NEW BRITAIN — The Water Planning Council will hold a meeting today to discuss a glitch in New Britain’s process in hiring an environmental consultant to study the impact of the proposed Tilcon quarry project.
The meeting was announced after the Council on Environmental Quality rescinded its approval of the consultant the city hired to conduct the study.
The land Tilcon hopes to mine rests in Plainville and includes protected watersheds, requiring the project to be under intense scrutiny from state environmental agencies and legislators who must approve the plans before construction starts.
Under a state law passed earlier this year, the city is required to hire an “independent” consultant to conduct a study of the potential environmental impact of the project and determine what the long-term water supply needs are for New Britain and interconnected water companies.
The law stipulates that the WPC must approve of the consultant along with the CEQ.
The CEQ backed off its approval after reviewing the plans for the study submitted by a consulting company that is frequently hired by the city for other projects, said the agency’s Executive Director Karl Wagener. In a letter to both the WPC and city water officials, CEQ members indicated that the scope of the study should include environmental impacts to forest ecology, natural land resources and wetland systems. The CEQ also indicated that there needed to be field surveys to determine if the area was home to rare or endangered species.
The CEQ also recommended the city put out bids to hire a consultant to do the study and suggested a definition of “independent” should be determined as it applies to the law passed earlier this year that allowes the city to move forward with the study.
It will be up to WPC officials to either agree with CEQ’s recommendations or come up with recommendations of their own, Wagener said on Thursday. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Up to $12 million needed for arts center project
BRISTOL — Last year, the City Council approved $400,000 to come up with a design and to find out how much it will cost to transform Memorial Boulevard School into a cultural arts center.
That tab quickly escalated into a request for $5 million, which was approved by the council.
Then, $5.6 million.
And then again to $7 million.
Now, the task force charged with overseeing the project is projecting the cost to run between $10 and $12 million to renovate the theater portion of the center.
“This is huge,” said Board of Finance Chairwoman Cheryl Thibeault Wednesday night at the joint Board of Finance and City Council meeting.
“There are lots of costs involved,” Councilor Jodi Zils-Gagne said Thursday.
Thibeault proposed the City Council consider putting the matter out to a referendum.
“When this project was originally presented, it was a feverish group — a dynamic group,” Thibeault said. “There was an appetite for it … now it’s its own little animal … I would like to hear from taxpayers.”
While Thibeault was all for a referendum, commission member John Smith, who is also on the Board of Finance, said he didn’t understand the reasoning.
“We have the new Muzzy Field, two new athletic fields at the high schools, no referendums on those,” Smith said. “We have a representative form of government. We are entrusted with these decisions.” CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Kensington firefighters' 9/11 memorial finally taking shape
BERLIN — After more than five years of planning by the Kensington Volunteer Fire Department, the construction of a memorial for the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks is underway on Farmington Avenue.
The project has been delayed for various reasons, including a series of land swaps the department had to make first with the nonprofit developer CIL, which previously owned the parcel on which the memorial will stand, said Chief Mark Lewandowski.
“We wanted to have it here,” he said on a recent morning at fire headquarters. “We had to wait things out and get everything right.”
The process started in 2010, when members of the department applied for and received three artifacts from the World Trade Center. A small part of the wreckage from the Twin Towers, along with debris including crushed emergency vehicles, bicycles and a bike rack, is kept in an aircraft hangar at John F. Kennedy International Airport, which Lewandowski and Lt. Robert Brown visited in 2010.
“The hangar was absolutely massive — just massive amounts of material,” Brown recalled.
The artifacts were moved from New York City to Berlin by the Plainville contractors Manafort Brothers, which, along with concrete supplier Suzio York Hill, volunteered time and materials needed for the project. Manafort Brothers also developed the site plan, Lewandowski said.
So far, two of the 19-foot steel beams have been installed, upright, next to the fire station, while the third piece, a 20-foot-long, curved section of twisted metal, will be installed later, Lewandowski said. The two beams rise 11 feet, with another 8 feet underground. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Developer moves to buy downtown Meriden buildings at tax auction
MERIDEN — Commercial property that has been vacant for more than a decade in the heart of downtown Meriden was tentatively sold at a recent tax sale to a well-known developer.
Ross Gulino, doing business as Meriden City Properties LLC, bid $81,920 to buy 9-11 and 13-17 Colony St. at an Aug. 3 auction. Gulino is the owner of nearby 33 W. Main St., which houses Cafe Dolce, offices, and apartments on the second floor. He also owns 30 W. Main St., a commercial building next to the Meriden Senior Center, as well as other residential and commercial properties in the city. He is a member of the city Planning Commission.
Paul Edwards, the owner of 9-11 and 13-17 Colony St., owed $54,659 in taxes and water and sewer bills. Edwards purchased the buildings in the early 2000s and had made some renovations to develop them into restaurants and entertainment venues.
Under conditions of the tax sale, Edwards has until Feb. 3 to match Gulino’s bid and pay additional interest on the property, said Sean Moore, president of the Midstate Chamber of Commerce.
Gulino could not be reached for comment on Thursday, but Moore said he spoke with the developer and landlord shortly after the tax sale.
“Mr. Gulino has significantly more capacity and creativity than the previous owner,” Moore said. “Ross can develop the property to its next use. He is dying to get working on the property.”
The commercial property is in the center of the city’s transit-oriented development. The property across the street at 24 Colony St. is midway through a $24 million transformation into a mixed-use commercial and residential building as part of a joint project between the state, the city and the Meriden Housing Authority.
“The condition of the property and the lack of any business activity there has been a disappointment,” Economic Development Director Juliet Burdelski said in May, discussing 9-11 and 13-17 Colony St. “The tax sale does offer an opportunity for outside investment to come in and bring the property back into commercial use and at par with the new development going in around it.” CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
But even if each town approves its approximately $300,000 share of funding for the $1.2 million project, it could be some time before the permits are obtained and the work completed.
The work is getting a boost now since the state has told the Town of Groton, which has been taking the lead on the project, that the work qualifies for $597,000 in state funding.
The towns have agreed to share the remainder of the cost.
Both communities did not include their 50 percent share of the funding in their current budgets.
Although the Groton Town Council had included the project in its proposed budget, the Representative Town Meeting rejected the funding because members had concerns that Stonington had not included the funding in its budget.
But after the Stonington Board of Selectmen briefly discussed the project Wednesday, First Selectman Rob Simmons pledged to seek a supplemental appropriation for the town’s share of the work from the Board of Finance.
Simmons has called the repair of the more-than-80-year-old span a safety issue.
With the bridge closed to vehicle and pedestrian traffic, it cuts off one of the access roads to Old Mystic Fire Department Station No. 1.
Fire Chief Ken Richards has said that his trucks must use a detour that poses a safety hazard to his firefighters and other motorists. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
CT Mileage Tax Study A Waste Of State Money
On the long list of bad ways to tax people, the state continues to consider one of the most odious: a mileage tax, where residents would be charged for every mile they drive.
Both Democrats and Republicans have wisely panned the idea, saying such a tax would be dead on arrival if it were proposed in the legislature.
But despite that, and regardless of the state's rickety financial situation, Department of Transportation officials recently promised $300,000 in matching funds for a federal study that would look into whether such a tax would work in the busy and badly dilapidated I-95 corridor.
It was a reckless move.How It Happened
Back in January, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's Transportation Finance Panel — the group assembled to figure out how to pay for his $100 billion infrastructure plan — encouraged the state to look into whether a "vehicle miles traveled" tax might be a fair way to get money for the grand vision.
So in May, Connecticut joined with a number of other states in the I-95 corridor and sought matching federal funds to study such a tax. Among all the states participating, Connecticut contributed the most money.
It's fair to ask why, since a DOT spokesman has insisted that the agency has no plans to implement such a program.
The DOT "has an obligation to understand driver behavior, and applying for a federal grant to study an idea's feasibility and further our understanding is, simply, what we do — we fight for every dollar available," Judd Everhart told The Courant recently. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
MIDDLETOWN — The city fielded six construction bids Thursday
on a new sewage pump station that will allow Middletown to link with the
Mattabassett District in Cromwell, then free up valuable riverfront land Water and Sewer Director Guy Russo said Walsh Construction
of Canton, Mass. is the apparent low bidder at $26.2 million. He said the
firm's bid came in slightly lower than the city's expectation of $27 million to
$28 million. City staff are examining the firm's qualifications and the
cost estimates in its proposal before submitting the selection to the state
Department of Energy and Environmental Protection for approval. DEEP must approve the bid because it is supplying the
funding for the project in the form of a grant for 20 percent of the cost and a
20-year, 2 percent fixed loan for the remaining 80 percent. The pump station is a major component of riverfront
redevelopment because it will allow the city to demolish the treatment plant on
River Road and free up some of the city's most prominent property along the
Connecticut River. The bid process was the second one the city opened for the
pump station project after getting only a single bid in March 2015 that was $5
million over budget Voters in 2012 approved $37 million for the pump station and
related pipeline project to hook up to the Mattabassett plant, and the common
council approved an additional $3 million in 2014. But after last year's bid
holdup the council had to ask voters for $15 million more to cover increased
costs and to add a $5 million contingency. Since opening for construction bids last year, the project
has also undergone two major design changes that will increase its cost Russo said the slightly lower than expected bid, if it holds
up after review, means there will be some money the committee can use to begin
planning for the removal of the River Road sewer plant. "This is going to free up the committee to not only
complete this phase of the project, but right on the heels of getting this
constructed we can immediately look toward demolition [of the River Road
plant]," Russo said. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE