With the coming of the new year, work has begun in earnest on defining the town’s fiscal priorities in the 2016-17 municipal budget.
First Selectman Peter Tesei will formally unveil his proposed budget to the Board of Estimate and Taxation on Feb. 1, but first a committee studying potential new capital improvements must do its work. Potential additions to the budget will be evaluated and ranked by several town stakeholders who are committee members.
“Life safety services is certainly the number one priority,” Tesei said after a meeting Tuesday of the Capital Improvement Program Projects Committee. “We have been consistent in advocating for it both in the capital and operating budget. Those projects that are going to enhance safety in our neighborhoods are also a priority. We want to support services centered on safety and our schools.”
Projects combining to about $5 million in new expenditures are being considered as part of the committee’s work. They include $300,000 for work on a northwest fire station, $500,000 for Greenwich Emergency Medical Services headquarters, $520,000 for design work on renovations for the Eastern Greenwich Civic Center and $250,000 to improve sidewalks in Pemberwick Park.
Tesei said there had been “considerable discussion” with his office about the sidewalk. Residents claim the roadway also is unsafe and presents a risk both for pedestrians and drivers.
Many of the expenditures that could end up in the new budget are for design, architecture or engineering work. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
State officials tour new Wallingford train station construction site
WALLINGFORD — Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman braved the frigid weather Tuesday for an update from transportation officials on the town’s new train station, set to open in May 2017.
The new opening date is another switch in the New Haven-to-Springfield commuter rail timeline, which was recently set back from 2016 to January 2018. Most of the setbacks and cost overruns stem from Amtrak’s failure to manage budgeting and staffing, according to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. The administration has since secured promises from Amtrak in return for additional funding to complete upgrades and double-tracking. The agreement includes a spending cap and deadline for completion.
But delays in the Wallingford project come from small issues arising during the double-tracking of the rail line. For instance, work near the plaza housing Holiday Cinemas Stadium 14 and other businesses was slowed to repair a culvert.
Construction at the corner of Parker and North Cherry streets has been ongoing for several months and two steel towers stand in the center of the lot. The towers will hold the elevator shaft, a staircase and a pedestrian bridge that crosses the elevated platform at the rear of the station. A 221-space paid parking lot is in the works.
Last month, the State Bond Commission unanimously approved borrowing $174 million for projects related to transportation improvements, including $155 million for the commuter rail project and $12 million to upgrade four locomotives. The additional funding brings the project cost to $643 million.
Transportation officials hope to shave six minutes from the average 30-minute train commute from Wallingford to Hartford, by double-tracking and reconfiguring curves along the route. Meriden and Berlin are also getting new train stations at roughly the same price tag. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Many residents have complained about the patchwork look of the paving job, as well as persistent parking problems on the street.
In 2014, the city's project engineer found flaws in the paving of part of the road during construction, so it had to be redone at contractor expense.
Then in the spring of 2015, a large crack developed in the center of the road from Baker to Smith streets.
The general contractor, B&W Paving and Landscaping of Waterford, repaired it in October by remilling and repaving a four-foot strip down the center of a section of Thames Street, giving the finished road a patched appearance.
"You'd think the road would be uniform and nice looking after a major project," said Kevin Trejo, a city resident. "When people are driving down there, they're not looking at the curbing. They're not looking at the sidewalks. They're looking at the street they're driving on. It's like walking into a supermarket. You see the floor. If it's dirty, it doesn't look right."
"I was a little disappointed," said James Streeter, former town mayor. "I don't think it's the quality that I would have expected. For example, the paving portion, it looks terrible."
City Mayor Marian Galbraith said the project was done to provide a safe driving surface and she has not heard any suggestion that it should be redone.
A second project that affected Thames Street was added in mid-2014, when the city was able to obtain $1.2 million in state funding for drainage work near Electric Boat.
The mayor said that affected the timeline of the street project and workers had time to put on only a single base and finish coat of asphalt in that area. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
$10M hole has city's ballpark “sideways''
A potential $10 million cost overrun to build Hartford's minor-league ballpark makes it highly unlikely the stadium will be ready for the spring start of the baseball season, threatening the credibility of the city and the builder, city and team officials say.
Meantime, Hartford Yard Goats principal owner Josh Solomon, who relocated his team from New Britain on the city's promise of a new ballpark for the 2016 season, said he has no intention of digging into his or the team's pockets for the millions it would take to fill the construction deficit. The city budgeted $56 million to erect the 6,000-seat stadium in the "downtown north'' quadrant, off Main Street.
"We're sideways,'' Hartford Stadium Authority Chairman I. Charles Matthews said at a contentious three-hour plus special meeting Tuesday at City Hall. "I'm trying to figure out what's the path forward.''
Amid fingerpointing by Middletown developer Centerplan Development, and its construction unit, and the city's construction adviser, International Facilities Group LLC (IFG) of Chicago, an IFG official acknowledged it was unlikely that Dunkin' Donuts Park would be ready by the April 7 start of baseball. Contractually, Centerplan agreed to deliver a largely completed ballpark to the city and its baseball tenant by mid-March. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Crews Prepare For Next Phase Of Hartford Line Construction
WALLINGFORD — Two short towers rise from a vacant lot on North Cherry Street and miles of newly graded rail bed run parallel to Route 5 far into North Haven, all signs that the long-planned Hartford Line is coming.
Heavy construction has been underway since last year, and work crews are getting ready to install a second set of tracks when the weather improves.
"Amtrak wants to get to work [putting down rails] in the spring. There's a lot more work out here to be done," John Bernick of the state Department of Transportation told Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman on Tuesday when she toured the site of Wallingford's proposed new station.
After decades of political discussions followed by financing debates and engineering studies, Connecticut and Amtrak are stepping up the pace of progress on the New Haven to Hartford to Springfield commuter rail line.After negotiating with Amtrak and federal rail regulators for most of last year, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in December announced a deal for Connecticut to put an additional $135 million into the project. In exchange, Amtrak — which owns the 62-mile rail bed and is performing the construction — pledged to hold to a new budget of about $574 million and a firm deadline to be ready for service by January 2018. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
East Windsor Possible Casino Development Site Identified
EAST WINDSOR — The proposed location for a casino in East Windsor is a 33-acre parcel at the corner of Wagner Lane and Route 5, First Selectman Bob Maynard said Tuesday night.
Maynard said he hadn't announced the site to the public previously out of respect to CenterPlan Cos., the developer that submitted the bid to build a casino.
The site is home to two businesses — a U-Haul rental and storage center and Lomac Ltd., a family-owned business that sells and services industrial, farm and homeowner John Deere and Kawasaki equipment.
The news brought questions from residents: Why wasn't the former Wal-Mart building and Showcase Cinemas that border I-91 and Route 5 considered? How will this impact the school system? Are town officials concerned about working with CenterPlan after news of problems with the development of a baseball stadium in Hartford, which CenterPlan is building? How will this affect traffic? Can Route 5 handle traffic for a casino?"There's no specifics — how big will it be?" Marie DeSousa said. "People have questions that need to be addressed."
Tuesday night's announcement came nearly two months after the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes, under the joint title MMCT, collected applications from developers and towns interested in building a casino near Hartford. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
CT Agenda: Get $100 Billion Transportation Initiative In Gear
Nearly a year ago, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced a massive 30-year, $100 billion proposal to rebuild the state's aging transportation infrastructure. The problem demands a commitment of this scale.
Years of delayed planning and deferred maintenance have taken their inevitable toll. Many of the state's roads and bridges are old and wearing out. Train service from New Haven to New York is slower than it was 30 years ago.
In short, the state needs Mr. Malloy's "Let's Go CT!" The challenge in 2016 will be to fund the project, protect the funds from legislative poaching and set priorities for construction.
Most Pressing NeedsWhen the governor announced the program, some legislators criticized it as a laundry list of his favorite projects. This year the governor and the Department of Transportation need to focus the 30-year project on the state's most pressing needs — the shoreline and the I-91 and I-84 corridors.
The infrastructure initiative includes a $10 billion investment in state and federal funds over the next five years to ramp up the project.
The General Assembly has approved $2.8 billion in bonding and set aside half of 1 percent of the 6.35 percent sales tax to pay for it. That revenue will be fully committed in 2018. Also, all revenues from the state's gasoline taxes (the retail gas tax and the gross receipts tax) will go toward transportation — as long as legislators don't meddle with the money. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Federal probe finds no wrongdoing by New Haven’s ex-CEO director Nichole Jefferson, lawyer says
NEW HAVEN >> The U.S. attorney’s office has told counsel for Nichole Jefferson that it found no evidence of wrongdoing and has closed its investigation.
David Kritzman, Jefferson’s attorney, said he recently was informed of that decision by Assistant U.S. Attorney Liam Brennan.
Jefferson was put on administrative leave as the executive director of the Commission on Equal Opportunity in March 2015 and fired in August after the city accused her of ethical lapses and questioned her relationship with the Construction Workforce Initiative 2.
The most serious charge was an alleged attempted bribe of a contractor, which the city alleged occurred in 2004.
The CEO records, however, show that the contractor in question had been found to have numerous violations of CEO rules, and in two instances developers had to cover wage payments for his workers. Two other contractors were critical of Jefferson, but both had had run-ins with the CEO.
One was fined $44,200 for failing to properly pay his workers and the other was threatened with a fine until he hired 67 New Haven residents, which the board determined was necessary to keep the company in compliance with hiring rules. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE