With President Donald Trump promising to rebuild crumbling U.S. highways, bridges and buildings, states have begun submitting lists of priority projects in need of funding.
The information has come in response to a December request from Trump's transition team to the National Governors Association to collect lists of projects from the states, executive director Scott Pattison said in a telephone interview. About 40 states have responded so far, and Pattison said he thinks Trump's team wants to assess how many "shovel ready'' projects there are as it crafts the president's infrastructure initiative.
"The feeling was 'if we wanted to try to move quickly, what are some of the things that we could do and what's out there,''' he said. Pattison and some transportation officials said they don't know how Trump's team plans to use the information.
Former President Barack Obama's team made a similar request for "shovel-ready'' projects for the more than $800 billion stimulus package developed in 2009, said Neil Pedersen, the executive director of the Transportation Research Board, who's a former Maryland state highway administrator.
In the end, only about 6 percent of the stimulus bill -- aimed at helping to pull the U.S. out of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s -- went to transportation projects, according to PolitiFact. That led Obama to say in a 2010 New York Times interview that he learned "there's no such thing as shovel-ready projects" because of the lead time generally required.
Pedersen said he suspects Trump's team is "trying to identify, under various financing mechanisms, what is the universe of projects that actually can be funded.'' The board, he said, has provided Trump's transition team with policy reports and research papers produced over the past several years, especially about public-private partnerships and other infrastructure funding and financing issues.
Pattison said he hopes the intent of requesting information about state projects is not to have the Trump administration identify which projects will be completed. States have robust processes for prioritizing projects and wouldn't want to see that "upended in any way,'' he said. Trump talked frequently during the election campaign about the need to upgrade aging U.S. infrastructure and put millions of people to work doing it. He emphasized that goal again during his inaugural address on Jan. 20. "We will build new roads and highways and bridges and airports and tunnels and railways all across our wonderful nation,'' Trump said. "We will get our people off of welfare and back to work, rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor.''
While infrastructure advocates have said the federal government can streamline or eliminate regulations that often slow down permitting and approvals and delay construction, Trump hasn't spelled out how work would be funded.
Trump's advisers have emphasized leveraging more private capital to fill a massive funding gap. A framework for the "America's Infrastructure First" policy was laid out on Trump's campaign website but hasn't migrated to the official White House page so far.
Trump has asked real-estate developers Richard LeFrak and Steven Roth to lead a new council he's creating of 15 to 20 builders and engineers to monitor infrastructure investments, the Wall Street Journal reported on Jan. 16. Steve Solomon, a spokesman for LeFrak, confirmed that LeFrak had been asked but said the initiative is in a very early stage. A spokeswoman for Roth declined to comment. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Downstate lawmakers want competitive bidding among casino operators
Lawmakers from the Bridgeport and New Haven areas who support expanded gaming in the state are calling for an open, competitive process for the evaluation of casino proposals, an approach that differs sharply from the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes’ ongoing pursuit of a Hartford-area casino.
State Reps. Christopher Rosario and Ezequiel Santiago, both Bridgeport Democrats, posted statements Monday in which they backed a bill introduced by Rep. Michael DiMassa, a West Haven Democrat.
The measure proposes the establishment of “a transparent and competitive process for the issuance of commercial gaming licenses by the Department of Consumer Protection.”
A 2015 law enabled the tribes, respective owners of Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun, to jointly pursue proposals for casino sites from Connecticut municipalities. The tribes' partnership, MMCT Venture, has narrowed the field to two towns, East Windsor and Windsor Locks.
Legislation authorizing commercial rather than tribal casinos would have to be enacted before the tribes — or anyone else for that matter — could open a third casino in the state.
“We need jobs in Connecticut, and our economy needs help,” Rosario said in a release posted on his website. “Connecticut needs an open, competitive process where the state — and the public — would evaluate competing proposals from world-class developers that must include plans for hiring during all phases of construction and when a casino begins operations.”
“The process we have now is nothing more than a string of missed opportunities and endless secrecy,” Rosario said.
MGM Resorts International, the gaming giant whose ongoing development of a $950 million casino resort in Springfield, Mass., has fueled the tribe’s in-state expansion bid, hailed the downstate lawmakers’ pronouncements.
"These legislators have it right, and they are proposing what Connecticut should have done from day one: put in place a process that is fair, open, transparent, reliable, and competitive,” Alan Feldman, an MGM Resorts executive vice president, said in a statement. “That’s how Connecticut wins — with a process that allows all qualified bidders to compete and the state to get the best deal. It is hands down the best way for the state to maximize the number of jobs that can be created, and the amount of gaming revenue that can be generated.”
MGM, which has been opposing the tribes’ pursuit of a Hartford-area casino, has commissioned market research that determined that a casino in Bridgeport would be more beneficial to the state than one in north-central Connecticut.
“We look forward to having an opportunity to develop a comprehensive plan that can be carefully considered side-by-side with other industry competitors,” Feldman said.
A bill proposed by Rep. Roland Lemar, a New Haven Democrat, would allow for new commercial casinos to be developed in the state and impose a tax of 25 percent on such casinos’ gaming revenues — both slot machines and table games.
The Mashantuckets and the Mohegans now remit 25 percent of their slots revenue in accordance with exclusive gaming agreements with the state.
An alliance of groups opposed to casino expansion announced Monday that it planned to hold a news conference Tuesday morning at the state Capitol. The tribes are hosting a public meeting Tuesday night in East Windsor to discuss their third-casino efforts. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
After Years Of Construction, Wethersfield High School Renovation Project Complete
When Jo Hedges walked through the newly renovated Wethersfield High School on Sunday, she couldn't believe it was the same school she graduated from in 1954.
The school's new television studio equipped with iMac computers, its state-of-the-art cafeteria, robotics lab and fitness center were a far cry from the inkwells and film slides that Hedges remembers from her school days.
"It's absolutely gorgeous. The amount of equipment in the gymnasium, the desks, the chairs, the greenhouse," Hedges said, after a tour of the building.
The $85 million project to completely renovate and expand the school began in September 2013 and wrapped up earlier this month.
"We're fully functional and open for business," Superintendent Michael Emmett said. "It's been a while in the making."
On Sunday the district held an open house for residents to explore the school's three new wings and dozens of improvements.Student tour guides led residents to the new gym, where the Wethersfield girls basketball team was practicing on Sunday afternoon.
The expanded gym features new locker rooms and space for 900 spectators, as well as a trophy case and snack bar by the gym's entrance.
The music wing has acoustic-enhancing ceiling panels, as well as more storage space, practice rooms and a recording studio for students.
Other improvements include a television studio equipped with all the technology student news anchors need to produce weekly video announcements for the student body.
"I think there are people who think technology is extraneous, but we utilize it," Emmett said.
Residents and future students gushed over the rooftop greenhouse and the new science labs.
"There wasn't even a green plant on the windowsill and now there's a whole greenhouse," Hedges said. "It's completely amazing."
For most who have toured the building, thenew auditoriumand cafeteria were the highlights.
"The cafeteria — what a space — we could have 300 kids in there," Emmett said. "It's a space where kids aren't confined to one area. They're in the high-back chairs or the couches ... it's a great social space." CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Little Derby has a big plan
In the frenzy of urban renewal that followed World War II, it was almost axiomatic that vast swaths of city fabric had to be leveled in order to be recreated. Thus went Hartford’s East Side, New Haven’s Oak Street and others among the state’s urban neighborhoods.
In time, many cities came to regret demolishing so much of their architectural and social heritage, sometimes with little to show for it. The practice of clear-cutting neighborhoods began to die out, but slowly. One of the last municipalities seduced by this approach was Derby.
In 2003 the city demolished a row of 19th century brick buildings along Main Street to make way for a major development. That project never happened, leaving a vacant 19-acre site with little more than a rusting grain elevator — kind of a landmark — that once was used to store birdseed. Derby is the state’s smallest geographical city, with just over five square miles of land, so 19 acres is not insignificant.
After a dozen yeas of inactivity — the empty lot is right across the street from City Hall and easily visible from the mayor’s second-floor window — city officials started over, bringing in a planning firm known for “new urbanism” — planning the kinds of buildings and neighborhoods that the city tore down.
Did they have it right the first time? The Derby project, called “Downtown Now!,” is an example of how thinking has changed in the efforts to revive cities.
Derby is nine miles northwest of New Haven at the confluence of the Housatonic and Naugatuck rivers, in a valley that once was an industrial (and high school football) powerhouse and now is trying to reinvent itself, with varying degrees of success.
As with many of the state’s once-vibrant older cities, industries left, retail struggled and the compact downtowns along the Naugatuck River went into a long decline in the latter part of the last century. By century’s end in Derby, the 19th century brick buildings on the south side of Main Street were abandoned and decaying. The town acquired more than a dozen of them via tax foreclosure. Officials decided to demolish them, against the strong advice of the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation and others.
New Haven-based writer Philip Langdon, who writes nationally about planning and design issues, excoriated the demolition decision in a Hartford Courant commentary titled “Drop the Demolition, Derby.” He said the city was repeating the mistakes of the 1960s, exhibiting “the flawed thinking of the urban-renewal era.”
The 19th century buildings were still standing then, and Langdon pleaded for a stay of execution: “Their details are still worth admiring: giant brackets, stone lintels, terracotta decoration, roundheaded windows, elaborate cornices – an encyclopedia of styling on a street that you can walk … in five minutes. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE