Christina H. Plass, who worked for 27 years as a legislative aide at the New Haven Board of Alders, died after a long illness on Nov. 29 in Yale-New Haven Hospital hospice. She was 76 years old. In her early career, she was an astrologer who hosted a WELI radio talk show. Christina Hottelet Plass was born on Aug. 22, 1949, in Springfield, Mass. Her father Edmund J. Plass was a machinist who died in 1986. Her mother Frances C. Plass was a homemaker who later moved to New Haven and became a civic figure until her death in 2003. Chris attended Springfield local schools and Westfield College. In her early career, she was a radio journalist in Connecticut and Massachusetts as well as a professional astrologer.  Chris loved to sit on the lawn with a bottle of wine at the Massachusetts concert venue Tanglewood. Her favorite act was Van Morrison.  She cherished Siamese cats, harboring several at her home on Front Street above the Quinnipiac River. She named one of the creatures Casimira after a relative from the family’s native Poland. Plass became the publicity chief for the New Haven parks department on Edgewood Avenue in the late 1980s. She moved downtown to the Board of Alders in 1990, retiring in 2017.   “Chris was really smart with a whimsical sense of humor,” said confidant and colleague Jonathan J. Einhorn, a former alder and attorney. “She was like the last living hippie, but she brought a dispassionate analytical sense to her work.”  Christina was not above wearing Birkenstock sandals with woolen socks to work in City Hall. She threw on a tasseled shawl against the frosty air-conditioning in her tiny corner cubicle on the second floor. With oval spectacles and ash-brown hair tied tightly back, she could be mistaken for a kindly schoolmarm – a misimpression that a pushy visitor might regret, though Chris rarely forgot her formal Old World manners. Plass was among the earlier staff members at the Office of Legislative Services. The office was established in the early 1980s by Einhorn with City Clerk John A. Keyes and others to be a non-partisan research department for the Board of Alders. The founders initially hired several journalists on the wishful notion that ex-reporters would be able to write clearly. “Chris was the go-to person on zoning and legislation,” said Michael Abeshouse. A senior legislative assistant at the Board of Alders, now retired, he worked alongside Plass for decades. Plass’s job included helping citizens, builders and lawyers navigate New Haven’s infamously arcane zoning and planning laws. The rules could be a frustrating obstacle for people wanting to open a small business, but Chris would help research the necessary steps – or workarounds. She could also draft a new zoning ordinance when asked, a ritualistic exercise in which every number and letter counts. One of the legislative office’s main missions is to fortify the elected council members in their role of city government oversight. She was one of the alders’ first lines of defense from developers of major construction projects. Some of the proposals were big on promises but short on facts. Chris helped the alders hold developers to their word and build projects that are an asset to the community and city. Working at the Board of Alders was not a cozy clerical sinecure. Some sort of crisis was usually brewing at City Hall – from nor’easter snow blizzards to budget holes, bomb threats and even an FBI raid. But many of these developments were tame compared to the constant political skirmishes among the alders, the mayor and everyone in between.  However, much of the work was in fact routine – a ceremonial streetcorner naming, a new sign for a business owner, looking up some land measurements, or trying not to yawn in a multi-hour legislative meeting.  Before her city employment, Chris hosted a radio talk show on news giant WELI in the late 1970s. The program covered mysticism and astrology. Each episode featured an interview with a new “psychic of the week,” as friends remember.  She owned a Digicomp DR-70 Astrology Minicomputer, a rackety machine that could perform the intricate math for casting a client’s birth-chart horoscope. First available in 1978, the 10-pound device was 24 inches long and looked like a monstrous Radio Shack pocket calculator. (U.S. president Ronald Reagan reportedly used a DR-70 too – for scheduling his appearances at celestially opportune times.).  Chris’s friend Lucille “Teale” Caliendo, also a former radio newswoman, recalled the excitement of working in the competitive New Haven media market. In decades past, a big, hustling local press corps scrapped for the latest details on car accidents, murder trials and the minutiae of New Haven politics. They huddled during election-night ice storms in the dim basement of St. Paul’s Church on Dwight Street, jousting to phone in the latest ward counts. “Chris loved the immediacy of live radio reporting  –  being in the moment, at the center of the action,” said Caliendo. Christina Plass’s survivors include: three cousins in Massachusetts, Tracy Plass, Susan Lawson and Deborah Lantaigne; and a nephew: Len Plass of San Francisco. A brother, Richard A. Plass, died in 1992. For information on local arrangements, call the city Office of Legislative Services (203) 946-6483 or Carol Manago at (203) 893-2100.  Mickey Mercier, who worked with Christina at Board of Alders’ office, contributed to this obituary. The post Christina Plass, 76 appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less