Fireside Chat with Hartford’s Mayor, Arunan Arulampalam

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Text: Citizen Travelers (service mark) at the Travelers Institute, a Series on Civic Engagement. A slide appears beside a man sitting in a chair on stage. The slide reads, Fireside Chat with Hartford's Mayor, Arunan Arulampalam. Citizen Travelers (service mark). A round seal logo reads, Seal of the City of Hartford, Connecticut. 

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JANICE BRUNNER: Hello. And welcome to our program today. We are so honored to have Mayor Arunan Arulampalam with us today. He was elected, or he was sworn in as the Mayor of Hartford on January 1, 2024. 

He is a husband, a father, an attorney and a former nonprofit executive. He's committed to strengthening Hartford's neighborhoods and building a Hartford that works for everyone. And prior to being elected mayor, he served as CEO of the Hartford Land Bank, where he developed a first-in-the-nation program to train Hartford residents to become land developers and tackle blight in Hartford.

He also served in the Lamont administration as Deputy Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection, where he fought for consumer rights and small businesses. And before that, he was a lawyer downtown at the firm of Updike, Kelly, & Spellacy, P.C.

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The speaker, Janice Brunner, sits on stage in a chair across from Arunan. She wears a dark suit and shoulder-length blonde hair. Arunan wears a dark blue suit, bald head, and a dark beard. A table with two water bottles sits on stage between the two. A screen behind them displays the Fireside Chat slide. 

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He has served on the board of the Hartford Public Library, the House of Bread, and the Hartford Redevelopment Authority. 

Mayor Arulampalam lives in Frog Hollow neighborhood in a vacant-- in a formerly vacant and blighted house with his wife and five small children. His wife, Liza, is the senior minister of the First Church of Christ in Hartford.

So you have done a lot. And we are so happy to have you here today. Thank you for joining us.

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Thanks for having me. It's great to be with you. I know this is broadcast throughout the Travelers network. And so for all of you watching in, thank you for doing that. We're also, I guess, recording in front of a live studio audience. It's great to see all of you here. Thanks for being here. I'm excited to have this chat with you.

JANICE BRUNNER: We're excited for you to be here on this cold day. Let's just start with your journey to mayor. Kind of what prompted you to become a public servant? And what kind of-- how did the whole process go of getting to such a great office?

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ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Well, you kind of talked through my resume. And it's not really a straight line into the mayor's office. It's not the typical kind of resume, I think, of a political leader. I was an attorney, as you mentioned. I'd call myself a recovering attorney. At a law firm downtown, I practiced corporate finance law. 

I went into Lamont administration as Deputy Commissioner for the Department of Consumer Protection and then took what I think many saw as almost a demotion, certainly less prominent role helping stand up this small nonprofit in our city called the Hartford Land Bank, which is a nonprofit that was created by the city of Hartford to take on the vacant and blighted properties that the city has and try to more quickly get them redeveloped, get them how-- create housing in our neighborhoods.

And we created this program that you mentioned that brings Hartford residents in, trains them on the skills in redeveloping properties. These are people who typically had some construction background, had some kind of nuts-and-bolts idea of how to do it, but gave them the business expertise and the technical skills to turn into small-scale property developers.

And they took on those properties instead of the nonprofit doing it ourselves in a kind of big and bloated way. These individual nonprofit developers took them on and created these properties throughout our city that we were very proud of. And from there, ran for mayor.

I think each step of that journey has been about people and about the city that I love and the potential for this city that I love and the people that I serve. You'd mentioned that I was born the son of Sri Lankan refugees, born in Zimbabwe. I'm an immigrant to this country myself.

I think, a lot of times, growing up just felt like politics was something that happened in some ether away from me, that it was something that I couldn't access myself, that it was something that people who had had different pedigrees and different upbringings maybe engaged in. But politics is about people. It is about what we can do collectively and what we can achieve collectively if we're willing to work together.

And ran in a race against two people who had been in politics a very long time, two people who had been in elected office, each of them, about as long as I'd been alive. And it was a tough race and an uphill race, but just tried to engage with as many residents as I could and tell them what my vision for the city was and what I wanted to do in this role.

And I feel really lucky to be where I am right now. It's the best job. Being mayor is the best job, I think, in the world. And this is the best city. And I'm really proud of it.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's great. I think one of the things that we often talk about with Citizen Travelers is encouraging people to become engaged civically. People often think, I need to have some kind of special background. You are a lawyer. But people often say, I need to be a lawyer or have a political science degree or things of that nature.

But one of the things that we've learned, I think, through this journey that we've been on is that it's really like a lot of the skills you use are skills that aren't necessarily related to being a lawyer or being-- it's really just certain things like empathy or being able to listen or being able to solve problems. What have you found is like the most surprising thing about being mayor and the thing that you didn't expect about the office?

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: I'll say two things. One, to me, we think we elect these officials. And we think about that individual as running a government. But it takes a lot of people to run government.

And, to me, the ability of somebody to build a team around them, to get the right people around them is almost the most essential component for somebody who's in an executive role or a mayor or governor or president, bringing to the table people who have a diverse set of experiences. In fact, I would say we shouldn't all be lawyers. We should-- we need a depth of creativity and skills and experiences to be able to take the society we see today and build the society we want to build.

And for me, the biggest part of that journey initially was building the right team around me. My chief of staff is here. James Woulfe happens to be a lawyer. We went to law school together. But he has so many other skills as well, was a former part of Travelers.

I've got a great COO, a great corporation counsel. We changed a lot of roles within city hall. And it took me a few months to really get my team set. But now that I have a team in place, we are able to move a lot further and more intentionally. And that's been huge.

The other big surprise for me has been just the level of support that we've had from the broader community. My goal has been to try to bring as many people into the process of moving the city forward as I can. And I think it's been embraced by such a wide array of people.

We had hundreds of people engaged just in the transition team on different committees on the transition team. And since coming into this office, we've tried to bring a broad array of people in helping guide our-- giving us advice on what to do and helping guide our mission. And the level of support we've gotten in that has been tremendous.

And I've never thought about the role of mayor as a convener. There's the formal power you have. There's the things that I, because of city charter and because of state laws, can do as mayor. But being able to bring together different nonprofits in a sector or different funders or different individuals towards a single mission and towards a single goal is an often-overlooked aspect of this role, of an executive role, that we've really tried to leverage in our administration. And we'll talk a little bit about some of those initiatives, I'm sure. But that's been a big surprise as well.

JANICE BRUNNER: That makes sense. What do you-- just, what do you love about the city of Hartford? And that probably goes into your initiatives.

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: There's a lot to love about the city of Hartford. I'll start by saying this. And I didn't say this a lot on the campaign trail. I didn't grow up in the city of Hartford. I chose. This is my chosen city. I grew up--

I was born in Zimbabwe. I grew up in LA, went to school in Atlanta and have lived in Hartford for a little over a decade. But this city is just such an incredible place. It is. The people of this city, I've never felt more embraced by any group of people than I do the residents of the city of Hartford. It is such a welcoming city.

There's such diversity of cultures, of foods that you can't get in other places. We have an incredible arts and culture scene. I think I often say-- and maybe it's a little bit of hyperbole, but I don't think much. I often say that we have the best arts scene of any mid-sized city in America.

But if you look at the Hartford Stage, Theater Works, all the shows that come into The Bushnell, the Wadsworth, which is amazing. I know it's like right next door to you guys, but-- or right next door to us-- but I don't go there nearly enough, the oldest public art gallery in the country.

The Hartford Symphony, all of the up-and-coming arts scene in the city is incredible. We've got great entertainment. We don't have a major league sports team. But I can take my kids to as many Yard Goats games as I want. And I don't have to take out a second mortgage on my house to do it.

I can actually afford it, afford a beer at Dunkin' Donuts Park. The UConn Huskies are playing tonight. And the Big East Road Show is there. We've got-- there's so much to do in the city and such diversity and such vibrancy in the city.

And the city gets better every year. If you haven't been down to Pratt Street recently, you should go there. It is electric. Especially on a night like tonight, it'll be amazing. The city gets better every single year. And there's so much to love about Hartford.

And I hope one of the takeaways from this is you walk out of this room and talk to people about the city in the next-- in the coming weeks and months. I hope all of you are cheerleaders for this city because there is so much to do right here in Hartford. This is an incredible city. We are building a world-class, mid-sized city right here. And I hope you're all proud of the city that we are and the city we're becoming.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's a good point. And as you were speaking, I was thinking like, how do we get more people to know that? How do you-- and that's part of what is maybe already underway. What are some innovative solutions to get people to think about Hartford more and to come into the city to do more things if they're not right in the city or to utilize the city and all those things you just listed?

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: We're working on trying to tell our story in a better way. Actually, one of the initiatives we have is we're working with the city of East Hartford on a task force around shared services. In the state of Connecticut, we've got 169 municipalities. If you were to start from scratch, nobody would create a state with 3.5 million people and put 169 different municipalities in there.

But as part of that task force, we're looking at whether we can share some services. We're also looking at whether we can start to think of ourselves and market ourselves as a region. And actually, Courtney at Travelers here is leading that task force around shared tourism and marketing.

But we are really the center. We're a city of 128,000 people. We're the center of a region, a metro of 1.2 million people. We have all the challenges of that metro. But we also have all of the potential and all of the opportunity of that metro. And we need to start thinking of ourselves as a city of 1.2 million people because that's what we are.

And we're looking forward and trying to figure out how we can position ourselves as a premier metro between New York and Boston. But I think telling our stories, talking about everything there is to do in this city, talking about all of the benefits of this city, talking to your friends about-- every time somebody says something negative about Hartford, I hope that everybody that loves this city will push back just as forcefully.

There is so much to do here. There is. There's so much fun that you can have in the city. There's a lot of reasons that you should think of moving to the city. There's a lot of reasons you should think about raising a family in this city. There's a lot going for the city of Hartford. And I think telling our story is something that we are, as a city, working on trying to do better.

JANICE BRUNNER: That makes a lot of sense. And that kind of goes into another topic that we were going to speak about is, how can people actually become more involved in making all of those dreams for Hartford come true? So in addition to just talking about Hartford and telling the story, are there hands-on things that people can do to make-- to be-- we talk a lot about, at Citizen Travelers, about civic engagement. How can you become part of the solutions?

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Yeah. And there's-- civic engagement, as you know, has a lot of paths. And sometimes that means running for office. But there are nonprofit boards in this city that need your leadership. There are boards and commissions at the city that we are, if you live in the city of Hartford, we are looking to fill our boards and commissions. And we would love to get you engaged in those.

There's an organization called Leadership Greater Hartford that does a program called Leaders on Board, where they sit down with people, and they talk about the general board governance basics. But then they have a speed dating kind of night where you can meet a bunch of nonprofits that need new board members.

And to your point, not everybody needs a lawyer. There are people who need creatives in the city. There are people who need accountants. There are people who need a whole range of skills and talents.

Courtney is helping us so much with that regionalism task force because of her marketing background. And whatever your skill or talent or passion is, there's a way in which that can be used to make the city better, make this region better.

And I think the goal of Citizen Travelers is an incredible one. It is about how working together, we can try to build the kind of society that we want to see. And that should be a shared goal. We were just talking before this about how nonpartisan that goal should be, that regardless of what you believe-- and oftentimes, when it comes to local government, the big partisan issues that divide people actually don't exist. There's not a Republican or Democratic way to plow a street or to build a bridge or to invest in a downtown.

It's about solutions. And we need as many people at the table in crafting those solutions and helping implement those solutions and being a part of those solutions as we can get.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's so true. I was just saying before we came on that one of the benefits of this role is I am able to speak with people throughout Travelers who are doing amazing things. And I was having a conversation yesterday with someone who's on his school board.

And he made a wonderful point. He said, everybody cares about their kids. Whatever your political views are, your perspectives are, you care about your kids. And it's an emotional thing.

And so one of the things that he takes to the school, being on the school board, is just that core idea. So people may be talking about all sorts of different solutions, how to get there. They may differ on what's required or how to get there. But ultimately, it's coming from the same good place.

And so many local offices are so impactful in your daily life. I think we do get caught up in the big national issues. But it's really at the local level, which is really impacting everything.

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: And it's a place where you have some control over things. I think you can look out at the world today as it is. And regardless of what party you come from, there's probably some level of fear and anxiety about what is happening in the world. And likely, none of us in this room can impact what international relations look like, or global conflicts look like.

But we can really have a huge impact on whether kids in the city of Hartford get the same education as kids in neighboring towns. We can really have a huge impact on whether our nonprofits have the ability to meet the needs of the residents of communities like this. We can have an impact on whether there's a coach for the after-school basketball program in the North End of Hartford.

And so those kinds of things make so much impact. And you can sit at home on Facebook or whatever social media or you can watch TV and just worry about what's going on in the world, or you can do something. And that action really has to happen at the local level.

JANICE BRUNNER: So much of what I've been surprised by too is how many-- how often these local offices or these local boards or these local commissions or committees, it's actually difficult sometimes to have people to serve on them, right? So there's real opportunity to make a big difference just by showing up.

And I don't know if you've found that, as far as-- I'm sure it's when you talked about your transition. And that's a lot of people to find to come to get involved. And do you find-- what's the best way for someone to just kind of say, someone in this room says, I really want to be involved? Like, who do they call? Or what do they do? Or maybe this is James, too.

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you a little story about me and James. When we were in our 20s, the city of Hartford had just announced some severe budget cuts. We were close to bankruptcy. A number of the big events and festivals had gotten canceled in the city.

And so myself, James and a friend of ours created this event we called Discover Hartford. We had a scavenger hunt around the city of Hartford. And we picked-- in every neighborhood, we picked one historical or cultural institution and then one food or drink place.

And so you'd get a clue that would lead you to the historical or cultural institution in that neighborhood. And then you'd go nearby. And you'd buy a pupusa or get a margarita or whatever it was. And that with that, the person behind the counter would give you the clue to the next place.

It cost $0. The people who came spent a little bit in money on the treats along the way. But it wasn't much. But everybody who came had a great day in the city of Hartford. It was always on a Saturday. We kept it running until COVID and never really picked it back up after that.

But it didn't cost anything. But it was a ton of fun. And everybody had some familiarity with the neighborhood that they hadn't learned about before. They learned a historical fact that they hadn't learned about before.

And we didn't have to really ask anybody. We didn't have to get any permissions to do it. We just did it. All of you guys, I'm sure, if you take time, spend time in the city, will have ideas of how to make the city better, of how you can get involved.

And obviously, at city hall, we would love to help you make that happen. But you should all feel empowered. This is your city. Whether or not you lay your head here at night, this is your city. If you are in the Greater Hartford area, as capital of this state, the success and vibrancy of the city matters to you.

And you should feel ownership in what the future of the city looks like. And if you have ownership in this city and what the city is going to look like, there are so many ways you can get involved and use whatever talent or gift you have to make the city better.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's great. That's a great story. And to think that now you're mayor and James is chief of staff.

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: I know.

JANICE BRUNNER: I mean, that's really amazing. Just curious. What obstacles? Like when you did that, what obstacles did you find? And how did you overcome them? Or what obstacles do you find just daily and can just almost just like a-- what's your advice for just kind of getting through some of those things?

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: There are a number of substantive obstacles we have as a city. We've got a fraction of the tax base that we need to deal with the challenges we have. We've got a smaller grand list than West Hartford does. And they have half as many residents.

And so we've got to do everything that we do with far fewer dollars and far fewer resources. And that's challenging. And on top of that, we have an office vacancy in our downtown. We have rising costs of city government and concerns about our revenue. There are really challenging circumstances as a city, as many mid-sized cities across America are facing, but that are especially pronounced in this city.

But to me, the biggest challenge that we face collectively is just a lack of belief in what we could be, a lack of imagination, creative imagination about what we can be as a city. It is every time you go to a dinner party and somebody says like, oh, there's nothing happening in Hartford, Hartford is such a dead city, Hartford is going in the wrong direction, it's not true.

Like, we have a lot going for us as a city. In the midst of all those challenges, we've got a great community. We still have really invested corporate partners like Travelers who are part of figuring out our future and our success. We've got incredible people in the city and incredible creativity and incredible opportunity.

And if we can work together to harness that, if we can get out of our own ways, if we can stop finding cynicism and challenges and look instead to solutions, I have every bit of faith that our challenges are-- that we have all of the tools we need to meet our challenges.

But I think, very often, the biggest stumbling block, the biggest obstacle can be our own self-perception, our own sense of self. We have a chip on our shoulder, I think, as a city maybe because we're in between New York and Boston. And there's a way in which that can turn into cynicism.

There's also a way in which that can allow us to double down on the things that make us great as a city, that allow us to lean into the things that already make us great, and, instead of trying to imitate some other city, become the best version of ourselves, which will be a world-class city if we do that right.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's true. Invest, right?

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Yeah.

JANICE BRUNNER: Time. Energy. Money would be nice too, right?

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Yeah, we'll take the money.

JANICE BRUNNER: So that's great. You mentioned-- you had mentioned that you work with mayors from other cities and that-- Just tell us a little bit about what that's like and what you've learned from that and how the pros and cons of what's going on in Hartford versus other cities and what you've taken away from that work.

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Yeah, I mean, I'll say this, I think Hartford has-- is another thing you should be proud about. Hartford is a leader among a lot of other cities in terms of the work that we are doing in a variety of fields. I'm still in my-- just early in my second year as mayor here.

But last year, I got on the board of directors of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. And I get to meet mayors from around the country. And there's two things we talked about. We talked about the role of local government and the depoliticization of that.

I don't even know who most-- what most of these mayors' political affiliations are. I don't know which ones are Democrats or Republicans. Because the challenges we face are all so similar. Mid-sized cities, larger cities across America are all facing really similar challenges.

Everybody has office vacancy issues that they're trying to solve. Everybody's worried about shrinking revenues and increasing costs. Everybody's unsure about what the federal landscape is going to look like over the next four years. And Democratic and Republican mayors are equally freaked out about that, at least behind closed doors.

But not everybody has the same level of, I think, stakeholder engagement in that cause going forward. I think a lot of mayors feel really lonely in trying to figure out solutions to that. And both as a state capital with a speaker of the house who's from Hartford, with a governor that I think really has bought into the future of the city, as a center with still a very large corporate footprint and corporations that were born out of the city and feel dedicated to the future of the city but also stakeholders across the board who I think really genuinely want to believe in the future of Hartford, really genuinely want to get involved in crafting a future. I think we-- there are a lot of mayors that look to Hartford and are jealous of some of the advantages we have in this city.

The alignment in political leadership, the alignment in corporate leadership, the alignment among residents broadly, I think is really remarkable. And we are being viewed as a leader, I think, in some of the innovative solutions we've brought to reducing crime in the city, which Hartford has decreased crime not just to pre-pandemic levels, but well below pre-pandemic levels.

This last year, we had the lowest number of shootings, the lowest number of murders on record in the city of Hartford. And a lot of other cities around the country are looking to us as a leader in that space. Some of the work we're doing on innovation in the city of Hartford and the creation of an AI Institute, I think, as other regions of the country are looking at what they're doing, and including Cambridge, many of them are coming and talking to us because of the potential we have around innovation.

Some of the work we're doing around education, I think-- and I see Jesse Sugarman here, who came from the board of ed, in trying to bring together stakeholders, both folks within superintendent’s cabinet and teachers union and folks at the state to come together around solutions in education, I think that will set us on a much stronger path and show some real innovation within education.

The work we're doing in regionalism with East Hartford, and so many municipalities have been terrified about touching the issue of regionalism. And this isn't about taking from one municipality. We're just looking at, if we're doing the same functions, can we do it more effectively by working together with East Hartford right across the river?

And a lot of mayors around the area are looking to see whether we will be successful. And I think we will be. I think we'll have some really positive results to announce in the coming year. But it is a real-- first real major stab in this city, in the state, in the land of steady habits at trying to work together across municipal government to make government more efficient.

And so I think in a whole lot of different spheres, the city of Hartford is innovating, is leading the way and is taking risks in a way that other municipalities are looking to us and trying to understand what we're doing and watching what we're doing. And I'm really hopeful that we'll be successful.

JANICE BRUNNER: That kind of collaboration is great. I think that it's always nice to have people to learn from and learn with and share successes with. How can someone-- to that point, how do you-- is there an example of a success story that you are particularly-- that you-- where someone has made a significant difference in quality of life in Hartford that has kind of been maybe in an unexpected way or something that you kind of can look to as a good example of what people could accomplish?

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Yeah. I'll give you guys a few examples of Travelers employees who are making a huge impact. And I talked about Courtney and the work she's doing on the East Hartford task force. Andy Bessette sits on a kind of group or convening of executives from the six major corporations in the area that we meet-- we try to meet quarterly-- I don't know if it's quite quarterly-- to just discuss what's going on in Hartford and ways in which our corporate community can get engaged. And it's the first kind of convening of that group in a long time.

Ojala is here. She's on the board of Ford City Works. I think she chairs the board of Ford City Works, which runs Fire by Forge. It's an incredible kitchen that's also a jobs training program. It also has a tip-optional model to pay and pays everybody a living wage in Frog Hollow. If you haven't checked it out, you should go check it out.

I know Matt Mocarsky is really involved in his community in Frog Hollow. We have so many folks at Travelers here who are making a huge impact right now in the city of Hartford. Jesse Sugarman in a whole host of ways.

And you should go talk to them. And you should find out ways in which you can get engaged. I'm sure I'm missing people in this room. But this community, this corporate community is so engaged in the city of Hartford.

But if you are looking for ways to get engaged, come talk to James. Come talk to one of your fellow employees who's here engaged in our community. We would love to have your energy. We'd love to have your creativity put to work in the city of Hartford.

JANICE BRUNNER: That sounds great. We-- you mentioned quickly, we think about-- a lot about Travelers. We have this-- perform transform is kind of our imperative and our motto. You mentioned a lot about-- you mentioned in passing that you're doing a lot of that in the city of Hartford, performing but transforming also, a lot of innovation.

One of the things you mentioned was AI. Can you speak a little bit more about that and what's on the horizon when it comes to AI and making-- and how that relates to the city of Hartford?

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Yeah. So one of the members of the team that I brought in is Jeff Auker, who used to run Infosys, had set up the Infosys hub here in Hartford. And there's this innovation cluster grant that the city came out with for ideas around innovation for cities.

And it was really created for Stamford and New Haven. And Hartford, we wanted to apply. And I talked to Jeff about it early on when he came in. And I said, let's come up with a project. I don't know if this is going to get funded or not. And so forget about the funding guidelines. Let's come up with a project that will be really transformative in the city of Hartford.

And we started this process of kind of looking through, talking through what we could do around innovation that would be really transformative. And I think in the past, some of the pitfalls we've had have been around chasing the shiny object, trying to create startups here that might not have the stickiness here, trying to be a mini kind of Silicon Valley.

And so we retooled. And we tried to figure out, can we lean on the existing strengths we have, this large corporate community we have here in the city of Hartford and the large higher-ed community we have here in the Greater Hartford region, about 30,000 undergrad and graduate students here in Greater Hartford? And we put forward this proposal. And we're now a finalist for the state's Innovation Clusters grant for an AI Institute that would be sort of a sandbox that all of the major corporations, including Travelers. Travelers is part of that application, The Hartford, CVS, Aetna, Stanley Black & Decker, Hartford HealthCare, Cigna, in which each of them can innovate, can try out use cases around AI, leveraging some of our higher-ed institutions.

So it allows a scalability that maybe you couldn't build within any one of those corporations individually but also leverages our existing higher-ed community. And so our colleges and universities can attract the best AI talent to their faculty in the nation. Our students can come out of those higher-ed institutions among the best trained in AI in the nation. And we build a workforce in the process that is among the most advanced and ready to use AI.

And places like Travelers have an incentive to innovate in Hartford instead of in Atlanta or anywhere else, that there's an incentive to keep all that innovation here in this city and to grow that and to leverage our existing workforce to do it. And we're really hopeful about what the future looks like in the city of Hartford. I think we can be a real leader when it comes to innovation.

And it's easy to forget that Hartford, at the end of the 19th century, early 20th century, was the wealthiest city in America, that Mark Twain, who was a global celebrity who could have lived anywhere, chose to move to Hartford because it was that cool of a city. And we built that city off of innovation at the time, innovation around insurance, innovation in manufacturing. We were one of the most innovative cities in America.

And, to me, this is just recapturing the heart and soul of Hartford, of who we are. We are an innovative city. We are a creative city. And as we go forward, our hope is to lean more into that and lean into enhancing the existing infrastructure that has made us so successful as a city.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's great. I know we have some questions that were sent in in advance. And I'm sure there may be some questions online or in the audience. So we'll maybe just start with those--

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Absolutely.

JANICE BRUNNER: --if you're open to it. I'll start with the ones that we-- were sent in in advance. Chris W. asked, for those entering the city from the Founders Bridge, we, unfortunately, see homeless individuals most days. There are many kind motorists who share a dollar or a food item. What is the city of Hartford doing to curb homelessness and help those individuals? Help would be both immediate as well as longer term.

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Janice takes off her red glasses and looks up from the paper in her hands to Arunan. 

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ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Yeah, that's a great question. And that's one of these issues that every single city is dealing with. Because as housing has risen, we've seen homelessness-- the cost of housing has risen. We've seen homelessness rise in direct proportion to that cost of housing. It's gotten so expensive just to live in rented housing in cities like Hartford that there are people who can't afford that and end up on friends' couches and then in cars and then maybe even on the streets. And that should be unconscionable, I think, to all of us. 

In the city of Hartford, we continue to operate a network of homelessness providers. We are doing everything we can to expand the amount of provision we have. We're also really stretched thin. This is one of those issues where being the center of a metro of 1.2 million people becomes very difficult.

Because in our little city that has a fraction of the revenue of that greater metro, we have 93% of the homeless beds. So the vast majority, if you walk through our homeless shelters, which I do regularly, the vast majority of folks in there are from Avon or Farmington or Glastonbury or West Hartford and end up in Hartford because this is where there's provision of those services.

And all of those services are provided in buildings that are incredible partners and that do good work but are untaxable, that further add to this issue we have, which is that, in our city, over 50%, 52% of all of the property in this city of 18.5 square miles is untaxable. And so our tax base just cannot keep up with the level of challenge and need we have.

And we need regional solutions to issues like homelessness. I was really encouraged this year. East Hartford, and we've been working closely with East Hartford. And the mayor of East Hartford opened up a warming shelter for cold nights. Warming shelters are places where people can go for a night during the winter months. They open up December 1, and they go till March, so that people don't freeze on our streets, which they inevitably will on cold nights like we've experienced in the last weekend.

And East Hartford opened up a warming shelter. There's one in Vernon. There's one in Bristol. But there aren't many options for housing for the unhoused outside of the city of Hartford.

And it's something that we have-- I talk to the commissioner of housing about regularly. I talk to the governor about regularly. We need other communities to step up and be part of that solution. Because these are the sons and daughters of surrounding communities.

This is a shared issue. It's not a Hartford issue. This is a shared issue. And we want to be part of that solution. We don't want anybody to freeze to death because there's not a place for them to live.

But we cannot indefinitely into the future hold 93% of all of the unhoused-- homeless housing shelter beds within the city of Hartford. We need surrounding communities to step up. And it's something that I've had conversations with mayors and town government in surrounding municipalities. It's something that I hope we all take onto our shoulders and try to share the burden.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's a great point that I don't know if people think about it in that broader way. If you are someone who's living outside of the city limits of Hartford in a community, what are the steps that you could take to get involved in that or to make sure your local officials are aware that this is a priority?

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Well, there are nonprofits who I think would be open to building housing. And there are dollars at the state. And there are nonprofits who would be open to building housing for the unhoused in almost any community. And struggle with zoning requirements in communities that have different zoning requirements than the city of Hartford does.

And so talking to people you may know on the planning and zoning commission, talking to your town council about it can be huge. I mean, I think that the perception of the unhoused being a Hartford problem is a stigma that we need to get past. Because it is impacting families across this state, across this greater metro.

There are kids who grow up in upper middle-class families in Glastonbury and have a sports injury and then get hooked to opioids. And they're more likely to end up and, frankly, more likely to die on streets like mine than they are in their community in which they grew up.

It's a shared problem. It is a shared challenge. And we are doing a disservice to our residents. We're doing a disservice to the families in our own communities if we don't want to work together on solutions.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's definitely worthwhile thinking about. Thank you. The next question we have is from Regina F. She says, I would like to understand more about what the mayor is doing about and what he's referring to when he says he would like to revitalize neighborhoods in Hartford. Are there specific programs available for ordinary people, not property investors or flippers, to purchase rental property? Are there grants programs available for first-time homebuyers?

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Yeah, there's a number of programs that already exist for first-time homebuyers. Mutual Housing in Hartford and the Urban League both have trainings for first-time homebuyers.

Liberty Bank actually has this incredible mortgage instrument. If you purchase a home in the city of Hartford, you can pay 3% down. There's no PMI. You get $2,500 towards closing costs. There's a number of programs for people who want to buy homes in the city of Hartford.

One of the greatest challenges we have is that if you want to buy a home in the city of Hartford and you are moderate to lower income, we just don't have enough homes in your price range to purchase. If you're looking at homes under half a million right now in the city of Hartford, under $400,000, you might not find one right now on Zillow. Because we haven't invested in creating middle-class homeownership opportunities here in the city of Hartford.

And because of that, we've got the lowest homeownership rate in the state of Connecticut. It's 23%. In the Frog Hollow neighborhood that I come from, it is 7%. And there's a number of neighborhoods around Hartford, Asylum Hill, Clay Arsenal, where it's in the single digits of homeownership.

And just to give you a reference point, Glastonbury has got a 70% homeownership rate. I'm sorry. West Hartford has got a 70% homeownership rate. Glastonbury has got an 80% homeownership rate.

It is driving a massive wealth gap in our state. And so we are-- we have invested. It's something that I tried to tackle in my last role at the Hartford Land Bank. The greatest issue is the resources for homeownership.

And so we've invested, at the city of Hartford, $6.5 million in the last budget to create homeownership for low and moderate-income families in the city of Hartford to build that physical home ownership to allow for properties that would otherwise become rental properties to be homeownership opportunities.

And there's a whole range of programs already in existence to help those who want to purchase homes. And there's a number of demand-side interventions. But there isn't really a supply-side intervention yet.

And it's something that no major city has really figured out across the country. And in fact, we have been, in the city of Hartford, pushing for a tax credit at the state level and at the federal level-- and I think at the federal level, it's less likely to happen these days-- specifically centered around homeownership for low- and moderate-income communities.

Because we've invested in rental properties, rental housing. We've invested in low-income housing. In my neighborhood, over 50% of the units-- housing units are deed-restricted, low-income housing units, which means we've spent millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars over decades in housing. And the housing instability has not gotten any better because people in neighborhoods like mine can't own, can't control those properties, can't build wealth in those properties, which means that we're going to stay in this cycle of housing instability for decades to come.

Even if we make the short-term investments in increasing affordable housing, if we don't allow communities in neighborhoods like mine to be able to own and build wealth that they can pass on to their kids, we're going to continue to replicate those cycles. And so we've made real investments in that.

We're hoping to be-- it's another place where we're hoping to be a leader. We've asked the state to join us and, hopefully at some point, the federal government as well. Because I think it's really important, if we want to address the full scale of the housing crisis in our nation, that we address the ability of all communities to be able to build homeownership.

JANICE BRUNNER: Tough problems, for sure.

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Sorry. I'll say one other thing. The question I think was a little tilted towards homeownership. But we also really believe in growing neighborhood investments in business corridors. So Hartford, 50 years ago, had thriving business corridors along Albany Avenue, along Main Street, along Park Street, along Franklin Ave, and Wethersfield, and Maple. They were mini city centers.

If you lived in a neighborhood, you had a kind of main business corridor that you could walk to and get a cup of coffee. And you'd get a-- sit down for a meal at a restaurant. But right now, north of Dunkin' Donuts Park, if you go through the entire north end of Hartford, there's not a single coffee shop that's not a McDonald's or Dunkin' Donuts. There's not a single like nice, sit-down restaurant the entire north end of Hartford.

And I think it just leads to such a disintegration of community, such a lack of a sense of place and a sense of dignity and value in our neighborhoods. And so we've also invested real money into rebuilding commercial corridors. And we're going to start on upper Albany, upper Main Street, Park Street, one other street in the South End. We're trying to figure out which one.

And we're going to try to create a cluster, invest in a cluster of businesses, small businesses hopefully geared towards Hartford residents, Hartford entrepreneurs, and create build-outs of a small cluster that can turn into a kind of neighborhood center, one intersection, one street in which you can walk down the street to a coffee shop, walk down the street to a restaurant, walk down the street to a record store, a clothing store, whatever it is, and have a sense of place, have a sense of community again.

And I think rebuilding those commercial corridors will have, certainly, an economic-development impact, a small-business impact, an employment impact, but also an impact on the sense of place, the sense that your neighborhood matters, the sense that the place where you live really matters and a sense of safety.

JANICE BRUNNER: Makes sense. Hopefully all those people at Travelers will go to all those businesses.

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Yes.

JANICE BRUNNER: So we look forward to that. Are there questions that people have in the audience? Or we have-- we received more questions online that you'd like to ask. Anybody in the audience?

(DESCRIPTION)
Janice and Arunan look out into the audience. 

(SPEECH)
AUDIENCE: Any chance of saving the CVS across the street that's scheduled to close on March 11? 

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Look, I worry a lot about that CVS. And it would be the second CVS closing in the city of Hartford. I live around the corner from the CVS on Washington Street. And it is the access to the pharmacy, to the prescription drugs.

It's also how most people in my neighborhood buy our basic goods. Like our toothpaste comes from that CVS. Our basic groceries come from that CVS. Each one of those closings has a huge impact on the city.

We have communicated that as best we can to CVS, who-- Aetna, which is a large part of CVS, has their headquarters here in the city of Hartford. They've had a number of changeovers in leadership over the course of the last year. Just since I've become mayor, their third CEO.

And we have tried as best we can through that system to communicate the importance of those CVSes here in the city of Hartford. We are committed to continuing to advocate, if they do close down, to finding an alternative that really tries to replace the impact that they're making, they've made. But it is on the list of things that I have no power over and know will make a huge impact on my community. We're doing the very best we can.

(DESCRIPTION)
Arunan smiles, looking out at the attendees. 

(SPEECH)
AUDIENCE: Hi. It's good to see you again. 

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Yeah. 

AUDIENCE: I lived in Hartford for a number of years. I first came to this area in the late '70s. It was a booming and very thriving city. Downtown Hartford had Sage Allen, G. Fox. And at lunchtime, I worked at the Aetna in City Place. Well, not City Place. I'm sorry. In the Civic Center. And at lunchtime, you'd go outside. And it was just a very thriving community. Pratt Street was amazing.

Over the years, and I lived in Hartford for at least 20 years, what I found, however, through the later years in Hartford, a food desert. No grocery stores. And that was probably the biggest one of the major issues that I had. I heard that a grocery store may be coming to downtown Hartford. Is that true? Or if it's not, in the future, would that opportunity become available to those who live here?

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: That's a great question. We are working with two major grocery store operators to try to attract a grocery store. We have $8.5 million that the state has allocated almost a decade ago now for a grocery store. And that hasn't really panned out. But it is still, for now, in an account over at OPM at the state.

And we are really bullish about trying to find the right operator and attract them with some combination of that $8.5 million and potentially some tax incentives from the city. It's been really hard to make our case to operators. And I think that there is an undervaluing of exactly how much communities like Hartford spend on food.

And everybody has to eat. And the income, even lower-income families spend on food, tends to maybe be a larger chunk of their income. But they still spend a fair amount of money on food. And they're going to grocery stores in Windsor and in West Hartford and Wethersfield. And so I'm very hopeful that we can attract the right grocery store to the city of Hartford. But it's been a challenge.

AUDIENCE: All right, I have a question from Joe F. You spoke a little bit about the grand list per capita being lower in Hartford than other municipalities in the metro area. One cause that comes to mind is the amount of nontaxable public land, like the state capitol and courts. Can you talk a little bit about how the city tries to offset that lost revenue?

(DESCRIPTION)
Arunan sips from his water. 

(SPEECH)
ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: So I mentioned that over half of our total property here in the city of Hartford is untaxable. And those of you familiar with the tax structure in the state of Connecticut, every municipality in our state relies disproportionately on property taxes, especially since there's no county form of government. There aren't other major taxes that go into city coffers like sales tax. 

And so we are really reliant on that essentially nine square miles in which we can build taxable real estate, in which we have taxable real estate. And it just isn't enough to meet the needs of the city that is, again, the center of this larger region.

We've got more 911 calls than any other municipality in the state. We have an education system that is so fractured because of the impacts of Sheff v. O'Neill and is struggling each year just to get by. But it spends 31-- over 31% of its total dollars just on special ed, which leads such a small percentage for the additional major expenses and transportation and in tuition that we spend for every kid who goes outside of the city of Hartford into CREC or into a neighboring town to get an education.

Not to belabor this, but we have an immense amount of challenges as a city. And we don't have the resources we need to meet those challenges. And it makes us less competitive as a region. This should be the shining jewel of the region. This should be a place in which housing and education and homelessness and all of these challenges that we are talking about today are dealt with regionally, are dealt with in a way in which we share the responsibility because we believe in what the city can be. And we know that the city is the center of our economic growth, of our vitality, of our success as a region.

And to offset that loss in tax revenue, there's a PILOT formula, payment in lieu of taxes, in which the state is supposed to pay to municipalities, pay back municipalities for lost revenue based on state buildings. And that PILOT formula has never been fully funded. And every year, we go and we try to get a little bit more. But it is a poor substitute for what we really need as a city.

And look, these are all services that we need broadly. Obviously, we all need the state of Connecticut to function. And many of those state buildings are here in the city of Hartford.

These are the large hospitals. It's a large cultural and entertainment center, as we talked about earlier. They are the universities. The benefits of these are shared broadly, shared regionally, shared statewide.

But the burden of those disproportionately falls on the city of Hartford. And so one of the things you can do if you know state legislators, especially those who aren't from Hartford, is argue that the state paying more in PILOT, in payment in lieu of taxes, to the city of Hartford for dollars we can never recoup, for dollars we can never get on our own that we have no choice over, will make us a more competitive state. It'll make us a more competitive region.

It'll be the kind of place where your kids, who graduate and go off to college, want to come back to. It'll be the kind of place where companies can continue to grow and attract young professionals into. It'll be the kind of place where a kid can go and get an education that is comparable to the education they receive in every neighboring town.

We should all want that. That is such a, I think, apolitical, nonpartisan goal for us to have as a society is a strong and thriving capital city. And that is something that legislators across the state and certainly across this region should support.

AUDIENCE: With three minutes left, can you share what you are most excited about achieving in your term? Everything you mentioned today?

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Wow. Yeah, there's a lot. Look, I think that there's an opportunity in the decade ahead to build a really phenomenal city. As we haven't really talked about development, but you probably have seen those developments coming up across from Dunkin' Donuts Park where the Yard Goats at-- that are at the DoNo Project is called Downtown North.

We are looking at developments in the parking lots across from Bushnell, the Bushnell South project. Those two sets of developments will stitch together a city that is seamless. As we start to invest in our commercial corridors, and our neighborhoods come to life and feel like city centers, it'll stitch together a city in which every neighborhood, every resident feels like a part of the progress.

I think we are going-- solving issues around housing that other municipalities, other states, other parts of the country are nowhere close to on. We're bringing college kids into our downtown. We're creating a college town with UConn bringing their dorms onto Pratt Street there, expanding their presence in the city of Hartford. St. Joe's kids are now downtown.

We were talking to other colleges in the area. This is going to start to feel a lot more like a college town. We are, I think, doing some really exciting and generationally changing things around innovation and around AI that will set us up to succeed and be a leader for generations to come as a city.

We are engaging our corporate community. And Travelers has been a big part of that in building a better pipeline of workforce between Hartford residents and our major employers in the area.

We're talking about this partnership with East Hartford, which would be historic. There's never been that kind of an effort to bring together and create shared efficiency, shared progress between two cities like that, and starting to view ourselves more as a region and starting to view ourselves more as one large city.

In so many ways, I think Hartford is going to change so dramatically over the coming decade. Maybe change isn't the right word, but really get to achieve goals that have been decades in the making.

And it's an exciting time, I think, for the city and an exciting time to be a part of that progress. And I hope that you all-- I started off saying this. I hope that you all are so proud of this city that is your city.

Whether or not you lay your head here, whether or not you physically live within the boundaries of the city of Hartford, I hope you view this as your city. I hope when you're out of town, you tell people that you're from Hartford. I hope you're proud of the city that we're building.

And I hope that you're a part of the progress in real, tangible ways. And if you're not yet, we'd love to make you, help you find your place, and help you become a part of that progress.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's great. Thank you. I feel like I learned today that it's complicated. And it's regional. And I think those-- and I'm sure everyone has their own takeaway, but super important conversation, super illuminating. And just thank you. Thank you for working so hard for the city of Hartford.

I was born in Hartford. And I feel a little prouder after this conversation.

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: That's good.

JANICE BRUNNER: So thanks to everyone who joined us today. And I hope we have some hands-on solutions that we can be a part of. So hopefully we have you back in a couple years and things are-- we have lots of progress.

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: All the problems will be solved by then.

JANICE BRUNNER: Exactly. Yeah. So thanks, everyone.

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM: Thank you, guys, so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

[APPLAUSE]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide text: Citizen Travelers (service mark) at the Travelers Institute, a Series on Civic Engagement. Watch Replays: Travelers Institute dot-org. Logo: LinkedIn. Text: Connect: Janice G. Brunner. Take Our Survey. Link in chat. Hashtag Citizen Travelers. 

Text: Citizen Travelers (service mark) at the Travelers Institute, a Series on Civic Engagement.