Former Hamden Economic Development Director Tapped By East Haven

EAST HAVEN, CT — Over the course of his near four decades in economic and community development planning, Dale Kroop has been in charge of getting more than $110 million in state, federal and local grants for cities and towns across Connecticut.

Now, East Haven has hired Kroop to do the same for the town.

Kroop’s voluminous résumé includes pages devoted to project funding he’s secured for municipalities statewide: elderly housing, residential rehabilitation, community and senior centers, human/social services programs, community development, affordable housing, infrastructure and economic development program funding.

“We’re excited, and lucky, to have Dale on board,” said East Haven’s economic development director Ray Baldwin. “So far we’ve been fortunate that we have a fire chief and deputy police chief who are skilled at getting much needed grants, but bringing Dale in, he’ll work with and train some Town Hall people on grant writing and economic development. It’s very exciting.”

Just last month, Kroop retired as Hamden’s economic development director after 21 years on the job. His new role with East Haven will have writing grants and, he’ll work as a consultant training staff on how to write and secure grants. The town had already budgeted for a grant writer for 2020-2021 and in cases where Kroop writes grants, the fee for that service is often written into the grant application itself.

In addition to securing grant funding, Kroop is skilled at managing state and federal legal requirements on projects and programs he’s led including environmental reviews, finance, labor, and procurement.

And he’s worked for dozens of cities and towns across the state finding the money for street scrape and bridge projects in towns including Stonington and North Canaan among many others.

“From the very beginning, I talked about working hard to secure grant money,” Mayor Joseph A. Carfora said in an email to Patch, noting that while there are existing examples of successful East Haven grant application awards, the goal now is to work to secure more funding, for myriad projects.

“He is going to train our staff, and work with them and together they are going to aggressively hunt grant money,” Carfora said.

Carfora said that East Haven Fire Chief Matt Marcarelli has been “very successful” in securing grants with “tangible results.” And, he said that the town has used state grant funding to help rebuild the public works department, “After we were handed trunks and apparatus that were fundamentally unsafe for our crews to even use.”

And he noted a recent grant award to Hagaman Memorial Library “for a new roof for our beautiful, but aging library.” Check back with Patch for an update on the library’s new roof.

“These are success stories and I want to build upon them,” Carfora said. “Ray worked to find an answer, and Mr. Kroop is it.”