Danbury’s new mayor is still apologizing to visitors for the state of the office he now occupies.
“Two frames in here still have to come down and I haven’t put anything up. I have one picture of my family, and one picture of a fictional president because I’m such a West Wing Nerd,” Alves said of the largely unadorned walls. “But I have work everywhere because that’s what I came here to do, I didn’t come here to be an interior designer. I came here to work.”
Despite the low priority given to décor, Alves did cite a symbolic change of policy among one of the most obvious changes he has implemented since his victory over long time Republican mayor Dan Esposito in November 2023, drawing from his experience growing up as a Brazilian immigrant in the city as well as his time in the private sector as a Cartus Technical Sales Engineer.
“When you come in here and walk into the mayor’s suite the doors are open. For the last few years those doors had literally been closed. Now they’re open figuratively and literally.”
“We’ve been here for 60 days,” Alves stressed. “The first few weeks we were focused on the transition. We’re a new administration with a new party affiliation for the city, we flipped a 22-year political seat. A lot of folks had to get to know us, and we met with every department head, we had in-depth conversations.”
Alves recently returned from a conference in Washington DC where he networked with other mayors, met with Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and other key federal officials, and spoke with President Biden.
“It was just a couple of minutes,” Alves said, “but here I am, somebody who grew up an immigrant, got my citizenship in 2017 and decided to run for City Council the year I got my citizenship, and in a few short years I’m the mayor of the city I grew up in, I’m in DC for a conference of mayors, and I’m shaking the president’s hand and telling him about my story and my city. It was just incredible.”
Alves kept more substantial changes his administration is working on under wraps, but cited one that will benefit from the Inflation Reduction Act.
“We’re in the design phase on one [project] that’s going to have a tremendous economic savings impact for the City of Danbury, one in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year,” Alves said. “We are looking at getting a complete ROI in 10 years, maybe less.”
In more concrete terms, Alves pointed to a collaboration with the Connecticut Community Facility Development Corporation making use of the Connecticut Community Investment Fund (CIF) to refurbish a historic courthouse and refresh the surrounding area.
“We were able to do a joint application for the Community Investment Fund,” he explained, “Danbury is one of the 55 communities that the state identified for the CIF. We’re doing a $15 million project that we’re hoping to get approved by the state. That’s going to be a great investment in our downtown that’s going to bring in market rate housing, that’s going to let us do sewer assessment studies so we can further develop, and get some more housing, retail and workspace downtown.”
Alves described the prior administration as being overly focused on individual issues. In his view the mayor’s office cannot allow any issue to be deprioritized, refusing to name a topic which he considers at the top of his to-do list.
“It’s sometimes not fair to say that one thing is a bigger priority over the other because what may be the most important thing to you may not be the most important thing to that person across the street from you,” Alves said. He described the possibility that one resident could be more concerned about the education financial crisis while another worries about the fire department’s response times growing longer. “How can I look at somebody in the eye and say I’m prioritizing one over the other? No, my job is to treat those with the same level of urgency.”
Alves illustrated this distinction with efforts to use the Danbury Line as an economic driver for the city, opening the possibility of more commuters and regular service benefiting both Danbury and communities as far south as Norwalk where transfer to Metro North’s New Haven Line is possible. In contrast, the prior administration had devoted effort to establishing direct rail connections to New York City by possibly joining with the Harlem Line across the New York Border.
In his view, both projects deserve attention, and he and his team can tackle both at the same time.
Alves also felt confident about Danbury’s ability to earn grants and engage in upgrades to infrastructure owing to the team he has put together, he noted that the task he was undertaking was even larger than he anticipated when he began his campaign.
“We’re going to do a series of events where we can talk about the finances of the city,” Alves said. “I knew we were facing some challenging times. But the more we go into it the more we know that it’s going to be tough. The reality isn’t good for the city of Danbury, but we have a great team, and we know we’re going to get out of the hole that previous administrations have put us in.”
“The financial reality has been hidden,” Alves said, noting that he hoped to distinguish his administration from that of prior mayor Dan Esposito by emphasizing openness and community engagement, including public meetings about the challenges he described as having been uncovered in the first months of his term. “The problems that we’re facing are even more difficult than we expected because of the situation the city was put in.”
Yet Alves believes he and his team, including recent appointments former state representative Farley Santos and long time Democratic campaign manager Francesca Capodilupo are up for those challenges, and the potential for community listening sessions to become an “airing of grievances.”
“If you gave me all the information I know today, how much harder the job is going to be,” the new mayor said, “I would still run for office today. I wouldn’t bat an eye, I’d say yes, sign me up again.”
