STOP TRANSPORTATION CUTS
The state legislators are considering budget proposals that will gut Connecticut's transportation funding.
If passed these proposals will cut transit services and road repairs. This will cripple our economy, impede mobility, increase delays, and make travel less safe.
Tell your legislators to oppose transportation cuts!
Take 2 minutes and use this link to send the message.
Press conference with Congressman John Larson
Time – 11:00am (please arrive early)
Great River Park
301 East River Drive
East Hartford
This bill will invest $1 trillion in revenue generated by a carbon tax in the nation’s infrastructure over the next decade. It will invest in all types of infrastructure, including:
§ Highway facilities, including bridges and tunnels.
§ Intercity rail
§ Intercity bus facilities or equipment.
§ Public transportation
§ Airports and air traffic control systems.
§ Port or marine terminal facilities
§ Transmission or distribution pipelines.
§ Inland waterways.
§ Intermodal facilities
§ Water treatment and solid waste disposal facilities.
§ Storm water management systems.
§ Drinking water systems
§ Dams and levees.
§ Facilities or equipment for energy transmission, distribution or storage.
The bill leaves the specifics of infrastructure programs to the committees of cognizance but this is an illustrative example of how the investment could be apportioned:
$550 billion towards existing federal highway and transit programs
$50 billion for sewer systems and safe drinking water
$30 billion for airports and our aviation system
$60 billion for levees, dams, ports, and waterways
$50 billion for rail infrastructure
$30 billion for broadband deployment
$30 billion towards energy infrastructure and the electric grid
$200 billion for a new Vital Infrastructure Program, focused on transformative projects that have great benefit but are simply too big for the scope of any one agency.
Old Lyme — The Water Pollution Control Authority is scheduled to make a short presentation Tuesday evening to provide an update on plans to replace individual septic tanks with sewer systems in the Sound View neighborhood, according to a town notice.
The meeting will be held from 7:30 to 8.30 p.m. at the Sound View Community Center, 41 Hartford Ave.
A question-and-answer session will follow the presentation.
Topics of discussion will include a brief history of septic system use in Old Lyme; scope of the project area; costs of the system; benefits of the system; and timeline and important milestones, according to the notice.
Additional public meetings will be announced at a later date.
Norwich residents to weigh proposed $5 million infrastructure bond
Norwich — Residents will get the chance to comment Monday on a proposed $5 million road and infrastructure improvement bond that is expected to be placed on the November ballot for a referendum.
The City Council will hold a public hearing at the start of its 7:30 p.m. meeting Monday at City Hall on the proposed ordinance. The council is expected to vote on a resolution later in the meeting to forward the bond proposal to voters in a referendum Nov. 7, along with a second ordinance calling for a $3.2 million bond to purchase five firetrucks and other public safety equipment.
Norwich voters have approved similar $5 million road improvement bonds three times in the past 11 years: in 2006, 2009 and 2013.
The current proposed bond would include improvements or new construction of “roads, bridges and bridge structures, sidewalks, piers and wharves, and ... areas throughout the city of Norwich. The specific improvements shall be determined from time to time by the Public Works Director and City Manager,” the ordinance language states.
Public Works Director Ryan Thompson said if approved by voters, the bulk of the money would go for road paving, drainage and other improvements in targeted areas, with some money going for bridge replacement or repairs. A relatively small amount, about $80,000, would be used for sidewalk improvements and some to make city infrastructure compliant with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.
The city Public Works Department has been working with the state Department of Transportation on design plans for a new Sherman Street bridge over the Yantic River. Thompson said a small amount of the bond money would go toward that project, which is in the preliminary design phase.
Thompson said other grants and funding sources are being used for the Sherman Street bridge, replacement of the deck on the Sunnyside Avenue bridge and replacement of the Pleasant Street bridge, but “bits and pieces” of the bond money could be used for those projects.
With Apartment Scene Bustling In Downtown Hartford, Condos Could Be The Next Step
Since early 2015, renters have moved into hundreds of new apartments downtown, the majority of converted buildings now boasting occupancies of 90 percent or better.
But is downtown ready to take the next step into condominiums?
Developer Jose Ramirez says he has no doubts, as he nears the end of a two-year quest to secure financing to convert long-vacant space at 289 Asylum St. into eight condos. The units would be on the upper floors of a building that once hosted Mayor Mike's restaurant. The $1.4 million "Hartford Lofts" project would convert the space that was a hotel and rooming house and would be the first residential condo project in downtown in more than a decade.
Ramirez, a 2008 Trinity graduate who has now relocated from his native New York to Hartford, sees the development of condos as the next logical step in the revitalization of downtown following strong leasing of new rentals. "At some point, you start to ask yourself should I keep renting or should I buy?" Ramirez said, as he walked last week through the Asylum Street building he purchased at the end of June for $250,000.
Ramirez, 31, estimates that the condos will sell for between $205,000 and $245,000. The units, Ramirez said, will be roughly 1,200 square feet — almost double the size of many condos downtown — and be competitive with units in Bushnell Tower and The Linden.
The project could provide a critical test for the appetite for condos in the city, much as the first new apartments did two years ago.
"We understand that there is a desire for an ownership product but we also recognize that the condo market has been weak," Michael W. Freimuth, executive director of the Capital Region Development Authority, said. "This project is modest in size and aims to produce a unit that would cost, on a monthly basis, essentially the same as a comparable rental but offers an equity and investment opportunity." CRDA has committed $400,000 in loans to the project along with $850,000 from the Hartford Community Loan Fund. The balance of $150,000 is from Ramirez and investors he has assembled. Historic tax credits will later also play a key role in the financing.
Ramirez said he is encouraged because he sees Hartford on the same kind of upswing that his old neighborhood in New York — Washington Heights — saw, beginning in the 1980s. Ramirez sensed it as early as 2004 while a freshman at Trinity, amid an early wave of apartment construction. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Natural Gas Project Brings Jobs
Four years ago, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed into law Connecticut’s first ever Comprehensive Energy Strategy, a bold plan to bring cheaper, cleaner and more reliable power to our residents and businesses while also creating good-paying middle-class jobs.
That is precisely why the CES proposed investments in and incentives for the expansion of natural gas pipeline capacity.
Pipeline projects like the Algonquin Incremental Market Project have put hundreds of our members to work, paying good middle-class wages. Our operating engineers take great pride in working on these projects that safely deliver cheaper and cleaner energy to home owners and businesses across Connecticut.
The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection is currently preparing an update to the CES. Given its success to date in bringing cheaper, more reliable, cleaner energy while also sparking tens of millions of dollars in investment and the creation of hundreds of jobs, continuing to prioritize the expansion of natural gas pipeline infrastructure across Connecticut must be a cornerstone of our state’s next Comprehensive Energy Strategy.
Nate Brown, Plymouth
The writer is the government and community relations director for the Operating Engineers Local 478 Hamden.