🔒Hartford native Cruz calls for tighter neighborhood connections

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Hartford native and current City Councilman Joel Cruz, Jr. sees Connecticut's Capital City as a whole of both downtown and its outlying neighborhoods, and he wants to change city government's policies to reflect that.

Born and raised on Capen Street in Hartford's North End neighborhood, Cruz wants greater connectivity between the city's neighborhoods, more promotion of small business, and greater communication between major entertainment venues.

Cruz, 35, is a member of the Working Families Party and will face the winners of the Democrat and Republican primaries in the Nov. 3 general election. He first entered city politics in August 2012 when he took over the city council seat from departing councilman Luis Cotto.

An eight-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Cruz joined the military immediately after high school, working as a Spanish translator for the Marines and later as a personnel administrator, eventually achieving the rank of corporal. Upon his return to Hartford in 2002, he became an ordained minister. He currently works as a family center director for Catholic Charities in Hartford.

Cruz said his decision to run for mayor grew out of his desire to continue his community service. He currently lives on Exeter Street in the city's South West neighborhood with his wife of 13 years, Karla Cruz, and their two daughters Lishamarie, 16, and Abigail, 5.

How would you assess Hartford's current economy?

Our development services needs to have a bigger role in developing and maximizing our neighborhoods. I can go back to when I was growing up in Hartford, I would be the one really supporting the downtown businesses as a Hartford resident because things were happening in the downtown but also in the neighborhoods, so I had the opportunity to either buy within my neighborhood or go to downtown Hartford. I know we have concentrated on 'Let's bring people from the outside,' which is great because we want our Greater Hartford area to really [add] to our city's vibrancy, but we miss the point when we don't tap into the 125,000 people who are already in the city. People move to the city because it is easier to get to services, so why not maximize our neighborhoods so those people can really pour into downtown? Our downtown could really be a melting pot for the people living in the neighborhoods.

What are your top two economic development initiatives to improve the city?

I would like to see some incentives and some programs to help our small businesses. I have been very vocal about really encouraging small businesses to hire ex-offenders. Maybe we can give them a tax break somewhere.

The other area I really see us exploring is putting small businesses in a different tax bracket. Our mill rate is 74.29, but homes don't pay [that] rate. Residents pay 30.68, so there are already brackets and they are very complicated. People have their opinions that everyone should pay the same mill rate, but that is going to require collaboration with the state delegation because it is really a state issue. If we stay with these different brackets, let's create a separate bracket for our small businesses.

What can be done to reduce the 74.29 mill property tax rate that businesses are subjected to?

We need to have a conversation about the fairness in our mill rate, especially the different brackets. I know they were set up to be fair, but we need to re-evaluate that. The state delegation has to be included in this conversation. I know they have been hesitant about eliminating the brackets because they don't trust the city not to raise the rate. It is going to require some trust building, having candid conversations about the elephant in the room, and making promises we can keep.

With multiple transportation projects in various stages of completion, what is your long-term plan for how people will move to, from, and around Hartford?

I was in York, Maine, which is one of my favorite places, and they have this system where you can rent bikes. I would love to see that happening in Hartford. Obviously, we are going to have to work on the awareness of bikes being in our streets and motorists are going to have to share the roads, but we can have a campaign to make people aware of that. It could be an agency or a company that takes care of those bikes, or the Hartford Parking Authority.

We also need to replace our lighting to make it brighter and more energy efficient and make our sidewalks better. These are the small things that people think don't make a difference, but they do. You ask people why they move to West Hartford, and it is not the big things, it is the small things. Hartford has a lot more to offer than West Hartford, but it is the small things that never materialize that don't allow us to move forward.

Assess the work of the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) so far, and how would you work with CRDA to further improve the city?

It requires collaboration and really being in constant communication. I know they've had their struggles because the XL Center doesn't really generate money, they operate at a wash or at a loss. One of the things that I've looked at is I've seen where the XL Center is having a garden show and the convention center is having the exact same show on the exact same day. You have a little bit of people [at one show], and a little bit of people [at the other show]; and there really is no communication [between the venues]. If they communicated, they both could have a garden show, but one has it one month and another has it another month. That way, you maximize the crowd you bring in.

How will you grow the momentum in downtown brought by the new housing developments and projects like Front Street?

That is bringing more businesses to the city. I'm not just thinking about big businesses but small businesses. As I said earlier, we need to find more ways to support and provide incentives for small businesses and find other ways to support them, even in the way of licensing and inspection.

What's your opinion of the Downtown North development, including the new baseball stadium?

At the beginning, it wasn't presented well, but from my spot on the council, I couldn't look at it from that point of view. My job is to untangle that mess and look for ways to make it work. People forget that the stadium is only $56 million of a $356 million project. This is an opportunity for us to bring things that people feel can bring them to Hartford. We are going to have family-friendly events.

What must Hartford do to attract more businesses?

I used to work for a health center. I was a supervisor for a medical records department, and we always used this term: root-cause analysis. It means we need to get at the bottom of what is causing a problem. I would love for Hartford to look at our education, because that is what brings businesses in. I go back to a trip I took to Seattle, Wash. The average person in Seattle has a master's degree or more. That is why you have Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon and all these interesting things happening in its borders.

In Hartford, 73 percent of our adults from the age of 16 and up are functionally illiterate. That means they have challenges reading ATM machines and filling out job applications. How can we attract when we are not able to provide a workforce? That is important in Hartford. Our children are very important to that; we have to prepare our kids for college. Also, our adult education is not up to par.

What should happen with the XL Center?

To be honest, there has to be better collaboration, now especially with the stadium and what is happening at the convention center. The people running those three things really need to be sitting at the table together, so they can maximize the attendance of their events.

For the proposed XL Center expansion, I am hesitant because we have not been able to maximize what we have now. There has to be a bigger effort of promoting and advertising and making it relevant to the people [who live] in this city.

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