columns discussed the new initiative of Mayor Dorinda Borer in establishing a Blight Taskforce. The new initiative, including several city departments and personnel, is tasked with enforcing the city’s blight ordinances, and making property owners responsible for ensuring compliance. This includes a major component of registering absentee landlords, giving the city a person with whom direct communication of issues may be addressed.
One of the second parts of the new initiative is a look at the types of businesses that come into the city, and the hours around which they do business. Smoke shops have proliferated in West Haven for a few years, and, like some other, businesses, like it or not, they do not add to the quality of life.
Like it or not, they are seen as places where less desirable individuals congregate. These are facts, not matters of hate or bigotry. It has nothing to do with race, religion, ethnicity, or culture. Certain types of businesses hurt neighborhoods. It is simple economics.
A moratorium on new businesses of this type has been put into force with city officials looking to encourage other types of businesses, more suited to boosting neighborhoods. Dovetailed to that effort is a look at 24-hour businesses, and attempting to curtail the number and types of businesses that have such hours.
It is no secret that West Haven attracts a subculture of individuals at night, particularly in the summer months, but during most of the year. Drugs, indigency, and homelessness is part of that subculture. Over the past few years, police and other agencies have dealt with the issues.
It is a reality we are seeing in stark relief throughout the country that individuals suffering in the three above-mentioned categories – in sum or part – create problems that lead to blight. While something must be done to alleviate their problems, a city has a right to make sure its citizens are safe. Especially in the matter of drugs, crime rates go up where these problems are left to fester.
Again, this is not an Ebenezer Scrooge mentality of “are there no prisons, are there no workhouses.” Agencies and programs exist that can help those suffering, and every effort should be made to help those who would benefit from them. That said, the city – any city – has a right to protect its citizens from the ill effects of the subculture, and it is folly to think otherwise.
For West Haven to rise out the ashes of its current fiscal problems, and to create neighborhoods in which people want to raise their families, the effort to encourage certain types of businesses over others seems an easy decision. It is a reality that must be faced.
We commend the Borer administration for taking small steps toward improving the city by means of monitoring those businesses looking to settle here. Dare we say a “gentrification” of business types into the city would be a welcome movement toward a better West Haven.