Mark Pazniokas
Gov. Ned Lamont simultaneously delivered an apology and pep talk to the House Democratic caucus Wednesday night, acknowledging that his highway tolling proposal had put fellow Democrats “in a pickle,” while defending the plan as a necessary and overdue boost to Connecticut’s lagging economy.
Hands on hips, Lamont spoke for seven minutes to Democrats in their caucus room, a place typically off limits to the press and visitors. He assured them he was deeply committed to the fight for the passage of tolls — and the re-election of those who joined him. Lawmakers stood and applauded as he left without taking questions from them or the press.
House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, had recently suggested the visit, and with a few minutes notice to the press, Lamont and his senior staff made the walk from his corner office on the second floor of the west side of the State Capitol to the caucus room on the east side. Lamont quickly told them he was demanding a tough vote.
“I know that,” Lamont said, his voice dropping as he scanned the room. “I’m asking every one of you to cast a really difficult vote.”
He is not asking from a position of strength. By one recent measure, his approval rating is among the bottom five of U.S. governors, undoubtedly the consequence of his unexpected call for a comprehensive system of highway tolls, not the limited levy on trucks that he proposed during his campaign last year.
After describing a vote for tolls as one of the most important things they could do to get the state moving again, Lamont circled back to where he began, acknowledging his role as the proximate cause of their political jeopardy.
“I owe you something else,” Lamont said. “I put some of you in a pickle, because I ran for office, and you know I said I think we can do this probably with trucks. We’ll get started with trucks only tolling.”
Lamont said a truck-only tolling system in Rhode Island is still the subject of litigation. Nothing has been clarified in courts, and such limited tolling would not raise the money Connecticut needs to keep its special transportation fund solvent.“I just don’t want us to nickel and dime this any longer,” Lamont said.
His audience listened politely. No one interrupted him.
“I know I put you in a tough vote,” Lamont said. “It’s the most important vote you can take, and I’m going to be standing here with each and every one of you. I’m going to be putting my shoulder to the wheel.”
Aresimowicz stood behind Lamont and to his left.
“We’re going to raise money for this caucus. I’m going to have the business guys coming in,” Lamont said. “Labor’s going to be standing up for you, and I’m going to be standing up for you.”
The lawmakers didn’t react.
The mood broke when Lamont described stopping into a Republican meeting on tolls on his way home to Greenwich earlier this week.
“I couldn’t stop myself. I walked into that room. Everybody got quiet,” he said.
They laughed when Lamont described challenging the leader of a grassroots anti-tolls group.
“Who’s that guy?” Lamont asked.
Someone yelled the name Patrick Sasser, who has mixed it up with Aresimowicz.
“Sasser, yeah,” Lamont said. “Joe’s friend.”
They all laughed.
The tolls plan still is a work in progress. Lamont stressed that it would raise significant funds from out of state motorists, and that his administration would lessen the blow on Connecticut motorists with discounts.
“It is not an easy vote, but it is the right vote,” Lamont said. “And I need you all to stand up.”
They laughed when he suggested that the House take the lead on tolls: “Maybe the Senate could use a push from the House.”He thanked them.“Back to you, Mr. Speaker.”
New Britain officials get a Smalley Elementary walkthrough
Michelle France
NEW BRITAIN – Several city officials got their first glimpse of the construction project at Smalley Elementary School Wednesday morning during a walk through. The school has been undergoing more than $50 million worth of renovations over the last several months.
Newfield Construction Project Manager Brian Grant lead the tour which included Mayor Erin Stewart, Superintendent of Schools Nancy Sarra, members of the School Building Committee, council members and others. The school is being renovated to accommodate 750 students and has expanded in size from 82,000 square-feet to 104,000 square-feet.
“This has been a long time coming,” said Stewart. “The school was bursting at the seams. It was very old and out dated. If we expect our students to learn well, we have to give them a good environment to work in,” she added.
Smalley School is the most densely populated school in the city, according to the New Britain Consolidated School District. In the past, the school could not accommodate all its kindergarteners.
Students returning to the school in September will find it completely unrecognizable as the building was stripped down and revamped.
The new main entrance will have more safety features such as bullet proof transaction window. Eight new classrooms were added and original classrooms were reconfigured into faculty offices. Pre-kindergarten and kindergarteners will have their own drop-off section of the building.
The school has been undergoing multiple additions including two new classroom wings; one for pre-kindergarten and kindergartners and the other for students in the first through fifth grades.New additions to the media center, an elevator replacement and brand new stairwells are also in the plans.
There will be two new playgrounds: one for preschool and kindergarteners and another for older students. At least one of the playgrounds will feature amphitheatre-style seating for outdoor learning.
“It’s amazing,” said Sarra. I’m really excited for our families and students who get to come home to the renovations.”
Smalley School was originally built in 1971 and underwent renovations in 1997.
Construction is on schedule and the work is expected to be completed in early August.
Apartment complex proposed across from EB
Tina Detelj VIDEO
NEW LONDON, Conn. (WTNH) - Just look along the roads surrounding the Electric Boat campus and you can see how much the company has expanded.
Cars fill every spot along the roads at Fort Trumbull and the shipbuilder has also started to reserve spots in the parking lot of the former Stash's Cafe. One developer would like to build an apartment complex there, which would be right across the street from Electric Boat.
"We all start very early because parking limitations around here so if you could sleep in a couple extra hours why not," said Electric Boat employee Amanda Fagan.
Living this close to work isn't for Fagan, but it may be for others. That's what developers building new apartment complexes in New London are counting on.
On nearby Bank Street, A.R. Building Company is constructing a new 98-unit apartment complex. It had already built an apartment complex at 60 Mansfield Road which is more than 90 percent full.
Related: Electric Boat says employment should remain stable
"There's a young crowd in this town," said Fagan. "There's certainly a lot of bars, entertainment, night life so I could see the young employees being interested in that sure."
"There's a lot of development going on in New London. Just kind of riding the cusp of that," said Jennifer Chiappone with Thamesport Marina.
The marina owns the former Stash's Cafe property and along with another developer it is proposing to build a 5 story 50 unit apartment building there.
It will need special permit and coastal site plan approval.
Chiappone says the expansion happening at Electric Boat makes the former cafe property even more valuable. "Absolutely it's kind of a built in clientele just across the street so it makes sense," said Chiappone.
On Thursday the Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing on the proposal.
This comes after the commission, in September, approved special permits which would allow residential development on commercial waterfront property.
We need a new revenue source for transportation
Bonita Messman
Nobody denies that there is an infrastructure crisis in Connecticut: 57 percent of public roads are in poor condition; 338 bridges are rated as structurally deficient. No one wants a repeat of the Mianus Bridge collapse, but that is where we are headed if nothing is done soon.
Instead of working together to find a fair and financially sound solution, politics has once again reared its ugly head and has served to divide us. One side is trying to convince us that more bonding — which is just more borrowing with more interest to put Connecticut into more debt — is the easy answer. There is no easy answer. More debt added to Connecticut’s already unsustainable debt is not a long term solution.
What we need is a new revenue source instead of continually kicking the problem down the road. We need a new revenue source that is shared by everyone who uses our roads — including the 40% who are out of state users. Why should Connecticut residents continue to be the only ones paying for Connecticut road maintenance? Out of state drivers use our roads for free while we pay tolls to use their roads! Do you realize that Connecticut is the ONLY state on the eastern seaboard where this is the case–the only state without toll roads?
Look at the toll revenues from only one year (2016): New Jersey $1.57 Billion, Pennsylvania $1 Billion, New York $708 Million, Massachusetts $395 Million, Maine $134 Million, New Hampshire $131 Million, Rhode Island $20 Million CONNECTICUT $0.
Why should we keep missing out on revenues like this — with 40 percent coming from out of state drivers? Introducing fair, safe and flexible tolls is the best solution for the long-term safety and health of our beautiful state.
Stonington development panel supports Seaport Marine project
Joe Wojtas
Mystic — With Chairman Dave Hammond calling it a “fantastic project,” the Stonington Economic Development Commission voted unanimously Wednesday night to support the Smiler’s Wharf project planned for the Seaport Marine property.
The commission now will send a letter of support to the Stonington Planning and Zoning Commission, which has slated a May 28 public hearing on the project’s master plan.
On Wednesday night, Harry Boardsen, who co-manages Noank Shipyard, which owns Seaport Marine, and his team again outlined the plans to demolish much of the 11.5-acre site and redevelop it with a second restaurant, a marine services building, a 50-room boutique hotel and a mix of 47 apartments, townhouses and single-family homes.
Plans for the project off Washington Street also call for a large boat basin to accommodate additional docking space and an 800- foot-long public-access boardwalk, event building, plaza and kayak pavilion. The plan has no retail space.
“We know our place in town. We want to bring people to town to stay and eat and patronize the shops on Main Street. We want our project to be complimentary, not have an adverse component,” said Boardsen, who called the uses and design in character with those of Mystic.
Don Poland, who prepared the project’s economic impact study, said it would result in a net positive tax impact of $120,000 a year. He added that figure could be higher, as he was very conservative with his figures regarding the cost of town services and the number of school-age children the project would bring in. He said the project also would generate $600,000 for the town in permit fees.
Meg Lyons, the project architect, told the EDC that plans call for 55,000 square feet of building coverage on the site, 12,000 square feet less than what exists now. She said this would open up the site and create space for a 6,500-square-foot plaza.
Jackson Avenue resident Joan Durant told the commission that she and her neighbors oppose the “massive proposal,” which she said does not conform to the town’s Plan of Conservation and Development recommendation for village development and character.
Hammond reminded Durant that his commission was only considering the economic impacts of the project, not the zoning issues.
Durant also was concerned about the 63- and 72-foot height of two of the proposed buildings.
Lyons pointed out several other existing downtown buildings that range between 50 and slightly more than 60 feet and said the decision was made to add height instead of lot coverage, as that would have made the development more dense.
The PZC public hearing on the master plan was slated for May 7 but the hearing was continued, as Seaport Marine wanted to address concerns and questions posed by town officials who have reviewed the plans. Now scheduled for May 28, the hearing is slated to begin at 7 p.m. at Mystic Middle School.
The only building that will remain on the site will be the popular Red 36 restaurant. Boardsen said that Angela Kanabis, who runs Red 36, also will operate the new 200-seat restaurant.
One hurdle the project faces is that the Mystic sewer treatment plant is nearing its capacity to process sewage. But there is a total of $1.7 million in the 2019-20 Stonington capital improvements budget and a planned $865,000 in the 2020-21 budget for upgrades to send sewage from the Mystic plant along an existing pipeline to the borough treatment plant, which is operating at 50 percent capacity. This would create extra capacity at the Mystic plant and allow new projects, such as the Seaport Marine project and two hotels proposed for Coogan Boulevard, to tie in to the system.
“This has been a long time coming,” said Stewart. “The school was bursting at the seams. It was very old and out dated. If we expect our students to learn well, we have to give them a good environment to work in,” she added.
Smalley School is the most densely populated school in the city, according to the New Britain Consolidated School District. In the past, the school could not accommodate all its kindergarteners.
Students returning to the school in September will find it completely unrecognizable as the building was stripped down and revamped.
The new main entrance will have more safety features such as bullet proof transaction window. Eight new classrooms were added and original classrooms were reconfigured into faculty offices. Pre-kindergarten and kindergarteners will have their own drop-off section of the building.
The school has been undergoing multiple additions including two new classroom wings; one for pre-kindergarten and kindergartners and the other for students in the first through fifth grades.New additions to the media center, an elevator replacement and brand new stairwells are also in the plans.
There will be two new playgrounds: one for preschool and kindergarteners and another for older students. At least one of the playgrounds will feature amphitheatre-style seating for outdoor learning.
“It’s amazing,” said Sarra. I’m really excited for our families and students who get to come home to the renovations.”
Smalley School was originally built in 1971 and underwent renovations in 1997.
Construction is on schedule and the work is expected to be completed in early August.
Apartment complex proposed across from EB
Tina Detelj VIDEO
NEW LONDON, Conn. (WTNH) - Just look along the roads surrounding the Electric Boat campus and you can see how much the company has expanded.
Cars fill every spot along the roads at Fort Trumbull and the shipbuilder has also started to reserve spots in the parking lot of the former Stash's Cafe. One developer would like to build an apartment complex there, which would be right across the street from Electric Boat.
"We all start very early because parking limitations around here so if you could sleep in a couple extra hours why not," said Electric Boat employee Amanda Fagan.
Living this close to work isn't for Fagan, but it may be for others. That's what developers building new apartment complexes in New London are counting on.
On nearby Bank Street, A.R. Building Company is constructing a new 98-unit apartment complex. It had already built an apartment complex at 60 Mansfield Road which is more than 90 percent full.
Related: Electric Boat says employment should remain stable
"There's a young crowd in this town," said Fagan. "There's certainly a lot of bars, entertainment, night life so I could see the young employees being interested in that sure."
"There's a lot of development going on in New London. Just kind of riding the cusp of that," said Jennifer Chiappone with Thamesport Marina.
The marina owns the former Stash's Cafe property and along with another developer it is proposing to build a 5 story 50 unit apartment building there.
It will need special permit and coastal site plan approval.
Chiappone says the expansion happening at Electric Boat makes the former cafe property even more valuable. "Absolutely it's kind of a built in clientele just across the street so it makes sense," said Chiappone.
On Thursday the Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing on the proposal.
This comes after the commission, in September, approved special permits which would allow residential development on commercial waterfront property.
We need a new revenue source for transportation
Bonita Messman
Nobody denies that there is an infrastructure crisis in Connecticut: 57 percent of public roads are in poor condition; 338 bridges are rated as structurally deficient. No one wants a repeat of the Mianus Bridge collapse, but that is where we are headed if nothing is done soon.
Instead of working together to find a fair and financially sound solution, politics has once again reared its ugly head and has served to divide us. One side is trying to convince us that more bonding — which is just more borrowing with more interest to put Connecticut into more debt — is the easy answer. There is no easy answer. More debt added to Connecticut’s already unsustainable debt is not a long term solution.
What we need is a new revenue source instead of continually kicking the problem down the road. We need a new revenue source that is shared by everyone who uses our roads — including the 40% who are out of state users. Why should Connecticut residents continue to be the only ones paying for Connecticut road maintenance? Out of state drivers use our roads for free while we pay tolls to use their roads! Do you realize that Connecticut is the ONLY state on the eastern seaboard where this is the case–the only state without toll roads?
Look at the toll revenues from only one year (2016): New Jersey $1.57 Billion, Pennsylvania $1 Billion, New York $708 Million, Massachusetts $395 Million, Maine $134 Million, New Hampshire $131 Million, Rhode Island $20 Million CONNECTICUT $0.
Why should we keep missing out on revenues like this — with 40 percent coming from out of state drivers? Introducing fair, safe and flexible tolls is the best solution for the long-term safety and health of our beautiful state.
Stonington development panel supports Seaport Marine project
Joe Wojtas
Mystic — With Chairman Dave Hammond calling it a “fantastic project,” the Stonington Economic Development Commission voted unanimously Wednesday night to support the Smiler’s Wharf project planned for the Seaport Marine property.
The commission now will send a letter of support to the Stonington Planning and Zoning Commission, which has slated a May 28 public hearing on the project’s master plan.
On Wednesday night, Harry Boardsen, who co-manages Noank Shipyard, which owns Seaport Marine, and his team again outlined the plans to demolish much of the 11.5-acre site and redevelop it with a second restaurant, a marine services building, a 50-room boutique hotel and a mix of 47 apartments, townhouses and single-family homes.
Plans for the project off Washington Street also call for a large boat basin to accommodate additional docking space and an 800- foot-long public-access boardwalk, event building, plaza and kayak pavilion. The plan has no retail space.
“We know our place in town. We want to bring people to town to stay and eat and patronize the shops on Main Street. We want our project to be complimentary, not have an adverse component,” said Boardsen, who called the uses and design in character with those of Mystic.
Don Poland, who prepared the project’s economic impact study, said it would result in a net positive tax impact of $120,000 a year. He added that figure could be higher, as he was very conservative with his figures regarding the cost of town services and the number of school-age children the project would bring in. He said the project also would generate $600,000 for the town in permit fees.
Meg Lyons, the project architect, told the EDC that plans call for 55,000 square feet of building coverage on the site, 12,000 square feet less than what exists now. She said this would open up the site and create space for a 6,500-square-foot plaza.
Jackson Avenue resident Joan Durant told the commission that she and her neighbors oppose the “massive proposal,” which she said does not conform to the town’s Plan of Conservation and Development recommendation for village development and character.
Hammond reminded Durant that his commission was only considering the economic impacts of the project, not the zoning issues.
Durant also was concerned about the 63- and 72-foot height of two of the proposed buildings.
Lyons pointed out several other existing downtown buildings that range between 50 and slightly more than 60 feet and said the decision was made to add height instead of lot coverage, as that would have made the development more dense.
The PZC public hearing on the master plan was slated for May 7 but the hearing was continued, as Seaport Marine wanted to address concerns and questions posed by town officials who have reviewed the plans. Now scheduled for May 28, the hearing is slated to begin at 7 p.m. at Mystic Middle School.
The only building that will remain on the site will be the popular Red 36 restaurant. Boardsen said that Angela Kanabis, who runs Red 36, also will operate the new 200-seat restaurant.
One hurdle the project faces is that the Mystic sewer treatment plant is nearing its capacity to process sewage. But there is a total of $1.7 million in the 2019-20 Stonington capital improvements budget and a planned $865,000 in the 2020-21 budget for upgrades to send sewage from the Mystic plant along an existing pipeline to the borough treatment plant, which is operating at 50 percent capacity. This would create extra capacity at the Mystic plant and allow new projects, such as the Seaport Marine project and two hotels proposed for Coogan Boulevard, to tie in to the system.