Mayor Elicker (center) at Monday's ribbon cutting for the Coliseum redevelopment: "On the housing front, we've made a ton of progress." Mayor Justin Elicker quietly kicked off the 2025 race for mayor on Tuesday — by officially filing to run for a fourth two-year term in office.Elicker, 49, submitted his mayoral campaign paperwork to the city clerk’s office on Tuesday — barely 13 months after the Democrat finished running his most recent race for New Haven’s top elected office in November 2023.He is the first candidate so far to file to run for mayor in 2025. A total of five people ran for mayor in the city’s 2023 municipal elections. The only other Democrat besides Elicker to get his name on last year’s primary ballot, Liam Brennan, is currently serving in Elicker’s City Hall as the head of the Livable City Initiative (LCI). The pace of municipal elections is set to slow down significantly several years from now, thanks to voters’ approval of four-year terms for mayor and alders as part of last year’s charter revisions.However, those four-year terms won’t take effect until the 2027 municipal elections; that means that, whoever wins the 2025 mayoral and aldermanic races will serve two-year terms.A former East Rock/Cedar Hill alder and community gardens nonprofit leader, Elicker first took office in 2020 after defeating incumbent Mayor Toni Harp in both a Democratic primary and the general election. He told the Independent on Tuesday that, just like during his 2013, 2019, 2021, and 2023 mayoral campaigns, he plans to participate next year in the city’s clean-money Democracy Fund.Unlike in previous years, Elicker did not invite the press on Tuesday to document his campaign paperwork filing, which he has used in the past as an opportunity to field questions about his time in office to date and his priorities if reelected. ​“I just wanted to file” and continue on with the work of being mayor and serving the city, he said during a followup phone interview.He told the Independent that he’s running for a fourth two-year term to ​“continue the momentum” from his first five years in office to date.“Of course we have our challenges, but overall we’re going in a really positive direction,” he said.Elicker pointed to accomplishments and priorities around housing, public safety, and education when explaining his run for another two years in the job.He said that the city has seen 2,000 new or renovated housing units come online in the past five years, ​“with 40 percent affordable.” He said another 3,500 units are in the pipeline — and that’s not even counting the 1,000 to 2,500 new residential units that could be included in the new Union Square / Church Street South redevelopment. He also credited the Fair Rent Commission and LCIfor stepping up work on landlord accountability during his tenure in office. In regards to public safety, Elicker said his administration has invested in ​“increased supports for young people” as well as in violence intervention programs, street outreach workers, and improved police technology — from surveillance cameras to stop sticks. He pointed to task forces on violent crime and stolen cars for helping with the city’s ​“efforts around accountability” and ​“to make sure, when there is violence, we get people off the street.”“Overall, numbers are going down, even though we have continuing challenges,” he said.As for schools, Elicker celebrated Supt. Madeline Negrón’s first year-plus in the job. He said the public school district has seen reduced chronic absenteeism rates and improved literacy rates under her leadership.“Where we’re putting a lot of energy this year is funding for schools,” he continued. Elicker said the city has increased its portion of public education funding in the last six or seven years ​“by almost 50 percent.” The problem is that state funding, based on the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula, has not kept up with New Haven’s schools’ needs.“There’s a statewide push now to change the Education Cost Sharing formula to reflect the real need in schools,” he said. More than 350 students per social worker is just too much, he said. And only 26 librarians for 41 schools ​“is not adequate.” The city is investing in fixing up aging school buildings, he said, but the district needs more state money to help with that, too.Elicker pledged to partner with the city’s state legislative delegation to advocate for increased schools funding from state government — much in the way that they succeeded in getting increased PILOT municipal aid several years ago.“It will become clear that this is a challenge shared by many municipalities” across Connecticut, he said. ​“My role is helping coordinate other mayors and first select people around the state” to testify before the state legislature and educate people on why the ECS formula needs to be changed. He pointed to the work of the 119K commission to help lay the groundwork that statewide effort to increase Connecticut’s funding for local public school districts like New Haven’s.Elicker concluded by saying how, five years in, he still loves the job of being mayor. ​“What makes the job really hard — tackling really big problems, challenges and surprises around every corner,” is also what he likes about it. ​“It feels really good to be able to work with a lot of inspiring people” all trying to make the city a better place.He said he hasn’t yet picked a campaign manager; that should happen in the spring. Tuesday’s campaign paperwork indicates that Elicker’s campaign treasurer is Susan Metrick of East Rock.