ISN'T THERE A FEDERAL TAX ON INTERSTATE FISH EXCHANGE?
So if you are going to think regionally, you definitely need a good map!  CT's economy in cartoon format;  the New England Region;  RPA's "tri-state" regional map.  Barter is the name of the game in 2009, perhaps?

CONTENTS:


An example of how to cut an administrative job out of the budget - do it over the summer?
East Hampton Town Manager Faces Public Fire Over Police Chief
By BILL LEUKHARDT, bleukhardt@courant.com
11:47 PM EDT, July 2, 2010

EAST HAMPTON —

Town Manager Jeffrey O'Keefe was pelted with catcalls and shouts of "resign" Friday morning by a noisy crowd of about 200 citizens backing embattled police Chief Matthew Reimondo.

The people filled the high school auditorium to hear Reimondo challenge O'Keefe's decision, made June 22, to immediately eliminate the $99,000-a-year job of police chief and several other police department positions to save an estimated $500,000.

O'Keefe said cuts are necessary because the town faces a projected $1 million shortfall in the 2011-2012 fiscal year. The town council will be asked to amend its ordinances and eliminate the police chief position. A sergeant was promoted to lieutenant to lead the department.

But the much-anticipated hearing sputtered out Friday before Reimondo could address the issue.

A legal issue postponed further discussion until July 15 to give Reimondo's attorney, Leon Rosenblatt, time to file a counter-motion. It's not clear if the town will resume the hearing or decide to forgo it.

At the start of the hearing, O'Keefe's attorney, Mark Sommaruga, introduced a motion to dismiss the hearing. He said the cut is not an issue of job performance or dismissal for just cause but to save money, so Reimondo has no legal right for a hearing.

But Rosenblatt and others contend that Reimondo's dismissal is politically motivated, retaliation for his role in bringing forward to the town attorney statements by three female employees alleging harassment by O'Keefe. Those concerns were investigated by the town, but the women declined to answer questions, and the town lawyers have said the case is closed.

Susan Weintraub, the lone council member who opposed a June 22 vote to approve a severance package for Reimondo, said Friday that the motion to halt the hearing is part of a push by O'Keefe and his supporters to try to backpedal from the chief-budget conflict.

"This issue is galvanizing the community. Look at all the people who showed up," she said.

It was an unusual gathering in a rural town of 13,000 where the big crowds in July are usually for the annual Old Home Days festival the second weekend of the month.

"I've been to a lot of meetings in town in the 10 years I've been finance director and this is the biggest one by far," said Jeff Jylkka, who came to the hearing. There were so many people at the high school that cars had to be parked on grass medians and across the street.

The attendance and the emotions in the crowd indicate the level of interest among residents, which is likely to persist no matter what the town leaders decide to do after July 15. At times, the crowd sounded like it was at a wrestling match, with a majority of the folks cheering one side and castigating the other.

Applause erupted early when Reimondo walked up to the front where officials involved in the hearing were to sit. He quickly got a standing ovation from the audience, which included more than a dozen police chiefs from other departments and a sprinkling of rank-and-file officers from surrounding towns.

"It's a brotherhood like no other," Suffield police Chief Michael Manzi said. He was part of a row of a half-dozen chiefs standing in the back of the hall to support Reimondo. "Something is amiss here."

Lisa Maruzo-Bolduc, chief of the Willimantic police force and president of the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association, said she and other chiefs attended because what is happening to Reimondo "just doesn't make any sense."

Reimondo, a 25-year veteran of the department he's led since 1999, contends that his termination is illegal and that he is covered by a state "just cause" labor policy giving any chief the right to an open hearing before being let go. He last worked on June 22, when he was stripped of his gun and badge and driven home from police headquarters.

After the hearing, Reimondo spent about a half-hour talking with supporters who lined up like guests at a ceremony to greet the honored guest.

""My family and I are overwhelmed by the support from the community," he said later.

One of his supporters was Rep. Gail Hamm, D-East Hampton, who said she thinks the town manager "behaved in a premature way," cutting the police budget to deal with a projected deficit that may not turn out to be as severe as expected.

"There's no immediate financial need here" from what she can see, Hamm said.

Rosenblatt said Reimondo, who is collecting pay now while on administrative leave, "is still the police chief" and probably will sue to preserve his job from what Rosenblatt considers political meddling.

"They have a tiger by the tail and they can't let go," he said of the legal headaches he says the town now faces.

The catcalls, including shouts of "get out of town" and "you suck" directed at O'Keefe, upset attorneys representing the town manager, who was sitting with lawyers at the hearing table in front of the stage. Nicholas Grello, one of his lawyers, chastised the audience several times for the outbursts, warning that he would have people removed if they didn't stop.

In recent days, O'Keefe said there have been half-truths and misinformation spread around town about the police chief issue. He said he hoped on Friday to have a chance to address the errors. But the decision to postpone the hearing prevented that.

"There's been a lot of nonsense about retaliation," Grello said after the hearing adjourned. "All the town is trying to do is save money."

Actually, a similar proposal is under consideration by "Smart Growth" proponents in the CT Legislature in re:  "home rule" character of CT's 169 towns!
Score One for the Diplomats
NYTIMES
By GAIL COLLINS, Op-Ed Columnist
September 26, 2009

We are gathered here today to praise the United Nations, not to make fun of it.

Although it’s sort of hard to resist when you’ve got Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi working on a plan to dismember Switzerland. This thought is not central to my argument about the U.N., but we live in troubling times and it might be very soothing to stop worrying about Iran for a while and listen to world leaders argue about the Swiss Menace.

The president of Switzerland, Hans-Rudolf Merz, paid a conciliation call on Qaddafi, who is camping out at the Libyan Embassy in New York City this week after literally being unable to find a patch of ground on which to pitch his tent. Merz has been trying to get Libya to spring two Swiss businessmen, who have been stuck in Tripoli since 2008, when Qaddafi decided that Switzerland is a “world mafia and not a state.” He also withdrew Libya’s assets from Swiss banks, recalled his diplomats and closed the Nestlé office in Tripoli.

This would be immediately after the Geneva police arrested Qaddafi’s son Hannibal and his wife for beating two servants with a coat hanger and belt while they were staying in one of the city’s luxury hotels. The servants later withdrew their complaint after receiving what The Associated Press said was “compensation from an undisclosed source.”

Unappeased, Qaddafi submitted a U.N. proposal to abolish Switzerland altogether and divide the territory among its next-door neighbors.

Hannibal has an interesting résumé, which includes being picked up in Paris for drunken driving at 90 miles per hour on the wrong side of the Champs Élysées. On another occasion, he was taken into custody by French police after he allegedly pulled a gun on officers who came to his hotel room to investigate reports that he was beating his girlfriend. After he was released, he was quickly arrested again in another hotel for breaking up the furniture. Perhaps he has a problem with rented rooms.

But we digress. About the United Nations: For eight years, the Bush White House regarded the U.N. mainly as an annoyance, a mole in the garden of the new American world order. Now we are in the age of the Obama, and trying to once again play well with others.

Qaddafi’s weird performance before the General Assembly on opening day was a bit of a blow to the American plan to deal with the U.N. seriously, although the 96-minute speech may have suffered from the fact that his translator collapsed somewhere into the second hour. But things improved a lot when Obama got the Security Council to pass a resolution on nuclear proliferation, just before he and the leaders of Britain and France dramatically blew the whistle on Iran for hiding a second uranium-enrichment plant from U.N. nuclear inspectors.

The resolution encourages member nations to consider whether the folks who buy their nuclear technology are allowing the U.N. to keep track of what they’re doing with it. It also encourages nations to get their nuclear materials secure within four years.

There has never been so much encouragement this side of elementary school tee-ball leagues. Basically, the Security Council resolved that it would be really keen if members refrained from selling nuclear bomb kits to just anybody who happened to show up at the door.

There are two ways to look at this. One is that it just goes to show that the U.N. can’t really step up to the plate. “Fluff and stuff,” grumbled John Bolton, the U.N.-hating U.N. ambassador during the Bush administration.

The other is to feel that while the United Nations can be feckless and frustrating, it’s not any more so than, say, the United States Senate, which has been busy this week trying to make sure that health reform does not involve anything that might really work.

Legislative bodies are maddening, even when they’re made up of people from the same country. In fact, if the United Nations was the New York State Senate, instead of passing a semi-toothless resolution, the Security Council members would have started locking the doors on each other and arguing about whether France could be counted as part of a quorum if its delegate just walked across the room to get a cup of coffee.

If it was the Connecticut House of Representatives, China and Russia would have been too busy playing solitaire on their computers to pay attention. The State Legislature in Hartford was recently embarrassed by pictures of two lawmakers playing card games on their state-issued laptops during a late-night budget debate. However, if the U.N. had handed out similar equipment to the General Assembly, there might have been a lot more people hanging around through that Qaddafi speech.

Anyhow, I’m thinking — good work, Security Council. At least it wasn’t a study commission.




Op-Ed Contributor
Small-Town Big Spending
NYTIMES
By TOM BROKAW
April 20, 2009

DURING these uncertain times we’ve yet to hear a phrase with the resonance of Franklin Roosevelt’s “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” but there are a couple of minor-chord expressions that should have staying power.

One is the observation of Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, that “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Another comes from my boss, Jeff Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric, who has warned, “This is not a cycle; it’s a reset.”

Taken together, these remarks challenge us to go beyond trying to quickly fix the immediate problems of toxic mortgages, risky banks, a struggling American car industry and escalating health care costs. If the American people are tuned into the need to change the irresponsible, inefficient practices and systems that created those problems, why not enlist them to take the next step and radically change the antiquated public structures that exist beyond the Beltway?

Here are a few examples. It’s estimated that New York State has about 10,500 local government entities, from townships to counties to special districts. A year ago a bipartisan state commission said that New Yorkers could save more than a billion dollars a year by consolidating and sharing local government responsibilities like public security, health, roads and education.

One commission member, a county executive, said, “Our system of local government has barely evolved over the past one hundred years and we are still governed by these same archaic institutions formed before the invention of the light bulb, telephone, automobile and computer.”

In accepting the commission’s recommendations, Gov. David Paterson promised to work diligently to put the changes into effect. When his budget was presented this spring it included several of the proposed changes, but it immediately met stiff resistance even from members of his own party who were determined to protect their parochial interests. It appears that few of the original recommendations will survive.

In my native Great Plains, North and South Dakota have a combined population of just under 1.5 million people, and in each state the rural areas are being depopulated at a rapid rate. Yet between them the two Dakotas support 17 colleges and universities. They are a carry-over from the early 20th century when travel was more difficult and farm families wanted their children close by during harvest season.

I know this is heresy, but couldn’t the two states get a bigger bang for their higher education buck if they consolidated their smaller institutions into, say, the Dakota Territory College System, with satellite campuses but a common administration and shared standards?

Iowa, next door, is having its own struggles with maintaining population, especially among the young. As the Hawkeye State’s taxpayers grow older and less financially productive, the cost of government services becomes more expensive.

Yet Iowa proudly maintains its grid of 99 counties, each with its own distinctive courthouse, many on the National Register of Historic Places — and some as little as 40 miles away from one another. Each one houses a full complement of clerks, auditors, sheriff’s deputies, jailers and commissioners. Is there any reason beyond local pride to maintain such duplication given the economic and population pressures of our time?

This is not a problem unique to the states I have cited. Every state and every region in the country is stuck with some form of anachronistic and expensive local government structure that dates to horse-drawn wagons, family farms and small-town convenience.

If this is a reset, it’s time to reorganize our state and local government structures for today’s realities rather than cling to the sensibilities of the 20th century.

If we demand this from General Motors, we should ask no less of ourselves.
New Day For Smart Growth
LEGISLATIVE PACKAGE • New laws would encourage regional cooperation, saving money and land
Hartford Courant
January 27, 2009

Progress, the late poet Ogden Nash observed, might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long. That might describe the state's postwar rush to suburbia.

Stoked by VA mortgages and cheap cars and gas, development marched outward. Cities lost population as former villages boomed. But what boomed was mostly sprawl — ill-planned, low-density, auto-dependent, single-family residential or strip mall construction on what had been forest or farmland.

Only belatedly did the citizenry realize that progress has a cost, in addition to infrastructure and services expenses, air and water pollution, energy use and social isolation. It diminishes the open lands that support agriculture, water supplies, wildlife habitat and the traditional visual character of the Connecticut countryside.

Corralling sprawl

In the past few years, the General Assembly has passed several bills to discourage sprawl. These have provided some funding as well as plans and studies. Sweeping legislation proposed on Monday would vastly increase the state's efforts to grow more compactly and efficiently.

The legislative package is the result of a year's work by the bipartisan, public/private Smart Growth Working Group assembled by state Rep. Brendan Sharkey, D-Hamden. The proposed laws place a heavy emphasis on regional planning and cooperation. Mr. Sharkey and his colleagues believe that regionalism and other smart-growth measures will shrink the overall cost of government and make the state more competitive.

This is a threshold moment for the state's smart-growth movement. If we really believe that sprawl is damaging the economy as well as the scenery, the bills should pass.

A core problem with the present system is that it almost requires sprawl. Towns have to pay for education and other services, and virtually the only way they can raise revenue is the property tax. So the incentive is to develop all available land, whether the development is appropriate or not.

Sharing revenue

Under the new proposal, towns would voluntarily form economic development regions, which would entitle them to federal funds. The towns would share the revenue from new commercial development rather than waste time competing with one another. They would engage in regional collective bargaining, land-use planning, purchasing and other activities.

As an incentive, the state would give the towns a percentage, perhaps 1 percent, of the sales tax collected in the region (though this might take a year or two to implement).

The proposals also include such things as model smart-growth zoning regulations (most local zoning codes encourage sprawl), Geographic Information System mapping and streamlining the state's brownfield remediation program.

In all, it is the most comprehensive approach to reversing sprawl that's yet been presented in this state. But note: Connecticut has been behind the curve on smart growth; many of these measures have been used successfully elsewhere. For example, Minneapolis and its suburbs have had a revenue-sharing system in place since the 1970s, and it's worked well.

Still, it won't be easy to overcome years of distrust between towns and the state. The way out of that hole is to view state and local governments as one government, Mr. Sharkey said, and not as competing forces.

With local budgets strained and the state heading for a major deficit, it is essential to reduce the cost of government. If we the people can make government more efficient, and save farms, reduce car trips and clean the air in the bargain, we should.
Gold Coasters not playing nice
Connecticut Post
Ken Dixon
Updated: 01/09/2009 04:48:17 PM EST

The Democratic-dominated state General Assembly has finally reached the stages of budgetary grief.  Unfortunately, that stage is denial, so this isn't going to be the year that the Legislature is going to blow up local school boards, the way Maine is doing in its fiscal crisis.

Too bad.

So many administrators doing the exact same things for the big bucks in every town and city. It's money that would be better spent in the classrooms, where it really counts.  Maybe, as we Yankees fans say, next year. That's probably when the $1.4 billion state budget reserves will be gone and lawmakers will be forced to look at systemic changes.

But some baby steps toward regionalization could easily be taken and it only involves negative-behavioral conditioning in the section of the state that the rest of Connecticut hates the most: southwestern Connecticut's "Gold Coast."

For all the wealth in the geographic arc from Norwalk to Weston, Wilton, New Canaan, Stamford and Greenwich, local officials have been trying to nickel and dime their way out of the regional recycling effort.  Instead of sending their paper, cans and bottles to the Stratford recycling plant, they're shipping them to Yonkers in Westchester County under promises of rebates from $15 to $21 per ton.

Together, all the southwestern towns and cities collected about 56,000 tons of recyclables last year, separate from solid waste collections. With the Gold Coast out of the picture, only 35,000 tons comes in.  Norwalk officials cut their deal after literally taking the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority bid specifications and shopping them around for a better deal.  The theory for the towns was that they could save the trucking cost of sending their recylcables up the line to the CRRA recycling center in Stratford.

Picture posh Greenwich, which each year pays for its school system in cash, trying to save a little money at the expense of the Connecticut's regional recycling effort.  It's amusing, if you hope that me-first public policy in Connecticut is just a couple years from going the way of the dinosaurs.  Part of the problem was that cities such as Bridgeport wanted to emulate the single-stream model that's actually increasing recycling rates in Hartford.

That's the program that gives taxpayers large bins in which they throw everything in together -- from bottles to newspaper and mixed paper. The Gold Coasters weren't into the single-stream concept.

Anyway, the mutiny of the down-county towns and cities was going on just before September, when the global market for recyclables became as depressed as those Bernie Madoff investors would be a few months later.  China, the destination for most of the U.S. recycled paper and cardboard, hasn't been taking the stuff since the Olympics ended and they began reneging on their contracts.

A year ago, we were getting $150 a ton for paper. The metal and glass markets have flat-lined, or cratered, depending on your cliché.  Now, according to state officials, the competing recyclables hauler can't deliver on his promises and wants a better deal for himself.  Fortunately, CRRA's regional recycling effort still has a paper market in Ontario, where it gets about $80 a ton from the mills; and plastic bottles are still being turned into U.S.-made fleece pullovers.

Paul Nonnenmacher, spokesman for the CRRA, said in an interview last week that when the down-county communities decided to take their recyclables elsewhere, it triggered a clause in the regional contract that would cause it to dissolve on June 30.  Part of the ancillary damage is the planned closure of the Garbage Museum in Stratford, visits to which, coincidentally, are in the statewide earth-sciences curriculum for Connecticut fourth-graders.

Tom Gaffey, a veteran state senator from Meriden whose day job is heading the CRRA recycling program, noted that the quasi-public state agency has never charged member towns a tipping fee for recyclables, while the Bristol project charges $35 a ton and other municipalities are paying as high as $60 a ton.  Plan B in certain, unnamed towns seems to be throwing the recyclables into the general trash mix and gambling that CRRA inspectors -- mostly former state troopers -- don't notice at the Bridgeport garbage-to-energy plant.

"I've had public works directors say unabashedly to me that it's just going to end up in the garbage," Gaffey said.

Meanwhile, Rep. Dick Roy, D-Milford, co-chairman of the legislative Environment Committee, said one of his goals this year is to expand the state's recycling efforts.  One way is to revive the legislation that failed in recent years to put nickel deposits on water, ice tea and sports drinks. Another is to accept plastics with the numbers "3" through "8."

"What we should do is collect all of these plastics and re-use them," Roy said last week. "I think we can because it's the right thing to do." Roy's committee will explore the single-stream idea, as well.

"There's a lot more material to take out of the waste stream and put into the recycling stream," he said.

The contractual door will stay open until the end of June for the Gold Coast mutineers to come back into the fold. But CRRA officials say they can get the same price for their recyclables without wooing the me-firsters.  If city and town officials can't agree on the slam-dunk public benefits of recycling, the eventual, inevitable battle over regionalizing school systems will become a virtual blood bath.
Regionalism Trumpeted, But Town Leaders Wary Of Being Told How To Do It 
DAY
By Karin Crompton , Ted Mann 
Published on 1/11/2009
 
Don't ask Lyme First Selectman Ralph Eno about regionalism unless you're ready to weather the shouting.
It isn't the concept itself. Eno - and many of his fellow small-town leaders - will point out the ways in which they already split costs and share services with other municipalities.

The problem is the approach. Eno and other local leaders bristle at the idea of the state legislature telling them how to do their jobs, especially when towns feel they are already carrying out the idea quite effectively.

”We want to be productive, cooperative members of a regional community, but we should be able to pick and choose the avenues to do that,” Eno said. “Any time the general assembly and the governor start telling us which roads we have to choose … it doesn't work. For whatever reason, they don't know how to do it.”

Some leading legislators have seized on the premise that bad economic times in Hartford could trigger a broad regionalization movement in local government - a long-held goal of many lawmakers.

The Democratic leadership in particular is pushing for regionalization and reorganization of local government functions even as aid to municipalities shrinks. And the leaders place most of the blame for previous failures to launch at the feet of people like Eno.

”It's very difficult to get any kind of inter-municipal cooperation because we have 169 separate fiefdoms jealously protective of their own turf on almost every issue, but at the same time looking to the state to be the senior financial partner in the relationship,” said Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, D-New Haven.

”So, we're hoping that we can use that leverage this year to kind of move them toward fundamental reforms that almost everyone who looks with a fairly educated eye at public policy believes have been necessary for a long time, but the political will hasn't been there to do it.”

It is exactly that type of statement that gnaws at Eno and his colleagues.

”There's a lot more going on than what you think,” said Nicholas Mullane, North Stonington's first selectman. Mullane's examples: North Stonington and adjacent towns will plow some of their neighbors' roads; small towns apply together for state and federal grants; towns use mutual aid for emergency services.

Eno ticks off his own list: Lyme is already part of a regional school district; its nine-town planning region shares a household hazardous waste facility that also handles e-waste; it is involved in a nine-town transit district; the Connecticut River Gateway Commission oversees zoning-related issues all along the lower Connecticut River valley; its Regional Planning Agency does the same with planning; and there are burgeoning health districts among some smaller towns.

”What scares me about this,” Eno said, “is the fact that a lot of people are preaching it who haven't experienced it from the ground level up. And I'm afraid, as is usually the case with the General Assembly, we're going to be dictated to by folks who haven't been there and done that.”

Pushing reforms

What precisely the efficiencies would look like is a guarded secret in Hartford, if there is consensus at all.

But Looney and Senate President Donald E. Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn, have indicated tentative support for proposals that would grant local governments new powers to raise revenue - including keeping some of the sales tax revenue generated within their borders - in exchange for new commitments to regional efficiency.

”Probably the one silver lining in the cloud of bad times is that sometimes it does push reforms that are necessary in the long run,” Looney said.

The goal will be to use incentives and encouragement as much as possible, Looney said, but he acknowledged that structural change would be unlikely without firm direction from lawmakers and Gov. M. Jodi Rell.

Republican leaders are deeply skeptical, however, and argue that more local control, not less, is what municipal leaders need.

Asked last week if local control could fade in the face of massive deficits, Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, said the state has already “gone down that road more than I would like, in the form of one-size-fits-all unfunded mandates.

”Regional governments and regional governance is not the solution to our economic problems,” he said. “If it were, New York would be doing just fine, and their budget problems are worse than ours.”

Those diverging opinions are visible even in the lobbying effort of municipal governments themselves.

”We're all looking like we get along here, and we do,” Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch said before the session began, at a press conference organized by the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities to press for greater local authority on multiple fronts, from the power to levy new taxes to the ability to reopen collective bargaining agreements during periods of fiscal distress.

”But,” Finch continued, “throw a Wal-Mart in the middle of us, and there'd be a fight, because we're all surviving on local property taxes. The takeaway from this is we can't keep going on this system of local control and property taxes.”

The cost

Small town leaders also question whether county government or other forms of regionalization would wind up being more expensive.

Mullane used the probate court system as an example. Small towns often handle their cases with part-timers and small budgets; Mullane said North Stonington's budget for those services is about $3,000, plus some state funding for benefits, while Eno said Lyme budgets $750 for its probate services.

Turning that responsibility over to a regional system, Mullane said, would create “a conglomeration of lawyers and paralegals running a very, very expensive organization, and one that will get wildly out of control.”

”There are certain things that the towns provide very effectively,” Mullane said, “and because their pay scales are less and a lot is involved with part-timers and/or volunteers, you're getting a lot more bang for your buck.”

Preston First Selectman Robert Congdon summed up what many of his colleagues have been saying for years.

”I'm not opposed to looking at anything,” Congdon said. “Our job is to provide the highest level of service at the lowest possible cost … If we can do that by working with another town to do that jointly, I have no objection to doing that. Dynasty builder is not my goal.” 


Taxpayers Could Benefit From State Makeover 
DAY Editorial
By Paul Choiniere    
Published on 11/25/2007 

A couple popular television shows provide the opportunity for a “complete makeover.”

In one show, individuals society would consider ugly ducklings are transformed through the miracle of modern plastic surgery.

Another features the complete redesign of homes. An army of construction workers, plumbers, electricians and other tradesmen descend on a home, outfit it with all the modern amenities and add unique touches to meet the family's special needs and interests.

Connecticut government could likewise use a complete makeover.

Having now lived in Connecticut for 32 years I can see that its reputation as the land of steady habits is well deserved. One steady habit is the sanctity of home rule.

Each town and city is responsible for educating the children in its borders, providing for the public safety of its townspeople and offering various other services. Municipalities in Connecticut have basically two sources for the revenues needed to provide for those needs — income from property taxes and the largesse of the state.

The greatest strength of this system is that local control tends to be frugal control. The smaller the government bureaucracy the less likely wasteful spending will be tolerated. Every dime has to be justified by finance boards, councils or selectmen and, in most towns, sometimes to voters in a referendum.

But this local-only approach to governing has plenty of drawbacks as well. It is often inefficient. The region has multiple emergency dispatch centers, for example, when one or two could serve all of southeastern Connecticut. Nearly every town, big or small, has its own school superintendent and administration though, at least in some cases, one superintendent could oversee the administration of several schools in multiple towns.

If not for home rule there would certainly be other services that could be shared by towns. Savings could also be achieved in the purchase of supplies by combining the buying power of several towns.

The dependence of the property tax system to meet local needs also creates inequities. Homeowners in towns with large commercial tax bases enjoy lower taxes and better services. Often this is the function of location near highways and having land available for development.

Conversely, small bedroom communities with little commercial tax bases can offer their citizens few services. Cities, which have limited land available for development, are hard pressed to provide services without overburdening taxpayers.

Towns compete with each other for the commercial developments needed to raise property tax money, leading to poor land use choices.

The complete makeover would involve some form of county government. The region, rather than just individual towns, could benefit from the large commercial taxpayers. Projects could be built where they make sense, not where they are desired to raise tax revenues. Economies of scale could be realized.

But this is not television and that is not going to happen, at least not at any point in the near future.

Yet towns can search for opportunities where regional cooperation makes sense. The state budget proposal, which this past week was still being negotiated between the governor and legislature, would provide financial incentives for towns to undertake regional projects.

Towns and cities may soon have no choice. Homeowners are reaching a breaking point when it comes to property taxes. Old habits have to change. And while Connecticut's communities may not be ready for a complete makeover, it is time for a partial makeover to begin.
Area leaders hash out hot issues at roundtable
Norwalk HOUR
September 13, 2007

Businesses are moving in, shops and restaurants are opening. Downtowns are flourishing in Darien, Fairfield, Westport and poised to do so in Norwalk.  If those trends are to continue, however, the four lower Fairfield County communities must work together on regional issues such as transportation, education funding and affordable housing.

So concluded Mayor Richard A. Moccia, Darien First Selectwoman Evonne M. Klein, Fairfield First Selectman Ken Flatto, Westport First Selectman Gordon K. Joseloff during a Regional Roundtable put on by The Greater Norwalk Chamber of Commerce at DoubleTree Hotel on Connecticut Avenue Wednesday.  Moccia, borrowing the city's new slogan, said Norwalk is a city "On the Move" through its urban renewal projects. When done, the projects will create neighborhoods where people will live, work and shop, he said.

"The one big caveat on all of this is the transportation. That is the key for all of us. We need something done about moving people in Fairfield County," Moccia said. "Whatever town you're in in Fairfield County, unless this problem is addressed and addressed immediately and on a regional approach ... we can have all the businesses in the world, but if people can't get home and people can't get to their jobs, that's going to cause problems."

Moccia said Gov. M. Jodi Rell and lawmakers made a commitment to mass transit, new rail cars, and bus service, but added "it's going to take a coordinated effort from the state and all the cities."

The roundtable drew about 100 business and civic leaders, as well as Norwalk mayoral candidates Walter O. Briggs and Scott P. Merrell. AT&T sponsored the roundtable. Wendy Corey, host of WSTC/WNLK Morning News, moderated the event, which began with the four chief elected officials explaining issues in their communities.

Klein credited Darien Revitalization Inc. and the Main Street Center Program, as well as smaller quality-of-life initiatives, such as allowing more outdoor dining, extending off-street parking hours and adding more pedestrian crossing signs, for the revitalization of downtown Darien.

She identified transportation, affordable housing, aging infrastructure as the greatest issues facing the town.

"Fortunately and unfortunately we have the Post Road, which brings a lot of traffic into our town. When people park and shop, it's good fortune," Klein said. "When they're just using Route 1 as an I-95 detour, our entire town becomes totally congested."

To solve the problem, Darien has applied for a $200,000 state and federal grant to study the Route 1 corridor. The study will get under way in early 2008, she said.  In the area of housing, one developer plans to include two affordable-priced units downtown. The town has the opportunity to create more such housing by acquiring the Darien Library property, Klein said.

Joseloff said Fairfield County communities do work together through meetings of chief-elected officials, as well as through the South Western Regional Planning Agency and Metropolitan Planning Organization.  At the same time, each faces its own problems in education, affordable housing and transportation.  Westport is now dealing with Connecticut Light & Power Co. digging up Route 1 to upgrade the Middletown-Norwalk transmission cable.

Joseloff urged "smart transportation" strategies to unsnarl traffic jams elsewhere. Traffic accidents along Interstate 95 and the Merritt Parkway could be cleared faster, he suggested, if first-responders were given the same access to live roadway camera images, as are broadcast media.

Flatto offered three solutions: "Fix the trains. Fix the trains. (Fix the trains)."

He said the opening of a new train station on the east side of Fairfield will alleviate traffic and add parking for commuters. Flatto urged following Transportation Strategy Board goals and "reform" of the Department of Transportation.

On education, Moccia noted that Norwalk is the state's sixth largest city but receives far less in Education Cost Sharing dollars from Hartford than do Bridgeport, New Haven, Waterbury and other communities.  He said Norwalk did receive more money this year thanks to Norwalk's legislative delegation. The cost-sharing formula, however, remains unfair to Norwalk, he continued.

"We're being perceived as being very successful cities. We're in the heart of the Gold Coast," Moccia said. Still "we are a city. We face urban problems. The state of Connecticut does not recognize this."


Push for regionalization a tricky balancing act
 Norwich Bulletin
By MAX BAKKE
August 25, 2007

For many small towns in Windham County, passing budgets this year proved arduous.

Several towns held at least two referendums -- Thompson held four and Canterbury passed its $13.7 million budget Wednesday, its third try.  According to John Filchak, executive director of the Northeast Connecticut Council of Governments, the pressures have much to do with balancing growth while retaining the charm of the Quiet Corner.

"It's about keeping the rural character, and at the same time growing the grand list," he said. "All these town's are concerned about developing because of rapid growth."

Part of the council's mission is to work with its 11 member towns, specifically concerning land use and engineering, Filchak said. The council is hiring a regional planner, who would be a full-time staff member. That person would divide time among the towns that purchase the services, Killingly Town Council Chairman Janice Thurlow said. The council also is hiring a regional engineer, a brand new position, she said.

"As towns become larger, there's going to be more and more expenses that we may be able to do on a regional level," Thurlow said.  Thurlow said she did not know exactly how much individual towns would save by buying into the program, but called the savings "significant."

Regionalization has its pitfalls, however, as many of these small towns cherish their own identity and see regionalization as threatening.

"Planning and zoning issues can be touchy," Thurlow said.

Many of Connecticut's 169 towns go it alone.

"Really small towns are trying to do it 169 different ways -- we need to regionalize," said Michael Saad of Moosup.

Saad said municipalities would benefit greatly from regionalization and sharing the cost of services. A regional high school, Saad said, could take pressure off some towns.

"There's nothing wrong with a regional school system. Sometimes you need to stop and say 'Hey. I need your help,' " he said.

Thompson First Selectmen A. David Babbitt said it's not likely his town would buy into regional services, but he said the monthly meetings with other town leaders is very helpful.

"The exchange of ideas -- that's just wonderful. We sit at a roundtable discussion and just talk about issues," he said.

The town of Ashford, which joined the council this summer, intends to employ the regional planning and engineering services, First Selectman Ralph Fletcher said.

"There are 4,400 people in the town of Ashford -- most of the towns in the NECCOG area are small towns similar to us," Fletcher said. "We can't afford all the situations that some of the other towns can, services we need that we can't afford individually."

Ashford, formerly a member of the Windham Regional Council of Governments, still needs approval from the Office of Policy and Management to join the Northeast Council. Fletcher said the Northeast Council is a better fit for Ashford because it's made up mostly of first selectmen. The Windham council has larger towns in its membership, which employ professional managers and administrators.

Plainfield First Selectman Kevin Cunningham, a strong supporter of the council, touted the facile way towns can share, loan or sell equipment to each other. Plainfield has sold older highway equipment to Brooklyn, a less expensive proposition for Brooklyn than purchasing new, he said

"Just by talking about it at a roundtable meeting we were able to sell equipment to a town that needed it," Cunningham said. "That stuff saves COG towns tremendously."

Brooklyn plans to use the regional engineer services, First Selectman Roger Engle said. As a council member, Engle has discovered a willingness to help from the member towns.  Engle mentioned at a recent meeting Brooklyn planned to repaint its Town Hall in July and several towns volunteered bucket trucks for the all-day project.

"I think that we can get a lot of good out of the council, because there are many things we can share," he said. "There's just so much we can do if we work together."

Filchak said future plans for the council could include expanding the regional dog pound, working on the proposed regional recreational center in Putnam or completing a visitor's center at Exit 100 on Interstate 395.

"There are no shortage of projects," he said. "We're never bored."

Intertwined economies quantified; 'trade imbalance' hurts state, report says
PAM DAWKINS pdawkins@ctpost.com
Article Launched:11/02/2006 04:49:00 AM EST

Gross state product isn't the only measure of an economy — especially when that state is Connecticut, according to a senior economist with the state Department of Labor.

In an article in the Connecticut Economic Digest, released Wednesday, Daniel Kennedy examined the apparently mutually exclusive realities of slower growth in gross state product, which measures the value of goods and services produced in a state, and high per-capita income.

"A major factor that resolves that paradox" is the two concepts at work, Kennedy said.

Namely, gross state product is a geographically based measure but many state residents, particularly those "south and west" of New Haven work in New York City.

"Fairfield County is basically a satellite of the New York City economy," Kennedy said. "There isn't really a 'Connecticut economy' because you've got a substantial amount of people that are working in New York City," said economist Todd Martin, who advises People's Bank.

This is also becoming true elsewhere. For example, Hartford and Springfield, Mass., are evolving into a regional economy, as are the New London area and southern Rhode Island, Kennedy said.

Connecticut, he said, has what amounts to a $4 billion "trade imbalance" with neighboring states. In 2004, that was the difference between what Connecticut residents earned in other states and the residents of other states earned in Connecticut. Kennedy also showed commuting from Connecticut to another state pays off, at least financially.

Fairfield County residents in the finance, insurance, real estate and information industries who worked in the county earned less than neighbors doing the same jobs in New York City, he said. While that's not a surprise — and is partly a function of the city's higher cost of living, which translates into higher salaries — residents of Westchester and Rockland counties in New York doing those jobs in Fairfield County tend to earn more than the Fairfield County residents working here. Kennedy said he wasn't sure whether the Fairfield County paychecks were larger than what the New Yorkers could earn in their home counties.

Fairfield County commuters aren't the only ones earning higher salaries in other states, Kennedy said.

Connecticut residents' average wage, based on U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data for 2004, was $42,444. But for people working in Massachusetts and living here, that number grew to $54,079. For New York workers, the difference is more striking: the average was almost $132,000. Only residents working in Rhode Island lose out — their average wage was $38,474.

"Our geographic proximity to New York makes that a very attractive prospect" for job seekers, said Lisa Mercurio, spokeswoman for The Business Council of Fairfield County.

The proximity also attracts businesses to Connecticut, Mercurio said, because they gain access to the city and its infrastructure at lower costs.

Kennedy's report, she said, is a "data-based reinforcement" of how much of southwestern Connecticut's economy is tied to New York's and the importance of having the ability to move freely around the region.

Of course, the states where the income is earned take a piece of it before the Connecticut income tax gets its bite. People working in New York City pay city and New York state income taxes, Kennedy said; neighboring states tend to have agreements to facilitate this and make sure no one gets away without paying. So it is difficult to be sure whether Connecticut actually takes in more tax dollars from the New York workers than it would if those people worked in Fairfield County.

"They want that before it leaves the gate," he said of governments and income taxes.

Kennedy stressed he is not making value judgements about the state's economy, but said if people want an accurate picture, "You've got to understand the delineation" between the geographic production and residents' incomes.

"There tends to be a real parochial view" among officials and economic development specialists, Martin said. "It's really an us-against-them mentality," but Kennedy's research shows taking a regional view is better, Martin said. Some groups, he said, are already looking at the big picture.
Ledyard Mayor Seeks Regional Cooperation;  Major developments affect more than just host town
DAY
By Paul Choiniere
Published on 9/21/2006

Norwich — Stung by criticism that her town, in hopes of generating commercial development by the Mashantucket Pequot tribe, approved zoning changes along Route 2 without acting in concert with its neighbors, Ledyard Mayor Susan Mendenhall called Wednesday for a greater spirit of regional cooperation.

“Now the towns are basically pitted against one another,” Mendenhall said, addressing fellow elected officials from throughout the region. “It's all about generating the property tax dollars.”

The region, she said, needs to develop some mechanism to address major planning and zoning issues on a regional basis. It is beyond the ability of small towns to consider all the implications of the major projects that appear on the horizon, she said.

Mendenhall made her comments at the start of the monthly meeting of the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments.

The tribe, operators of the Foxwoods Resort Casino, appears to be eyeing the Route 2 corridor near its casino for a major resort development. Unlike development on the reservation, however, the new enterprise would be taxable and subject to approval from town land use commissions.

Tribal officials have not released any details about their development plans.

In neighboring Preston, voters on May 23 approved a development agreement that could pave the way for the massive Utopia Studios Ltd. project on the former Norwich Hospital property.  That $1.6 billion project would include 4,500 hotel rooms, enclosed theme parks, movie studios and a performing arts college.

“The issue that Preston and Ledyard have is not going to go away and, in fact, it is only going to get worse given the development we are facing in the future,” Mendenhall said.

The Ledyard mayor did not offer specifics for dealing regionally with large-scale development issues but said she saw a role for the council of governments, a largely advisory group that is the closest thing Connecticut has to regional governance.

Ledyard, Preston and North Stonington all added “resort districts” along Route 2 to their zoning regulations in the early 1990s, hoping to spin off some development from the casino. The strategy has met with little success.  Last month, acting on an application from the tribe, the Ledyard Zoning Commission agreed to broaden the types of development it would permit along Route 2, including condominiums, time-share units; parking garages; multiplex cinemas; gas stations; amusements; water parks; bowling centers; mini-golf; boat rentals; business and government offices; campgrounds; and retail stores of up to 50,000 square feet, which would accommodate so-called “big box” retailers.

Ledyard approved the changes despite opposition from the Reference Committee of the Regional Planning Commission, which reviews zoning changes that have ramifications for neighboring towns. The committee, part of the COG, concluded the zone change in Ledyard “would have adverse inter-municipal impacts” and “would significantly intensify the already intense activity in (the) area.”

Officials in Preston and North Stonington also questioned Ledyard's decision to move forward without consulting its neighbors.  Those towns only learned of the proposal when they were mailed copies of the tribe's application, as required by state law.

“In retrospect, should their planner have met with our planner and gone over this first? Yeah, probably,” said Preston First Selectman Robert Congdon. “But hindsight is 20-20. The important thing is that we work together going forward.”

The tribe has said it also plans to seek similar zone changes in Preston and North Stonington, but no applications have yet been filed. At a recent meeting of the Regional Planning Commission there was discussion of creating a subcommittee with representatives of Ledyard, North Stonington and Preston to monitor future development plans along Route 2.

As for Utopia, Congdon said the town should know by Nov. 20 if the project will be moving forward.  That is the deadline set for the developer to meet a series of requirements in the development agreement.  If the project does move forward, Congdon said Preston officials expect to work closely with the neighboring towns of Ledyard and Norwich in planning for the impacts of the entertainment complex.

The council of governments is also planning to do a regional analysis of large-scale developments, such as Utopia and the current expansion of the Foxwoods Resort.
Support Grows For Regional Solutions To Regional Issues
DAY
By Paul Choiniere
Published on 6/5/2006
  
Norwich doesn't have a casino, but its schools have plenty of casino kids.

The student body at Greeneville Elementary School is an ethnic and racial melting pot, with two-thirds categorized as minority students. For many, English is a second language. More than one-third have parents who work at one of the region's two casinos. They bring both a cultural richness and an educational challenge.

Griswold doesn't have a major shopping center, but its business district in the Borough of Jewett City felt the pinch six years ago when Lisbon Landing — with its Wal-Mart, Home Depot and several other big- box retailers — opened just a couple of miles down the road.

Big projects have consequences that spill over town borders, but Connecticut, governed by a system in which decisions on development, zoning and education are left to each individual town, is particularly ill-equipped to plan for and address those impacts.

But that could be changing. The public, it appears, is in a mood to explore new approaches — regional approaches — to the challenges facing this corner of Connecticut.

Utopia Studios Ltd., the next potential big project, was given a green light May 23 when Preston voters approved a development agreement to allow planning to move forward on the $1.6 billion entertainment and studio complex. It is proposed for the 419-acre former Norwich Hospital property in the southwest corner of town.

A poll of likely voters conducted for The Day prior to the referendum asked residents both in Preston and from the surrounding towns if there should be a mechanism for large projects to be decided regionally, not just by the host community.

A large majority said yes.

Sixty-nine percent from outside Preston agreed or strongly agreed that there should be regional decision-making, while 66 percent of Preston respondents also agreed or strongly agreed.

“Based on those numbers, more and more people are realizing that if it happens in one town, and it is of any scope, it is going to affect everyone,” said Bozrah First Selectman Keith J. Robbins, the current chairman of the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments.

“That 66 percent of the people in Preston said we have a responsibility to the region, I think it's encouraging,” said Preston First Selectman Robert Congdon. “They could have said no one asked us before they built Millstone in Waterford or before they put the Pfizer global headquarters in New London, but they didn't. They said this is something there should be a regional discussion about, and that's good.”

Robbins says many constituents he speaks to want to see more regional approaches to education, emergency services, infrastructure and the pursuit of major new employers.

“We have to make structural changes in Connecticut, big time,” Congdon agreed.

•••Councils of government are the closest thing Connecticut has to regional governance. The southeastern council, made up of the chief executive officers from each of the region's 20 towns, cities and boroughs, is one of 16 “COGs” in the state.

In 1960 Connecticut abolished its eight county governments. Lawmakers saw them as outdated and concluded that local administration of government was best.

Some 30 years later, the General Assembly acknowledged something had been lost, and in the early 1990s authorized the creation of COGs to assess regional needs and conduct regional planning — but with no real authority.

Now the local COG is undertaking one of its most important functions, updating the Regional Plan of Conservation and Development for the first time in a decade. The plan is intended to guide development at the municipal level with an eye on the needs of the entire region.

The revision comes amid growing interest in regionally addressing the challenges of economic growth, open space, transportation and affordable housing, said James S. Butler, executive director of the COG since 1998.

Regional success stories he cited include the Southeast Area Transit bus system and the waste authority that deals with the region's trash disposal needs. There has already been extensive regional emergency planning, and in 2004 towns throughout the region joined the Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequot tribes to lay the groundwork for a regional water system.

But now for the first time, said Butler, political leaders are considering the need to review and plan for the effects major developments can have on the region and perhaps share some of the resulting tax revenues.

“No one is yet suggesting how it is done, but the fact that it is being discussed is significant,” Butler said.

Development is now closely tied to the property tax system. Towns compete to attract commercial taxpayers. Conversely, zoning is often designed to discourage affordable housing for fear such housing attracts families with children, raising expenses in the school system.

Congdon has promised regional involvement in guiding the development of Utopia, which company executives claim will create 22,000 permanent jobs and generate 22 million admissions annually. He has said the door remains open to some form of revenue sharing to deal with its impacts.

The same suggestions are being heard elsewhere.

Last year a steering committee of local leaders, developed a “Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy” for southeastern Connecticut. Intended to serve as a blueprint for growth in the region, the plan went to the federal Economic Development Administration and is meant to help qualify the region for federal economic improvement grants.

Douglas Fisher, who chairs the Governor's Commission for the Economic Diversification of Southeastern Connecticut, formed last year after the Naval Submarine Base in Groton narrowly escaped being closed, said the region could become an economic leader in the state by creating business parks in which both the cost of development and the resulting property taxes would be shared by multiple towns.


In 2000 the legislature passed a law that would allow municipalities to voluntarily share property tax revenues.  So far no region has utilized the law.

•••Those who have watched Connecticut's parochial approach to government say the time for a regional approach is long overdue.

Kathy McCoy, a Norwich resident, is concerned as plans move forward for the Utopia project in neighboring Preston. McCoy expects Utopia would have a major effect on Norwich, much like the region's two Indian casinos. She wants a regional discussion on how to deal with it.

“It should have been a regional decision,” said Richard L. Humphreville, a New London resident who has long complained about that city's high tax rate. Confronted with urban issues but with limited land for commercial development, New London has not been well served by a system dependent on property taxes and home rule, he said.

“One reason Connecticut is hurting so much is 169 towns have their individual infrastructures, their individual administrations. It creates a level of government that is a burden and could serve many more. It needs to be cut in half so we can compete for economic development,” he said.

A regional effort to attract new major businesses, and sharing the resulting tax benefits, would be a step in the right direction, he said.

“This fiefdom mentality in New England is killing our economy, with everyone one fighting to get these big guys,” Humphreville said.

Peter Roper, a Groton resident, is on a steering committee guiding the new regional plan of development. He feels there was a major shift toward regional cooperation as the public witnessed over the last decade the effects of the Foxwoods Resort and Mohegan Sun casinos.

“I really do think there is more of a mood for it,” said Roper. “I don't think it's a foreign concept anymore.”
 

The New England Approach:
Some of America's smallest states are learning the value of a bigger picture. Transportation is a good example.
Editorial By Day Staff Writer
Published on 6/4/2006
 
It is starting to dawn on policymakers and planners in Connecticut and other New England states that they are part of a bigger picture, and that it would pay to consider that reality in planning for the future. For tourists traveling from outside the region, Mystic or Litchfield County might not yet be a clear destination for a week's vacation, but New England is. So the New England states should cooperate in marketing rather than doing their own thing.

Added to the “brand name” of New England is the fact that the New England states are among the smallest in the country and more often than not, it makes no sense for them to wall each other off in formulating policy. A nearby example of this is the common interests that exist between southwestern Rhode Island and southeastern Connecticut in such matters as water issues, transportation policy and tourism.

The common challenges to the New England states have been the theme of a series of articles run in the Perspective section the past several months under the rubric of the New England Futures Project. The latest of these appears in this section today, and addresses the issue of rail transportation. The writers describe the importance rail could play in unifying the region. What they're talking about isn't pie in the sky, for they describe steps that states are taking to get people off the region's already overstressed highways and onto trains and other mass transit.

One promising development is addressed in the latest transportation legislation to come out of the Connecticut General Assembly. The measure authorizes state investment in a commuter rail line between New Haven and the Massachusetts state line, with bus links to Bradley International Airport. The article points out that Connecticut's original plan would have stopped short in Hartford, but a regional agency in Massachusetts persuaded ConnDOT to look further, with the goal of a rail connection to Springfield, Mass., and eventually Brattleboro, Vt. The Massachusetts legislature is deliberating on funds for its part of this plan.

Evolving New England concept

This new focus has its origins in another evolving New England concept, “The Knowledge Corridor,” an economic development strategy tying together the Hartford, Springfield and Northampton area, home to more than 30 public and private colleges and universities. Connecting these dots could create a knowledge-based, economic powerhouse equivalent to the Raleigh-Durham, N.C., metropolitan region.

Connecticut has been scrambling to revamp its transportation policies to address the mounting highway congestion on its interstate and state roads, a situation a planning report warned could deprive the state of benefits from the global economy.

The same transportation problems cross state lines, and require regional attention. The sort of collaboration that is taking place between Massachusetts and Connecticut also is developing between Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Rhode Island is moving ahead with an ambitious transit plan that will connect Boston metropolitan area mass transit with new rail service to Providence and Green Airport west to North Kingston, not far from Westerly, which is right next door to Connecticut.

Shift in Connecticut's emphasis

The entire topic is highly pertinent to this part of Connecticut, where planners are grappling with the potential impact of a burgeoning tourism and entertainment industry and billions of dollars in potential new development. While the focus in the past has been on road improvements (widening I-95, improving Route 2 and completing Route 11), a new emphasis is developing on mass transit. Molly McKay of Mystic, transportation chairwoman of the Connecticut Sierra Club, points out in another article in this section that the shift in emphasis in Connecticut to public transportation extends into Eastern Connecticut. The new transportation law calls for a study into reviving rail passenger service on the New London-to-Worcester line, an idea previously dismissed in a ConnDOT study. The transportation bill also raises the chances for expanding the Shoreline East rail commuter service to New Haven and New York. While they're at it, planners should look at developing public transit links northeast toward Providence, Boston and Green Airport.

It won't be long before the casinos and other players in the region's tourism and entertainment industries will realize the drawbacks of relying on roads to get increasing volumes of people to their businesses and turn to mass-transportation solutions such as light rail and monorail. Such solutions would improve their competitive advantage over regions known for their highway congestion and reduce the damage of highway construction on the area's countryside. Good businesses would be attracted to such an on-the-ball region.

One day it will be possible for a family from Iowa, planning a New England vacation, to fly to Providence, shuttle to Mystic, New London or Norwich by public transportation and move among the region's attractions without having to rent a car.

The idea is no longer merely fanciful.
 
Dear Electees: Get Smart About Growth
By Lisa McGinley, Night City Editor, DAY
Published on 11/9/2005

Congratulations and good luck to all who woke up elected this morning. The terms you start now could be among the busiest your towns have ever seen.

Eastern Connecticut is HOT.

Growth is going to be on the agenda of every board and council, so before the dust settles on the leftover campaign signs, study up on “Smart Growth,” a buzz phrase that some candidates have been using without understanding all its implications and ideals.

The opposite of Smart Growth is not Dumb Growth. In every development project there is at least one smart guy, the person who sees an opportunity to build something profitable. Smart Growth depends on all the players — land-use officials, taxpayers, users of highways and water systems and breathers of air — knowing as much as the developer about the pros and cons of the proposal.

Smart Growth aims to counteract sprawl, which uses up land and leaves towns and cities and their schools to waste away.

Anthony Downey, a senior fellow in economic studies for the Brookings Institution, the well-known independent think tank, listed the goals of Smart Growth in a speech in 2003:

• Limit outward expansion

• Encourage higher-density development

• Encourage mixed-use zoning;

• Reduce travel by private vehicles

• Revitalize older areas

• Preserve open space

Affordable housing can be a goal, but usually is not, he noted, because of homeowner fears it will drive down the value of their own investments.

Nor — in spite of campaign remarks by some local candidates — does Smart Growth aim to find a good tract by the highway for big-box retailers. Nor does it support carving new villages, however clustered the houses, out of the woods.

If you are an incumbent on a land-use board, you already engage in growth management by your votes on zoning, wetlands impact and related issues. Around here, Smart Growth is a relatively new idea for managing growth, although it is extensively used in Maryland, Michigan and other states.

You may argue with some of the principles, such as whether it's possible to reduce the use of cars in a region with so little public transit.

But you elected officials need to be ready to act when a developer comes and tells your town his plans for film studios (Preston, North Stonington, Waterford), a racetrack (Plainfield), shopping centers (Montville, Stonington), or a special taxing district for age-restricted housing (East Lyme).

And developers will come, followed by workers and their children, needing homes and schools and room on the highway for their cars.

No region, Downey says, can totally control its own population growth. The reality is that a town can control even less.

And that may be the most important issue on the table: Is your town willing to consult with others, in the absence of a regional planning agency with authority to make decisions?

If there had been a serious regional conversation in the 1960s, would the Millstone nuclear plants have been built? And if so, would only Waterford have gotten the tax benefits of a significant regional presence?

How many officials in other towns knew ahead of last month's announcement that North Stonington was talking to would-be developers, including the Mashantucket Pequots, about a major studio and science center complex right next door to the possible future home of Utopia, in Preston?

Don't let people wonder 40 years from now what this region would have been like if only officials had looked beyond their own town lines. Get smart about growth now.

Somebody Take Command:  Economic development is too important to Eastern Connecticut's future to be left in the hands of local governments.
New London DAY Editorial   
Published on 10/16/2005

The fight to save the submarine base demonstrated what an effective network of regional organizations the region has assembled since previous base-closing struggles in the early 1990s. But the important factor in that success — which few want to discuss — is the role leadership played. The organization would have gone nowhere if it hadn't been for strong direction by a few leaders.

Cooperation is good, but it was a command structure that overcame this crisis, and clear lines of command will be essential to make this region BRAC-proof in the future. Somebody, or some unified organization, has to take charge of uniting the region behind the complicated and arduous task of economic development. For a region as steeped in Navy tradition as this one, that point should be obvious.

Economic development needs to be carried out on a regional basis with people whose day job it is to be in charge.

Instead it's in the hands of an unconnected array of mom-and-pop economic development operations: first selectmen, local economic development commissions and underpaid local development coordinators who often double as town planners. Squeezed by the same property-tax pressures that force them to operate on their own, they have few resources to invest in research, business recruitment and other essentials of economic development.

There are good regional organizations, but nothing ties them together. And they have little relevance to what towns are doing to attract investment.

Local leaders say that's going to remain the case as long as the reliance on property taxes forces them to compete for development. But the situation the region is facing won't wait for the legislature to enact property tax reform, something that probably will take years.

The BRAC fight was an emergency, but one that pointed to a greater emergency. It was a short-term project, and will turn out to have been the easy part compared to the larger task.

Now Eastern Connecticut is confronted with the crisis underneath the crisis: The lingering possibility of another base closing in the shifting world of national defense spending and the unsettling reality of an economy that still isn't strong enough to withstand such a blow without serious dislocations. An economic development policy based on the hope the Navy will start building two submarines a year is not going to get the region there.

Deal with the weaknesses

The region has a new plan to deal with these weaknesses, among which are the dependency on defense that continues to exist and a new dependency on tourism, the high cost of living in Connecticut, growing congestion on the highways and the absence of a local research university to stimulate the growth of biotechnology businesses.

It is a sound plan, called the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, in which many people from around the region participated.

The region has an agency that was set up to lead in economic development, the Southeastern Connecticut Enterprise Region. But the agency is understaffed for that task and has little financial support from communities in the region. If it is to lead, it needs vastly more resources and authority. But this plan is a start in that direction.

SeCTer has named a committee, headed by the respected regional planner, Richard Erickson, to implement that plan.

The question remains who will make sure the tasks that are assigned are carried out, and be held accountable if they're not. That's what Mr. Erickson's committee needs to figure out.

The need for a clear chain of command for economic development was embedded in the message Thomas Marano brought to The Day's recent forum on economic development. Mr. Marano, an economic planner for Northeast Utilities, this year visited places across the country where large military bases have closed. What he observed is that the ones most successful at bouncing back were those where someone was clearly in charge of planning economic development and carrying out the plan. The area around Denver, led by the mayor of the city and business leaders, united behind a plan to redevelop Lowry Air Force Base. In 12 years, the development authority the communities formed had turned the base into a thriving business and residential community.

Could this region have done the same with the submarine base?

It's not likely if past experience is any indication. The Norwich Hospital property in Preston and Norwich is a poster child for dysfunction in economic development. During the period when the Denver area successfully redeveloped Lowry Air Force Base, the state property has sat idle. The region, despite its network of organizations and substantial leadership pool, never united behind the task of redeveloping the property. Nobody asked it to. A state bureaucracy was in charge until the town of Preston assumed the job. But small towns are not any more equipped to do the painstaking work of economic development than politically insulated government bureaucracies.

The same can be said of another decommissioned government installation, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in New London. It was closed at about the same time as Lowry Air Force Base, and remains undeveloped, enveloped from the beginning in bickering and controversy. Seaside Regional Center in Waterford, occupying one of the most beautiful tracts left undeveloped on Long Island Sound, is still vacant years after the center for the retarded was closed.

Regional assets for regional growth

These tracts are regional assets, but they're handled as local possessions. The opportunities they present for regional growth are being squandered at the hands of local governments with short-term goals.

The corridors of undeveloped land along Interstate 395 north of Norwich and I-95 in North Stonington and Stonington are similar to these. Abandoned airports and old golf courses are all part of the region's inventory of potential sites for corporations looking for good places to locate operations.

Developing these sites cries out for regional management.

Ledyard Mayor Susan Mendenhall offers one way of doing this. She favors a system in which neighboring communities would share in the costs and benefits of developing such assets, regional asset districts. In line with such thinking, Norwich Hospital probably would stand a better chance of sustainable redevelopment under such an arrangement. Connecticut law, while it doesn't provide for regional taxation on this scale, does permit towns to share industrial parks that straddle several neighboring communities. Regional economic development will require further such changes in the law.

The idea of sharing anything elicits anger among most local leaders. But the region ought to be considering Mayor Mendenhall's idea, and any other one that would increase collaboration in economic development. Otherwise, Eastern Connecticut can look forward to little more than more big-box stores, factory outlets and warehouses on its prime land along the highways and more 50-and-older housing developments inland from the highways.

Mr. Erickson's committee needs to do more than assign tasks. It must nudge some entity, whether it's SeCTer, a regional alliance of chambers of commerce, or both, into taking charge of making this plan work. If that doesn't work, maybe Thomas A. Sheridan, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut is right: the area needs an entirely new development authority to take charge.

Strong organizations rooted in the business community commonly provide the leadership in economic development in other parts of the country. A league of chambers is in charge in Columbus, Ohio. The business-based Hartford Alliance has become the development arm for 32 cities and towns in the Hartford metropolitan area. The same should happen here.

Economic development is too important to be left to chance, which is what this region does when it surrenders the task to local governments.


THIRD RAIL OF GREENWICH POLITICS RUNS ALONG LONG ISLAND SOUND SHORE.
Bronx residents Melanie Paredes, 15, her friend Kiara Figueroa, 15, and Melanie's sister Rachelle Paredes, 4, take in the scenery on a ride to Island Beach. (Helen Neafsey/Staff photo )

Many residents agitated over new island policy
Greenwich TIME
By Neil Vigdor
Article Launched: 06/16/2008 01:00:00 AM EDT

If only Gerry Christophersen could vote people off the island the way contestants do on the show "Survivor."

Like a number of Greenwichites out at Island Beach yesterday, Christophersen objected to the decision to allow nonresidents on town-owned ferries without the company of a resident for the first time in at least 25 years.

"This is our island," Christophersen said, arguing that ferry privileges should be reserved for taxpayers.

Up until this year, nonresidents were allowed to visit Island Beach and neighboring Great Captains Island, but with one major barrier - they had to find their own transportation there unless they were accompanied by a resident on the ferries.

Fearing another lawsuit like the one that forced the town to open its beaches to outsiders in 2001, officials quietly changed the policy this past off-season. Not since Grenada has there been as bitter a fight over an island, however. On the first weekend of ferry service, the move sparked a broad spectrum of reactions, from outrage and resentment to praise and a sense of resignation.

"I think everybody should stay on their beach," resident Miki Dougherty said. "We pay for the repairs of the beach. Everybody in the world wants to go."

While the senior and her husband were waiting for the ferry, the couple got into a disagreement over the change, however.

Bob Dougherty argued that many people in the area cannot afford to live near the water or reside in land-locked communities.

"They don't have a beach in Danbury," Dougherty said.

"That's too bad," his wife replied.

"Where are you going to? Are you going to go down to Florida?" the husband answered.

According to Liz Fitzroy, the gatekeeper at the Arch Street ferry boat dock, 170 of the 519 people who rode the ferries yesterday as of 3 p.m. were from out of town. A round-trip ferry ticket is $8 per person for nonresident adults, compared with $3 for residents with beach cards. A card costs $27 for the season and is only available to a resident.

Orlando Gonzales, 29, a Peruvian immigrant from Byram, said the old policy made it difficult for nonresidents to enjoy the islands.

"I've got a couple of friends and they asked, 'Can I come?' And I said, 'No.' My friends, they live in Port Chester," Gonzales said.

Out on Island Beach, which is about two miles off shore or about a 15-minute ferry ride, a family from the Bronx waded in the water and snapped photos. In the distance, the Jeffersonian-style Belle Haven manse of hedge fund kingmaker Paul Tudor Jones II rose up along the coastline.

Asked how the island compared with Orchard Beach or City Island in the Bronx, Melanie Paredes, 15, said "Way better."

"And it's clean," added Melanie's friend, Kiara Figueroa, 15. The teens said they learned about the island from one of their fathers, who works in the area.

Near the island's pavilion, it was no day at the beach for longtime resident Cliff Kreuter, however.  Kreuter complained that the island was already crowded when just residents could take the ferry.

"I think it stinks," said Kreuter, 73, who read about the policy change in yesterday's newspaper. "When I saw the headlines this morning, I almost died. I think the residents are getting ripped off."

Linda Fiorito, 45, a lifelong town resident, shook her head in disgust while sitting with her family at the beach.

"I don't think anybody should be able to walk off the street and use our beaches," Fiorito said. "We pay taxes to have our beach."

Fiorito said her objections to allowing outsiders had nothing to do with being elitist or discriminatory, as some critics of the town's old beach policy have alleged.

"It's not that we're trying to be frou-frou Greenwich," Fiorito said.

Aboard the ferry Indian Harbor, some residents expressed a sense of resignation and said the change made sense.

"It was inevitable. I'm a lawyer. It would have been ordered by a court," said Peter Saxon, 67, who was on a Father's Day outing with his family to Island Beach. "I think the seashore should be open to everyone."

By the town quietly changing its policy to allow nonresidents on the ferries, Saxon said officials were taking pre-emptive action to avoid another legal setback.

"I know the town would have been sued and lost. They did the right thing," said Saxon, who does not believe the island will be overrun by outsiders. "I don't think, given this economy, a huge amount of people will take advantage of this."

Fred Chimblo, 56, who was spraying sunscreen on his daughter, Teresa, 8, on the ferry, said everyone should have access to the waterfront.

"They should strike some balance," Chimblo said.

Sun-burnt from three summers as Island Beach's caretaker, Lenny Nielson greeted residents and nonresidents indiscriminately yesterday.

"I'm nice to everybody," Nielson said, cautioning, "If we get too many out-of-towners and they start to get rude, I'll be strict."

On Saturday, the first day of ferry service to the islands, some residents praised the new policy.

"I think it's going to be great. It's so beautiful, why not share it?" said Carol Wright, a longtime Old Greenwich resident riding the ferry to Island Beach with her husband, Wayne.

Sam Fitzgerald, 38, who lives in Norwalk and works in Greenwich as an architect, said he and his family felt at home yesterday as they rode the ferry out to Island Beach.

"I don't feel unwelcome," said Fitzgerald, who learned about the islands from colleagues.

Fitzgerald laughed when told he could have visited the island in the past but had to get there on his own. He owns a boat, but it's not motorized.

"It would take me a while to get out there," Fitzgerald said while sitting next to his son, Ben, 5, on the top deck of the ferry.

The Norwalk resident then offered to reciprocate.

"For the record, if anyone from Greenwich wants to come to Calf Pasture Beach in Norwalk, come on down," Fitzgerald said.
RTM member can't vote: Town rules against Porricellis' voting rights claim
Greenwich TIME  
By Martin B. Cassidy
Published January 8 2007

A town voting eligibility panel denied a local grocer and his wife status as Greenwich voters yesterday, saying that at least part of their house must be in Greenwich to qualify as residents.

The Board for Admission of Electors voted 3-1 to adopt a 10-page decision denying Jerry and Marianne Porricelli voting and residency status, noting that even though their property straddles the Greenwich-Stamford border, their house is entirely in Stamford.

"I think that the decision is incorrect and that I look forward to the appeal," the 58-year-old Jerry Porricelli said yesterday. "Saying something is a certain way doesn't make it so, and I think they are refusing to recognize their erroneous actions."

The Porricellis have argued that before they moved to the 9 Hillcrest Road home, the town's registrars assured them in writing repeatedly that they would remain Greenwich voters. The couple purchased the home in 2000, Porricelli said.

The board consists of Republican First Selectman Jim Lash, Republican Selectman Peter Crumbine, Democratic Selectman Penny Monahan, and Republican Town Clerk Carmella Budkins.

The Porricellis will appeal the decision to the state Election Enforcement Commission, according to Alan Neigher, their Fairfield-based attorney. Further appeal could be made in state Superior Court.

The grocer and his wife filed a complaint with the panel in May after being removed from the voter rolls as part of an annual review by the registrars, part of a standoff that began in 2001.

While the Porricellis' mailing address, mailbox, and part of their driveway are in Greenwich, their entire house is in Stamford, which, under the standard adopted yesterday, disqualifies them for Greenwich residency or services.

With the decision, the town has established a new criteria for residency, saying that at least part of a home must lie within town lines for those who live in it to qualify as residents.

Budkins, the sole vote in favor of granting the Porricellis voter status, said she thought the circumstances of the case made the decision to deny the Porricellis unfair.

"I think the facts dictated they should be allowed to vote in Greenwich as long as they resided at that address," Budkins said.

Town Attorney John Wayne Fox declined comment.

The town's two registrars, Republican Registrar Veronica "Ronnie" Musca and Democratic Registrar Sharon Vecchiola, removed the Porricellis from the voter rolls for the first time in 2001.

But in 2003, the Board for Admission of Electors voted 3-1 to restore the Porricellis' status as Greenwich voters for procedural reasons, finding that the registrars failed to properly notify the family of their removal from the voting rolls.

In 2005, the State Election Enforcement Commission also dismissed a complaint from Vecchiola and Musca that the Porricellis intentionally misled the registrars to believe they lived in Greenwich, but concluded that Greenwich was entitled to establish its own criteria as to whether the Porricellis were town voters.

Because of the registrars' assurances, the town is obligated to grant the Porricellis the right to vote, Neigher said.

"They can't do one thing and say one thing, and then take it back and say you are the one who has to pay for it," Neigher said. The written decision issued yesterday said that assurances given by the registrars do not prevent the registrars from revoking the Porricellis' voter status when it became apparent their home was in Stamford.

Municipalities have wide latitude in deciding what factors to use to determine voting eligibility. Neigher questioned whether the town can apply its new residency standards retroactively to the Porricellis' situation.

Jerry Porricelli, who has lived in the town since 1972, has served two terms on the Representative Town Meeting of Greenwich while living at his current address and owns the Food Mart supermarkets in Cos Cob and Old Greenwich.

"I think the language of the decision speaks for itself," Lash said. "It establishes a standard for what is a resident and denies the appeal."