CT Construction Digest Friday June 28, 2019

Legislators secure more funding for Litchfield County Fire Training School
TORRINGTON — State Reps. Michelle Cook and Maria Horn, D-Torrington, announced Wednesday that Litchfield CountyRegional Fire School in Litchfield is expected to receive $410,000 for soil remediation from the Connecticut Bond Commission, according to a release.
“I would like to thank the Bond Commission and Governor Lamont for supporting this project. This funding is essential in ensuring our new facility and surrounding environment is safe for our firefighters who have sacrificed so much to protect Torrington and Litchfield County residents,” Cook said in a statement. “This is a modern facility, and we hope it will attract a new class of volunteer and career firefighters.”
“Fire schools are a manifestation of our community’s support for our dedicated volunteer and career firefighters,” Horn said in the statement. “These committed individuals ensure our safety, and I’m grateful to the Governor and the Bond Commission for this grant that will help ensure theirs.”
The Burrville Regional Fire School was demolished and a new school rebuilt in its place, the Litchfield County Regional Fire School.
Firefighters officially opened the doors of the $13 million facility in October. It includes a 16,650-square-foot administration, education and vehicle maintenance facility as well as a 5,900-square-foot burn building, training tower and rehab shelter, according to the release. The state Bond Commission approved the project in 2016.
According to the release, in 1999, the Connecticut Fire Academy, which manages Connecticut’s nine regional fire schools, began planning the rebuild of eight fire schools to meet current needs and accommodate future growth. In 2003, the legislature recognized the Stamford Regional Fire School as the ninth fire school needing funding for renovations.
As of 2018, capital improvements have been completed at the New Haven, Hartford, Litchfield and Fairfield regional fire schools.
Construction is underway at the Eastern Connecticut Fire School in Willimantic, but funding has yet to be distributed to the Valley Fire Chiefs Regional Fire School, Middlesex and Wolcott schools, and the Stamford Regional Fire Training School.

East Haven health dept. finds no rats, gives OK for old high school demolition
Mark Zaretsky
EAST HAVEN — The East Shore District Health Department found no evidence of rodent activity in the old East Haven High School building and, following a walk-through Thursday, gave the developer converting the building to housing the OK to demolish its 1973 wing.
“We did a walk-through this morning ... with the town and the pest control company and contractor,” said East Shore District Health Director Michael Pascucilla. “Everything ... looked good. I have not seen any signs of rodent activity in the school.
“The building has been given the OK to be demolished,” Pascucilla said.
The go-ahead for demolition came just days after the town’s Building Department, at the Health Department’s request, asked the developer, WinnDevelopment, to hold off temporarily on demolition for the $21.5 million project to convert the 83-year-old former high school building to senior housing.

The delay followed media reports that neighbors were complaining about rats they said were being displaced from the vacant school to the neighborhood as work to prepare the wing for demolition proceeded.

Building Official James Bassett said “it was just the demolition that was on hold,” and the town never ordered the developer to stop work on the entire project.
In any case, “I did get the verbal OK” Thursday morning for demolition to resume,” he said.
Dave Ginsberg, project manager for WinnDevelopment, said that with the hold now removed, “we would begin demolition early next week.”
Ginsberg said WinnDevelopment wants to work with neighbors and “we would gladly pay for a survey” to see how the project may have affected their properties.
Town officials have made it clear that tests by both WinnDevelopment — which has had a subcontractor set 92 traps since January — and the East Shore District Health Department have yet to show evidence of rats.
“They found nothing,” said town Director of Administration and Management Sal Brancati. He said that if it were up to him, he would have demolition begin immediately.
“I told them, ‘Go ahead and do it today,’” he said.
The shutdown came just as demolition on the 1973 wing was about to begin. Demolition had been scheduled to begin Tuesday, Brancati has said.

Brancati and Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. have said that if there are rats in the neighborhood, they didn’t come from the vacant school building.

“It’s the nut cases (in the neighborhood) who are trying to cause a problem,” Maturo said Wednesday.
A subcontractor of the developer, Winn Development of Boston, has set 92 traps since January, said Brancati.
Not one rat has turned up, he said.
Brancati said WinnDevelopment and its subcontractor have “done everything they can possibly do, and they’ve caught no rats. If the people would follow the instructions” from the health department, “the rats would probably go.”
Brancati said he was told by health department Deputy Director Alex Sinotti that “the problem is the bird feeders and garbage cans without lids” and people feeding chickens tehat they keep in chicken coops in the backyards of nearby homes.
Sinotti is on vacation this week and could not be reached for comment.
Town and state officials joined officials from WinnDevelopment last Wednesday to break ground on the “adaptive reuse” project, which will include 70 age-restricted, mixed-income apartments for seniors in front and a community center with meeting space, a theater, gym and a renovated pool in back.
Neighbors attributed what they said was an increase in rats in the neighborhood to construction at the former East Haven High School building, according to WTNH-TV.
Neighbors have noticed an increase in rat activity that has them hurridly patching holes in homes and garages, WTNH said. “They are still trying to get into our home,” neighbor Frank Ettore told WTNH. “They ate a hole alongside of my garage.”
Ettore and others believe the rats are being displaced from the former high school to their neighborhood as the city and WinnDevelopment prepare to renovate most of the old school while demolishing one wing for parking.
Pascucilla told WTNH that a pest inspection in February didn’t find any rat activity inside or outside the building. He recommended that residents make sure they don’t leave out food for stray animals and clean up any food left outside by household pets, which could be attracting pests such as rats.
Maturo called the WTNH allegations, which were repeated in a Hearst Connecticut Media story, “fake news and fake reporting about rats at the high school.”
The problem is “the nut cases who are trying to cause a problem,” he said.
In seeking to shut the project down, the East Shore District Health Department is “listening to the same nut cases” who spoke to WTNH, Maturo said.
“Let the fake news do some reporting to find out what’s really going on,” Maturo said. “The rats have not been coming from the schools. There is no food in that school. The basement is spotless. I’ve been in there.”
Maturo announced Tuesday that he will not seek the Republican Town Committee’s endorsement to seek a 10th term for mayor — but would not rule out the possibility of seeking another term as an independent.
Work on the project to convert the old high school — which is being rebranded “The Tyler” — to housing has been going on since March, with several apartments already framed-out within the shell of the old school.
Prior to the arrival of WinnDevelopment, the vacant old high school building, which for many years was used only for storage by the town and the Board of Education and to house a teen center, Biddy Basketball and the town pool, was “an albatross around us,” Maturo said last week.
He said he was thrilled that it will once again bring in tax revenue to the town.
The high school building was built in 1936 under the Works Project Administration, part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt “New Deal,” said WinnDevelopment Senior Vice President Adam Stein.
The main building, completed in 1936, was designed by prominent New Haven architect R. W. Foote in the Colonial Revival style. That portion of the building, as well an addition built in 1964, will house the planned apartments.
The apartments will be available to residents aged 55 and up.
The conversion of the 104,871-square-foot building will include new windows, curtain walls and doors, exterior masonry re-pointing and repair and numerous site improvements. The 1973 addition to the building will be demolished to allow for creation of 55 of the 86 planned parking spaces.
The town, meanwhile, will use the income and operational savings from WinnDevelopment’s redevelopment of the front of the property to help finance renovation of the rear, which ultimately will have a new Town Council chamber, a new home for the East Haven Historical Society, a theater and a refurbished gym and town pool, Maturo has said.

Old Lyme looking to schedule Sound View sewer project referendum
Mary Biekert  
Old Lyme — While looking to avoid the possibility of losing funding, and to follow an administrative order from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, town officials are inching ever nearer to installing a shared community sewer system in its Sound View neighborhood.
The move would allow those homes to abandon their cesspools and septic systems.
Besides recently receiving approval from DEEP for its proposed “Coastal Wastewater Management Plan,” which details installing a gravity-fed sewer system within the Sound View neighborhood and a neighborhood north of Route 156 known as "Miscellaneous Town Area B" by connecting to New London’s wastewater treatment facility, town officials also have discussed scheduling an upcoming referendum to approve town bonding to finance the $7.44 million project.
If approved at referendum, the project design then would be slated for late 2019 or potentially 2020, with construction estimated for 2020 through 2023.
With a referendum tentatively scheduled for Aug. 13, both the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance have discussed signing resolutions authorizing town bonding in their recent meetings. The resolutions are expected to be signed in July, First Selectwoman Bonnie Reemsnyder said Monday in an interview with The Day, and are needed before proceeding with the referendum.
Though the referendum calls for resident approval allowing the town to borrow money through federal-state Clean Water Funds to finance the project through both loans and grants, only residents of impacted neighborhoods — and not all town taxpayers — will be responsible for paying the $7.44 million through a sewer connection fee, Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA) Chairman Rich Prendergast said by email Thursday.
In an effort to lock down what that fee would look like for those future ratepayers, the WPCA also recently approved a charging formula at its June 11 meeting.
The formula, Prendergast said, will charge each equivalent dwelling unit, or a median-sized home, in Sound View and the Miscellaneous Town Area B an estimated $31,007 to cover the project's capital costs.
Homeowners could pay the estimated $31,007 cost, comprised of a betterment fee and a facility connection fee, in a full one-time payment, or they could finance it over 20 years at a 2 percent loan, which equates to two payments of $944 per year, Prendergast said.
Annually, homeowners also would pay an estimated $430 operations and maintenance fee.
In addition to the capital cost and the annual maintenance fee, homeowners also would be responsible for the plumbing cost to install the line from the house to the curb. According to WPCA presentations detailing the project, each foot of piping could cost between $50 and $100.
After initially working for years to form a plan to install its own independent sewer system to service the town's beach communities in an effort to adhere to the town's "sewer avoidance program," Reemsnyder said the town turned to its current sewer plan with nearby towns — entitled "Coastal Wastewater Management Plan" — once it realized DEEP likely would not approve the independent plan, and further studies proved it would be costly.
As part of its plan, the town also is seeking to combine its sewer project with another separate and ongoing project among the Miami Beach Association, Old Lyme Shores Beach Association and Old Colony Beach Club Association — all of which are chartered beach neighborhoods and considered separate municipalities from the town — by sharing one pump station and one force main. That station would service and pump wastewater from each of the beach neighborhoods to East Lyme, through Waterford and then to New London for treatment. 
By sharing one pump station and force main, residents from each neighborhood will save money by splitting the costs needed to build and maintain the pump station, among other fees, Reemsnyder said.
Prendergast said that town ratepayers using the system— which will include those living Sound View and the Miscellaneous Town Area B — would pay an estimated 30 percent of those costs and that they have already been factored into the $7.44 million needed to finance the project.
Should the beach associations build the pump station before the town is ready to move forward, Reemsnyder said the town’s ratepayers then will pay their share when their neighborhoods tie into the station.
The town approved last fall a leasing agreement for the three beach associations to locate the pump station on town property in the Sound View neighborhood area, Reemsnyder said, but the associations are now considering a different location for the pump station on private property on Portland Avenue.
The three beach associations, further along in their sewer projects compared to the town, already have completed studies, drafted intermunicipal agreements with adjacent towns for both sewage capacity and wastewater treatment at the New London plant, and have approved the borrowing of millions of dollars to pay for their projects, according to The Day's previous reporting.
Reemsnyder and Prendergast both said that the WPCA and town officials still are working out details on whether the town will sign separate agreements with East Lyme, Waterford and New London, or if the town could gain sewage capacity through the agreements already drafted by the three beach associations.
The Old Lyme WPCA is planning a public information and question-and-answer session to detail septic system use, the scope of the project area, costs and benefits of the system and a timeline of the project. It will be held from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Saturday at Town Hall.       

CT Construction Digest Thursday June 27, 2019

Lamont threatens to clamp down on borrowing if tolls not approved
Keith M. Phaneuf, CTMirror.org   

HARTFORD — Gov. Ned Lamont threatened Wednesday to clamp down on state borrowing if legislators can’t agree in special session this summer on a plan to toll Connecticut’s major highways.

The governor, who made his comments during and after the State Bond Commission meeting, also said he’d consider shifting more borrowing capacity away from non-transportation initiatives to support Connecticut’s highways, bridges and rail lines.

“If that’s the case, we’re going to have to be very selective about what we do going forward,” Lamont said during the meeting.

“We cannot afford to do a lot of these other items if we put all that money into transportation,” he added afterward.

Lamont, who pledged during the campaign to support tolling only on large trucks, reversed himself in February and has since pressed for tolls on all vehicles to repair Connecticut’s aging, overcrowded infrastructure.

Lawmakers declined to adopt any long-term financing plan for transportation work during the regular session, which adjourned on June 5. But they must return to the Capitol later this summer to adopt the annual bond package. And Lamont has asked them to reconsider tolls, saying the status quo can’t continue.

Connecticut will borrow $850 million this coming fiscal year — $75 million more than it averaged over the last two years — for transportation repairs. This borrowing, which is repaid with gas taxes and other revenues from the budget’s Special Transportation Fund, is paired with about $700 million per year in federal transportation grants.

But state and federal funding totaling roughly $1.5 billion per year “is not enough to keep us in a state of good repair,” Lamont said.

Department of Transportation Commissioner Joseph Giulietti has testified Connecticut needs to spend between $2 billion and $2.5 billion per year if it wants to improve the condition of its infrastructure and make key strategic upgrades like replacing the elevated section of Interstate 84 in Hartford of widening I-95 in Fairfield County.

Lawmakers debated two options this spring to increase capital spending this year, but settled on neither.

Electronic tolling on I-84, I-91, I-95 and the Merritt Parkway is projected to raise $600 million to $800 million per year. Lamont backs this option, estimating out-of-state motorists would contribute as much as 40 percent of the revenue, because it would enable the state to avoid more borrowing.

Republicans countered with “Prioritize Progress,” which avoids tolls and instead shifts $700 million-to-$750 million per year in borrowing from school construction, economic development and other non-transportation programs and makes it available for highway, bridge and rail work.

Political retaliation for opposing tolls?

Some questioned Wednesday whether Lamont — who chairs the bond commission — retaliated politically against the GOP for their anti-toll stand.

The commission approved a total of $1.9 million in financing for upgrades to fire training schools in Democratic legislators’ districts in Torrington and Windham.

But a similar request for help for the Valley Fire School in Beacon Falls — which trains firefighters in the Naugatuck Valley — was left off the agenda.

House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, a staunch opponent of tolls who pushed for aid for the Valley Fire School, said Lamont and his running mate, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, pledged last fall during a visit to her district to support upgrades to the school.

“They were very passionate and it was very heartfelt,” Klarides said, adding that the Democratic team pledged their support for the school repeatedly. “Now he’s trying to threaten people and say ‘If you don’t do tolls that I want, schools like this aren’t going to get funded.’ People are sick and tired of politicians saying one thing during their elections and then conveniently forgetting what they said.”

When Rep. Chris Davis of Ellington, one of just two Republicans on the 10-member bond commission, asked whether the Naugatuck Valley school would be funded in the future, Lamont’s deputy commissioner of the Department of Administrative Services, Noel Petra, said ‘We’re evaluating our options at this point.”

Lamont said afterward there was no political retribution. But his answer to Davis during the meeting was: “I’ll get back to you, I think, by the end of the special session to tell you what appetite and what capacity we have to do projects like that.”

The governor added afterward that even if legislators don’t support tolls, he isn’t ready to support the GOP’s Prioritize Progress plan and shift $750 million in borrowing away from school construction, economic development and other non-transportation programs to support highway, bridge and rail projects.

But he said he would be willing to compromise and support a smaller shift if was part of a deal that also included approval of electronic tolling.  

 

Next up for State U should be a makeover for the XL Center  

Mike DiMauro    

It may take a few days for the hyperventilating to become normal breathing again. Soon, though, a great number of Really Important People who have been out there taking bows the last few days will be faced with placing their cash in the vicinity of their kisser.
(Put their money where their mouths are.)
Because, really, how can we in good conscience go ga ga over UConn’s decision to declare itself a basketball school and leave the XL Center in its current condition?
That’s right, Connecticut. It’s time. No more procrastination. The XL Center, in need of an extreme makeover for quite some time, just got its bounce of the ball from the universe. The Grande Dame of 1 Civic Center Plaza has its avenue into the 21st century.
“It’s hard to quantify, but, yes, the move to the Big East is a good thing,” Mike Freimuth, the straight shooting executive director of the Capital Region Development Authority, said Wednesday. “Apathy with the team leads to apathy for the building. But the inverse is also true.”
Indeed. UConn women’s coach Geno Auriemma even said the other day that the move to the Big East “better put 16,000 in the XL Center every night.” And yet if Auriemma’s wish comes true, better attendance also means greater demands on a building that has all the figurative foundation of a card table with Haystacks Calhoun standing on top of it.
And so now with State U awash in a sporting renaissance — perceived or real — approval of the $100-125 million to upgrade the building becomes a necessity, lest every politician in favor of this conference switcheroo risk the ridicule that comes with utter fraudulence.
“The building’s fate has always been tied to UConn’s fate,” Freimuth said.
The new building, if constructed properly, would instantly become the Big East’s jewel. Freimuth said he envisions “optimizing” 11,000-12,000 seats. And yet with a rather ingenious mechanical wall, the new XL Center could still accommodate 16,000 for big events.
A mechanical wall would roll down from the ceiling to shroud roughly 4,000 seats that wouldn’t always be used, Freimuth said, a more modern version of the building’s current setup, in which a curtain drops in front of unused seats.
The multi-use wall would be available for video use during games, while also shutting off three sections of the upper bowl. Freimuth said such a setup would preclude the cost of building an upper concourse and save the project several million dollars.
Most events at the XL Center draw in the 11-12,000 range anyway, Freimuth said. The extra 4,000 seats are used for only five to 10 percent of the events. 
“If we get Georgetown coming here as the No. 1 team in the country or Elton John in concert,” we’d absolutely have the ability to use those extra 4,000 seats,” Freimuth said. “By ‘optimizing’ 11-12,000, I mean that the support systems for the building (concessions, restrooms) would be geared to 11-12,000. On the nights we have 16,000, the lines would be longer, but given the financial issues, I don’t think we need to construct the building that way for what amounts to five to 10 events a year. It’s saves a lot of money.”
Freimuth said the optimal plan would be to “reprogram” the lower bowl seats with more amenities. Atrium expansion for the concourse, he said, would offer more concessions, restrooms and social gathering spaces.
Notez bien: This project began in the $250 million range. It’s half as much now, but still cleverly conceived.
Once again: There was no political arm twisting here, no frantic calls from on high to move UConn back to the Big East. It was nothing more than an idea before last weekend when news broke. The point is that now that our leadership unilaterally decided UConn’s course, it bears the responsibility tethered to the decision: fixing the XL Center, thus providing a downtown facility that honors such newfound excitement.
It’s time, Connecticut.
No more excuses.
You think you’re returning to big time basketball?
Then no more gauze and bandages for the Grande Dame. It’s time to pay up.

National Grid Seeks Permit to Build Transmission Line   

Clear River Energy LLC and the Narragansett Electric Company, doing business as National Grid, are seeking a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New England District to conduct work in waters of the United States in conjunction with constructing a transmission line, an energy center and upgrading a substation in the vicinity of Burrillville, R.I.
This work is proposed in various waters and wetlands in which the mainstay of the project is located south of Wallum Lake Road (State Route 100) in Burrillville, R.I.
Clear River Energy LLC, a project company of Invenergy Thermal Development LLC and The Narragansett Electric Company d/b/a National Grid, have jointly submitted a permit application to the Corps of Engineers pursuant to Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. The proposed project would consist of two major components, the Clear River Energy Center and the Burrillville Interconnection Project. More specifically, the application proposes to construct an electric generating facility known as the Clear River Energy Center (CREC); construct a dedicated 345 kilovolt (kV) transmission line interconnection known as the Burrillville Interconnection Project (BIP); and upgrade an existing substation known as the Sherman Road Switching Station.
The project would begin at the CREC site and extend generally northeast to the Sherman Road Switching Station. Once constructed, the BIP would connect the CREC to the existing New England electrical grid system. Clear River Energy LLC would construct, own and operate the CREC, located adjacent to the existing Algonquin Compressor Station. The CREC is a proposed combined-cycle electric generating facility that would be located on a 67-acre site, south of Wallum Lake Road (state route in Burrillville). The 67-acre CREC site is a subset of a 730-acre site that is owned and operated by Algonquin Gas Transmission LLC.
During construction, the CREC would be accessed via a temporary access road that would be constructed off of Wallum Lake Road. Once operational, permanent access to the CREC would be via an improved Algonquin Lane, which also is located off of Wallum Lake Road.
The basic project purpose is to supply and deliver energy to market. The overall project purpose is to supply and deliver energy to market to meet long-term electric supply demands within the Rhode Island and New England region. The CREC would address the need for new electric capacity that has been and will be created by retirements of existing generators, including oil and coal fired generators, and the additional potential retirements of other generators in the New England market. The CREC would improve the overall flexibility of the electric generation fleet, due to its fast start and high ramp rate capabilities, and would help support and complement the addition of more renewable generation into the region. The BIP would be necessary to interconnect the CREC to the New England electric system so that the electrical energy produced at the CREC can be delivered to the end user market.
The proposed project has been designed to avoid and minimize impacts to aquatic resources while bolstering the existing electrical infrastructure in the Rhode Island and New England region. To compensate for unavoidable impacts to aquatic resources, the applicant is currently proposing mitigation, which includes land acquisition and preservation of 1) an approximate 148-acre parcel of land known as the Sweet Hill Farm located off of Route 107 in Burrillville, RI, and 2) two parcels (Alles) totaling approximately 150-acres of land located west of Round Top Road in Burrillville, R.I.
The current mitigation plan reiterates the applicants' commitment to restoration and stabilization of temporarily disturbed wetlands, construction staging areas and transmission line rights-of-way. The plan includes a description of project impacts, objectives, mitigation site selection procedures, site protection information, and monitoring standards in addition to all required graphics and information.
The application for the federal permit was filed with the Corps in compliance with Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, which regulates the discharge or fill of material in U.S. waters, including wetlands. The public notice, with more specifics on the work proposed by Clear River Energy, LLC, and the Narragansett Electric Company doing business as National Grid, can be viewed on the Corps website at https://www.nae.usace.army.mil/Missions/PublicNotices/.

            

CT Construction Digest Wednesday June 26, 2019

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Killingly power plant approval good news for ‘bridge of flowers’
John Penney
DANIELSON — A plan to transform a Danielson footbridge into a flower-festooned tourist destination, while not a certainty, recently took a leap forward after state events proved out in favor of power plant developers.
The approval earlier this month of certificates of environmental compatibility and public need by the state Siting Council for the development of the proposed Killingly Energy Center facility means thousands of dollars partially earmarked for a “bridge of flowers” on the Water Street bridge could eventually be dispersed.
A Community Environmental Benefit agreement approved by the Killingly Town Council in 2017 calls for NTE, the plant’s developer, to provide $30,000 for the bridge project as well as for the installation of benches on the town’s River Trail path – or for “another appropriate outdoor project,” Town Manager Mary Calorio said.
Calorio said the money won’t be released until the plant is operational, which, if funding for the project is garnered, is likely at least a couple of years away.
“We still need to determine what the cost of that bridge project would be and if more money would need to be raised to get it done,” she said. “Once we determine that cost, the Town Council would need to vote to allocate the funding.”
Ginny Chase, head of Mother Nature’s Garden group, has been pushing for the bridge project for years. Her group has already helped beautify sections of town with pocket gardens, especially along the river area along Water Street.
Chase said adding hanging plants along the span was the “biggest dream” of former Killingly Planning Director Linda Walden, who died in 2015.
“We’re basing the idea on a couple of flower bridges, including ones in Simsbury and Shelburne Falls, Mass.,” she said.

She said preliminary plans include adding hanging flower baskets onto the bridge via pulleys. The plants would need a drip-irrigation system, locking mechanisms and likely cameras nearby to ensure the pots remain intact.
“It all boils down to costs and as a nonprofit, that’s especially important,” Chase said. “Our next step is to get concrete cost numbers for welders and other work so we have them on hand when the council asks.”
Calorio, who supports the bridge renovation in theory, said she does have maintenance concerns.
“This is town property and with similar projects, volunteers typically step up in the beginning, but that enthusiasm sometimes wanes,” she said. “But these kinds of additions do look beautiful.”
Chase said she’s already got a pool of volunteers in the wings for such projects.
“We do have resources, like the students at the local vo-ag programs that have already helped us so much with garden planting,” she said. “Something like this has the potential of being a draw, not just for Killingly residents, but from people out of town. And that’s beneficial to our economy.”                 

Officials in the Valley dismayed by Gov. Ned Lamont’s reversal on fire training center
Daniela Altimari

After nearly two decades of delays, the Valley Firefighter Training Center appeared to be back on track and Chuck Stankye III wanted to celebrate.
His late father spent the last years of his life advocating for the fire training school so about three weeks ago, Stankye brought a beer and a shot of whiskey to his dad’s grave to mark the moment.
But last week, Stankye and other advocates of the regional training facility slated to be built in Beacon Falls were disappointed to learn that the project has been stalled yet again.
Stankye, a former Derby fire chief like his father, said it felt like “a kick in the chest” when he heard funding for the $14 million training center would not appear on the agenda for Wednesday’s State Bond Commission meeting.
Training centers are crucial for firefighters to learn the complex rules of the fire service, from drills and rescue protocols to OSHA requirements. Most of the firefighters serving communities in the Valley are volunteers who also hold full-time jobs and often cannot get away during work hours to train at facilities in other cities, most of which are only open during the day.
The Beacon Falls project has been in limbo since 2000, when the region’s previous training facility, located on an island at the confluence of the Housatonic and Naugatuck Rivers, was shut down due to environmental concerns.
Stankye and other supporters were encouraged last fall, when Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ned Lamont came to Derby and pledged to support the center. “This part of the state has long been neglected,” Lamont said at a campaign stop in Derby, as reported by the Hearst Connecticut Media. "You’ve got to set priorities. These are priorities. We bond a lot of things that have nothing to do with public safety, things like operating expenses. ... Fire training is public safety.”
After the election, Lamont told House Republican Leader Themis Klarides the state’s fiscal challenges have caused him to reassess which projects merit state bond funds. He has embarked on a so-called debt diet that dramatically scales back state borrowing.
"Unfortunately our fiscal challenges, which you have consistently acknowledged, require us to reexamine our prioritization of bond funds,'' Lamont, who chairs the State Bond Commission and sets its agenda, wrote to Klarides. “At this time we are unable to support this new project.''
Officials in the Valley blasted the governor’s turnaround. “This is not sitting well with people in this part of the state,” Klarides said. “The word ‘politician’ has gotten a very bad reputation in recent years. The one thing people cannot tolerate is when you say one thing and do anything.”
Rep. Kara Rochelle, a Democratic freshman from Derby, also expressed disappointment.
 “The Valley Fire School is an issue of deep importance, and a project long overdue its bonding,” she said. “Since taking office I have spent hundreds of hours coordinating efforts ... [and] will continue to work tirelessly through proper legislative channels in my efforts to advance this project.”
Rochelle noted that she has a personal connection to the project.
“I grew up in a fire family, I know intimately what volunteer firefighters do on calls, and how hard they work to maintain proper fire service and ensure public safety," she said. "It is a way of life that is selfless and it is a family. I will continue to fight for the fire school, our firefighters and the public’s safety at every turn, as a faithful and diligent daughter of the fire service.”

 

CT Construction Digest Tuesday June 25, 2019

Summer tolls vote may be difficult for Lamont
Emilie Munson
Gov. Ned Lamont has a short window to close a tolls deal with lawmakers before summer vacations push a vote into the fall as he faces increasing calls from top Democrat leaders to find a transportation funding plan that will win Republican votes, making a deal even harder to clinch.
Don’t expect a vote on tolls until mid-July or — barring that — September, House Majority Leader Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said Monday.
Legislative leaders are not expected to meet with Lamont to negotiate transportation funding legislation until after the July 4 holiday, Ritter said. Lawmakers’ planned vacations will bar a House vote on tolls in August, he added.
Lamont told reporters in Milford on Monday he’s not sure when a special session to pass tolls-enabling legislation will occur. Meanwhile, several House Democrats privately told Hearst Connecticut Media they don’t expect to cast a tolls vote until September at the earliest.

Lamont’s latest pitch for tolls, including an income tax reduction to offset the cost of tolls on Connecticut residents, is likely to need revisions before it sees the floor of the House and Senate.

Like Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, Ritter would like to craft legislation that will get some bipartisan support, he said Monday. That will be a challenge because Republicans have loudly and universally promised to oppose tolls in Connecticut.
“Our goal is to get Republicans too,” Ritter said. “I think that the business community and a lot major employers in our state have been very clear that transportation is a major issue in our state, so I don’t see how any legislative leader can say no or walk away… If you are not part of the conversation and we don’t do something very positive about transportation infrastructure in the future, the business community will be very upset and will be very harsh on those in the future.”
Looney, a New Haven Democrat, called for a “bipartisan approach” last week, adding that such a plan would probably include fewer tolls and more bonding.
“I’m looking at any compromise that works, but the numbers have to add up,” said Lamont Monday.
Ritter predicted that the working draft of tolls legislation Lamont released in late May would not win Republican votes. That plan included no more than 50 toll gantries on interstates 95, 91, 84 and the Merritt Parkway. Connecticut drivers, receiving resident and commuter discounts, would pay 4.4 cents per mile at on-peak times and 3.5 cents per mile off peak. Low-income drivers would get additional savings.

But Ritter believes some moderate Republicans could vote in favor of tolls if an income tax reduction meant an overall savings for the average Connecticut driver and taxpayer, he said.

If tolls are implemented, Lamont suggested last week dropping the income tax rate on an individual’s first $10,000 and joint filers’ first $20,000 of income from 3 to 2 percent. That change would give individuals making between $25,000 and $101,500 a savings of $90 and joint filers savings of $180.
“Maybe the reductions that have been proposed so far are not substantial enough,” Ritter said. “Some may want to go a little further. We’ll have that conversation.”
The income tax cut suggested by Lamont would mean $100 million less heading into state coffers. Ritter acknowledged some House Democrats might push back against removing that money — or more — from the General Fund to use on state spending for education, health care, pensions and other government expenses.
Lamont has called tolls a “tough vote” for Democrats and even promised to help House Democratic lawmakers fundraise, if they vote yes.
Lamont acknowledged Monday that inertia around tolls may grow worse over time, even if Democrats are not worried about their 2020 re-election chances with President Donald Trump seeking another term in 2020. He directed his comment at Democratic lawmakers.
“If you’re not willing to vote for it now when you’ve just been elected - as you point out Trump is at the top of the ticket in a couple years - you’re never going to be willing to make a tough choice,” Lamont said. “Now’s the time for you to make the choice.”
Lamont said he will hold another meeting with top Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate in the next few weeks. He will also discuss his tolling plan with some rank-and-file lawmakers, he said.
“We are briefing them on the fact that the special transportation fund is going to be bankrupt in a few years unless we do something serious,” said Lamont.

Major construction projects underway, set to begin at Waterbury schools
MICHAEL GAGNE
WATERBURY — Work to prepare the former St. Joseph School building on John Street to welcome Wendell Cross Elementary School students in the coming school year is well underway.
On Monday, city public works employees could be seen pushing piles of dirt in the parking lot on the property, preparing it for repaving.
Meanwhile, work will soon begin at four city school buildings — Hopeville, Kingsbury, Chase and Sprague elementary schools — all of which will be getting elevators installed.
The city is leasing St. Joseph School as swing space for when the Wendell Cross Elementary School project, expanding it to a grades pre-K-through-eight building, is fully underway. That work is expected to begin by October.
Waterbury Public Schools Chief Operating Officer William Clark on Monday said he’s confident the St. Joseph property will be ready for students and staff.
“We’re moving along there quite well, no question we’ll have that ready for swing space,” Clark said, adding a lot of the classroom work in the main building is already completed. “We just got a bid back for some paving in back for the parking lot area, and to install some drainage and a retaining wall.”
Clark said that work in the parking lot will allow for a play area at the school. “All that is moving along. We will be pushing our attention to the convent area, get that ready for the kindergarten classrooms and the library media support center,” he said.
“Our crews have been doing a great job over there,” Clark said. “We’re doing a lot of the work in house.”
The expected cost to partially demolish, renovate and expand Wendell Cross is currently $46.2 million. The state has committed $36.3 million to reimburse the city toward the project, provided it begins by this October.
The elevator installation projects are expected to cost around $3.2 million, with the city expected to receive a nearly 79% reimbursement toward the overall cost.
Work will begin on the elevator projects once a contract with J.A. Rosa Construction, LLC, the firm selected to to the work, is signed, Clark said.
According to J.A. Rosa’s website, the company has offices both in Wolcott and New Milford.
All but one of the elevators — Sprague — will be installed as an external addition.
Kingsbury’s project is expected to be the most costly of the four, as the projected $873,000 project covers not only the cost of installing the elevator to the building’s rear, but also the cost of installing a handicapped-accessible ramp and a curb cut, providing improved access from the roadway.
Officials are looking to add elevators to two more buildings: Bunker Hill and Washington elementary schools. An application with the State Department of Administrative Services, which administers school construction grant, is still pending approval. Officials expect those projects may be underway by the 2020-2021 school year.
Board of Education Vice President Karen E. Harvey is optimistic about the improved accessibility the projects will bring to each building, in particular Hopeville, where she noted the board had stopped convening meetings due to accessibility issues.
“I am ecstatic that we’re going forward with these projects,” Harvey said, adding she hopes the district will address accessibility issues in other school buildings.
Accessibility isn’t be the only challenge officials are seeking to address.
Clark said there are other projects, including replacing the roof at Rotella Interdistrict Magnet School, as being on the district’s list of capital improvement projects. There are some projects, including security and technology upgrades in several school buildings, that Clark expects to also move on this summer.

Lamont widening outreach on tolls to rank-and-file lawmakers
PAUL HUGHES
MILFORD — Gov. Ned Lamont is planning on reaching out to rank-and-file state legislators to make a case for highway tolls while continuing his dialogue with General Assembly leaders.
Lamont was no closer Monday to setting a date for a special session for a vote on a tolling bill, and he also had no firm date for a follow-up meeting with Democratic and Republican leaders after last Wednesday’s initial gathering.
The challenge for Lamont and toll supporters remains assembling House and Senate majorities to authorize the development of an electronic highway tolling system.
Passage will require 76 votes in the House, and another 19 votes in the Senate, or 18 votes, plus the tie-breaking vote of Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz. Also, Republicans have been steadfastly opposed to tolls, so it will likely require all-Democratic majorities.
Lamont told reporters Monday that the governor’s office is now widening its outreach effort to rank-and-file representatives and senators
“We are talking individual legislators. We are briefing them on the fact that the Special Transportation Fund is going to be bankrupt in a couple of years unless we do something serious. We’re going to be laying out the options for them,” he said.
Lamont and top aides laid out various funding scenarios for Democratic and Republican leaders last week that all showed the transportation fund heading toward financial crisis in the near future.
The legislature’s budget office has estimated the transportation fund will operate in the black through the 2024 fiscal year. The unsigned two-year, $43.4 billion budget bill anticipates slight balances of $13.1 million in the 2020 fiscal year and $15 million in the 2021 fiscal year. The Office of Fiscal Analysis also projected balances of $110.2 million in 2022, $135 million in 2023, and $83.4 million in 2024.
Sen. Kevin D. Witkos, R-Canton, said he remains doubtful Lamont and Democratic leaders can round up the votes to authorize highway tolls. He joined Lamont at a ceremonial bill signing Monday at Tribus Beer Co. in Milford.
Republican opposition is unlikely to lessen, and Democratic leaders have proven unable to get enough Democratic votes to pass tolls up to this point, said Witkos, the second-ranking Republican leader of the Senate.
He predicted tolls will be a dead issue if Lamont fails to win legislative authorization before the end of 2019 because 2020 is an election year.
“I want them to vote for it because it is the right thing to do. It gets this state growing again, and nobody has a very credible alternative,” Lamont said. “If you’re not willing to vote for it now when you have just been elected, you’re never going to be willing make the tough choice. Now is the time to be making the choice.”
Witkos said he believes so many legislators remain reluctant to back tolls because they continue to question if the transportation fund’s finances will be as dire as now being portrayed.
He said there is also hesitancy because the legislature would not be approving a final plan. Instead, legislators would be authorizing the state Department of Transportation to negotiate a tolling agreement with the Federal Highway Administration.
Witkos said he questions how legislators can commit themselves without having all the details laid out, or a guarantee of a final vote on a federally-approved plan.

CT Construction Digest Monday June 24, 2019

Dan Haar: Coaxing a Senate leader on tolls
 A play in one scene:
A dark night inside the domed Capitol building of a struggling state on the first weekend of summer. Most legislators are long gone with the spring session over. Two men cross paths in the shadows.
NED: Senator? Is that you? Shouldn’t you be home plotting the next Medicaid expansion?
MARTY: Hello, Governor. I was just polishing up my comments for next week’s ceremony.
NED: Ceremony?
MARTY: You know, when you sign paid family and medical leave into law. Took us three years to get it through, a triumph for working people. It’s a great social insurance program that brings us in line with other forward-looking states. What keeps you here so late?
NED: Tolls, Senator Looney, tolls. We have no other way to fix our roads and bridges to get this state moving again. I just spent the week laying out all the facts — how the numbers can’t add up to the $1.2 billion a year we need, even with the car sales tax and more borrowing. Bridge tolls don’t add up either.

MARTY: So what do you want from me?

NED: I want a vote on tolls in the Senate, Marty. Joe A-to-Z has the support lined up in the House. We need you to take action. People are wondering why we haven’t called a special session. They’re starting to believe Fasano that we can’t pass it.
MARTY: I don’t know, Gov. I’m just not sure we have the numbers.
NED: Let’s go through this one more time. Hartley is a no for sure, Kushner campaigned against it. Mae Flexer is a no but maybe the unions can bring her around. Maroney is in a tough spot and so is Needleman. But we have the lieutenant governor for a tie-break so we need just one of those five. Come on, Marty. You know you have this.
MARTY: Yeah, okay, but I’m worried, Ned. We’re getting so much done. A $15 minimum wage. Fully funded agencies. Protection for immigrants. Ethan’s law. Time’s Up on sexual assault. Police accountability. Health care for 4,000 more poor parents. Now, paid leave. Why risk all this progress by making senators take an unpopular vote? Some who will vote for it don’t even like tolls. Now they’ll take a fall in 2020.
NED: Been meaning to talk with you about paid leave, Marty. It sure is a pretty bill.
MARTY: Senate Bill Number 1. Our highest priority.

NED: It would be a shame if something happened to it. You know, like, if a legal glitch fell on it and I couldn’t sign the bill. I’d hate to see that.

MARTY: Governor Lamont! You wouldn’t.

NED: Hey, don’t get me wrong, I like paid leave. Even campaigned on it. Everyone pays one-half of 1 percent of their income up to the Social Security threshold - what is that, about $140,000? How can people live on that? Anyway, it should help attract young people to the state.
MARTY: That’s $132,900, governor. Yeah, I can’t believe the Republicans think it’s just another tax on hard-working families. And Haar, usually on our side, said in a column we should delay it until the state is back on solid ground. Doesn’t he see all the good it would do?
NED: I know you have your heart set on it. And speaking of tolls, did you see I sweetened the deal with a $100 million income tax cut for the working class? If I were smart, I’d up that to at least $250 million by throwing in some property tax credits for homeowners. Could even target the credits at poor cities, Senator. Like, I don’t know, New Haven?
MARTY: Oh Governor, I never knew you cared.
NED: I care, Marty, I care a lot. You really delivered for me in November and I want to sign that paid family leave bill - maybe right there in your district. That would show up Brennan at CBIA for coming down against tolls, defying half his members. But I need that vote, Senator. Let’s get it done in the summer. No one will even notice - just like the primaries last year.
MARTY: Listen, Ned. You know I’m with you, but a lot of taxpayers say they can’t trust state government. We passed that lock-box referendum in November and seven months later, we yank $58 million of the car sales tax from the transportation fund. Now we’re seeing reports our DOT spends way more per mile on road reconstruction than just about any other state. Seven billion dollars for the Waterbury Mixmaster, really?
NED: That’s just not true. Just Thursday, Joey G. at the DOT told editorial writers that report in Reason about wild spending was ‘inherently flawed.’ He said, ‘When we actually do an orange-to-orange comparison, there is no difference.’ Then Giulietti said the author of the report is about to come out with a revision.
MARTY: We certainly need to straighten that out with the public.
NED: What we certainly need is that tolls vote. Stop worrying. Trump on the ballot in ‘20 means your Senate Dems could run naked along I-95 carrying Nader signs and still win re-election. That leaves you in charge until you’re what, almost 75 in ’23? I could be a one-termer like Weicker but that’s okay.
MARTY: It’s a $500 million tax hike, Ned.
NED: With $300 million from out-of-state drivers and interstate trucks. Don’t make me keep talking about interstate trucks. Way, way cheaper than borrowing.
MARTY: Hard to refute when you put it that way. Can we keep all the gantries out of cities? I don’t want to see any clogged local roads. And tell Lehman at DECD to knock it off with expanding Tweed, okay? That’s the only thing Fasano and I agree on.
NED: We’ll see. Just get it done - for SB 1.
MARTY: Thanks for not mentioning it to Pelosi at the dinner. You know she loves tolls as much as legalized pot.
NED: Speaking of that, how about you and I head up to Northamption? Elliott tells me the Ghost Train Haze is kickass. Too bad you couldn’t get that bill through.
MARTY: That was the House, governor, not us. Talk to Joe.

Construction Work on I-91 in Rocky Hill Expected to Start Monday VIDEO

The state Department of Transportation is expected to begin construction work on Elm Street in Rocky Hill Monday.

Crews were supposed to start replacing two bridges on the street that runs over Interstate 91 last week but postponed it until after the Travelers Championship.

The work is expected to last through late August.

BRIDGE BUILDERS: Men who constructed Pell Bridge tell their stories
Derek Gomes   

Dangerous conditions and good pay were just part of the thrill. As the 50th anniversary of the bridge’s opening approaches on June 28, eight men talk about their role in building one of the state’s iconic structures.

“This is the one business you start at the top and work your way down,” Conrad Johnson said about constructing the Pell Bridge. “You’re required to get up in the air. ... There was an adrenaline to it. It’s self-satisfying.”
Fifty years since motorists first crossed under its twin high-arching towers, the Pell Bridge remains an architectural marvel. The longest suspension bridge in New England forever changed the City-by-the-Sea, making it easier for islanders to get to the rest of the state and visitors, for better or worse, to get here.
Depictions of the bridge seem to be everywhere — from the back of the state quarter, to the background of driver’s licenses. It has captured the imaginations of Rhode Islanders — Newporters in particular — like few other structures.
For the countless people who helped build the bridge, the structure is more than an object of fascination; it is a marker in their lives. Workers from across Rhode Island and beyond converged on Newport day after day to raise the structure from the depths of Narragansett Bay’s East Passage.   
Assigned to the project were professional construction workers and summer-job seekers alike. The promise of long work weeks and lucrative overtime was incentive enough for many.
From the beginning of 1966 through the spring of 1969, different contractors completed the bridge — from driving the piles that formed its foundation, to assembling the pieces of the superstructure and putting them in place high above the water. Workers like Newport resident Patrick Hayes gathered near Long Wharf to connect pieces of steel and transport them on barges to the construction site.
Asked if the scene there resembled that of a factory assembly line, he said it was more chaotic. Workers had to have their heads on a swivel. They were stationed a few dozen feet atop pieces of steel, while cranes were swinging materials to and fro nearby.  
The Newport Daily News spoke with eight men, who ranged in age from recent high-school graduates to their early 30s when they worked on the bridge, about what stood out to them from that experience on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the bridge’s opening, on June 28. For some, it was a career milestone; for others it was an aberration, a detour before they found their true calling. For all of them, the experience gave them a sense of ownership or pride that they played a role, however small, in building that iconic structure.
Like son, like father
Jerry Candelmo downplayed his contributions to building the bridge. He was only on site for a month or two, after all, before he was deployed to Vietnam with his National Guard unit, the 103rd Field Artillery Regiment.        
If it weren’t for his father’s role, Candelmo likely would not have agreed to sit down with a reporter in the first place. After owning a tiling business, Anthony Candelmo took a job on one of the tugboats that ferried workers to and from the bridge site. His inexperience did not deter the powers that be from hiring him as a deckhand responsible for cooking meals.
“They were looking for men — they were looking for bodies, let’s put it that way,” Jerry Candelmo said. ”‘Do you think your dad would be interested in doing it?’” he remembered being asked. “So I asked him, ‘Dad, would you like to go down there? It’s a good-paying job.’ He always loved the water. So he went and he stayed there until they took that tug out of there — and the tug stayed until almost the end.”  When his father died many years ago, Jerry Candelmo’s brother gave him a token of their father’s work on the bridge: a photo of Anthony Candelmo on the tugboat, with the hulking superstructure of the bridge looming above. The bridge project marked the beginning and end of Anthony Candelmo’s construction career. He went on to manage a parking lot on Empire Street in Providence. For his son, his service during the Vietnam War disrupted what would ultimately be a 45-year construction career.
“When I first started working, I used to ride with this man, an operator, and we were working in Fall River just as you go over the Braga Bridge,” he said. “And we’d be going along and I’d be in his pickup truck and he’d say to me, ‘Jerry, you see that building right there? I put that one up. See that one? I put that one up.’ And I thought, ‘Oh my God, this man has worked on so many projects.’”
Thirty-five years later, the roles were reversed, with Candelmo pointing out to a younger co-worker all the buildings marked with his fingerprints.
“All the men who have worked on these projects,” he said, “they have done it with great pride.”
A new paint job for Dad’s ride
It was the summer of ’69. Officials soon would be commemorating the completion of the Newport Bridge with a dedication ceremony.

Vincent Marseglia, who’d just completed his first year at the University of Rhode Island, returned to the bridge for his second summer on the job.He got permission from his father to take his Oldsmobile 88 on the commute from Cranston to Newport. All these years later, he remembers that immaculate car — its black paint job and red interior.
With the deck work completed, Marseglia parked the car on the bridge during his shifts. One day, crews were adding a fresh coat of paint to the steel, and a steady wind blew. As he walked back to the Oldsmobile 88 to head home, his stomach dropped.
“There are thousands of these little green dots on my dad’s car,” he said. “I had to get rubbing compound and compound the whole car and then wax it. After I was done, the car looked just fantastic. But I’ll never forget that. ... So I learned my lesson about parking on the bridge.”
After finishing high school in 1968, Marseglia took a summer job on the bridge doing grunt work. Stationed at the yard, where the Louis Jagschitz State Pier and Newport Shipyard are now, he was tasked with handing bolts to the professional ironworkers who were putting together pieces of the superstructure that were then transported by barge to the bridge site.
“That summer was like we worked 10 hours a day, six days a week,” he recalled. “All the overtime was double time. ... All I had time for was go to work, come home, take a shower, eat, go to bed.”
Marseglia caught the eye of the higher-ups, and by the end of that summer he was tightening bolts himself.
He got married while at URI and didn’t have enough money to pay for an extravagant honeymoon; Newport had to do. Every year, he and his wife return to the City-by-the-Sea to celebrate their anniversary. When he crosses the bridge, he thinks, “I can’t believe I did that.”
“I always tell my grandkids whenever we go over, ‘I worked on that bridge,’” he added. Their response: “Yeah, Papa, you told us that.”
Watching the pieces fall into place
The Newport Bridge project is the one that Conrad Johnson, a full-time ironworker for 38 years, will always remember.
“I think as you grow up ... you want to have some kind of accomplishment, you like to have one story that is remembered by everybody,” he said. “When you say, ‘I worked on that bridge,’ everybody knows what you’re talking about, because it’s the biggest bridge in the state.”
Being a trained paratrooper in the Army did little to ease Johnson’s concerns about being hundreds of feet above water on beams that were only several inches wide. “This is the one business you start at the top and work your way down,” he said. “You’re required to get up in the air. ... There was an adrenaline to it. It’s self-satisfying.”
He was assigned to build the lower section of the tower on the Jamestown side of the span and, after taking a break to work on another job site on Cape Cod, the upper reaches of the tower on the Newport side. The work might have been monotonous at times, but the engineering that allowed for such a colossal structure captured Johnson’s imagination. For example, workers could be bolting together pieces of steel and were instructed to leave a few holes unfilled in specific places, he explained. Only months later, in some cases, would bolts be added.
“Like I say, the engineering was phenomenal,” he said. “The pieces fall together.”
A bridge he helped build, but rarely crossed
George Akstin’s first construction job was building a biochemistry lab at Brown University. As that project was winding down, Akstin needed more work, so he went to his local union hall. The next day, he was at the bridge site.
“Probably about zero,” he said when asked what relevant skills he brought to the job. “You know, I had worked in a factory. I had worked as an auto mechanic for four or five years, which was kind of my fallback job.”
Like other novices, Akstin lugged a basket of bolts and gave them to his more experienced co-workers upon request. For the first two or three weeks, he was stationed at the yard. The next phase would test the young man’s mettle. “The tugboat dropped us off at the same place every day,” Akstin said. “There was a set of ladders to the top. The first day when we went out to the spot, I thought, ‘Holy crap, we’re up that high?’”
A motorcycle accident in 1970 cut short his fledgling construction career. For the next 33 years, eight months and one day, Akstin worked at a jewelry production plant in Attleboro. He enjoyed the work for the first 20 to 25 years before cost-cutting measures sapped the joy from the building. Akstin retired when leadership announced it was shutting down the plant.
Now living in Tacoma, Washington, he is planning to visit Rhode Island later this summer for his grandson’s 30th birthday.
He still has his E-ZPass transponder handy, though he wishes the toll wouldn’t apply to him. “You know, I didn’t drive over that bridge for years because I was like, it’s $2 to cross. No, I’ll do 10 cents on the Mount Hope Bridge. The least they could have done [for the workers] was: Here’s a free pass.”
A job worth doing right
For Ray Ferreira, doing every job right is what matters the most. The work itself was worth it.
His father emigrated from the Azores to Portsmouth, where Ferreira has spent his entire life. “Like Dad said in Portuguese, ‘Pay attention,’” Ferreira said. “And that was me. I did. That’s why I am where I am today.” He also has an innate curiosity about how and why systems function. “Everything I do I have to know everything about it, and it stays right in my mind, you know.”
Those two qualities allowed Ferreira to soak up as much information as possible about the bridge project and, on one occasion, likely saved lives.
One Friday afternoon, workers crammed into the cage that lowered them toward the water. The lift that was intended to carry eight people was packed with about 18.
“It started coming down,” Ferreira said. “It starts speeding up.”
He remembered one of the workers previously instructing him about an emergency lever that would bring the lift to a sudden halt.
“I say, ‘Hit that lever!’” he said. “He whacked it and it put the brakes on. Lives were saved.”
Ferreira started working in Newport earlier than most, helping build the causeway out to Goat Island in 1963. Once that was done, he drove piles, the foundations on which the bridge structure stands, and he went on to work for Bethlehem Steel as an ironworker. He quips that he was among the last men to walk off the job site.
“It’s one of the greatest things I’ve done,” Ferreira said. “I look at it that way. I was so happy that I did it, so happy. The grandchildren call it Papa’s Bridge. It was so gratifying.”
An invitation to ‘God’s country’
Anthony Branca was out of work in New York City with bleak employment prospects.
A friend recommended heading to Newport, the site of an ambitious bridge-construction project. Branca took an interview with Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade and Douglas, the engineering firm overseeing the project. John W. Kinney, the resident engineer, wanted to know how much experience Branca had in surveying work. Very little, he responded, barring some rudimentary combat surveying during the Korean War.
Branca got the job and reported for his first day of work on Jan. 3, 1966. His first responsibility was analyzing surveying reports used to identify the coordinates to drive the piles. At his disposal to crunch the numbers was a Monroe calculator with the four basic functions and a thin booklet of logarithms.
Asked if he ever worried about the accuracy of his coordinates, he said: “Let me tell you, I never thought about it. It wasn’t until years later that the magnitude of my responsibility really hit me. ... It was a job to do, I did the job, and that was it. Not to put too much on me. We checked, but the responsibility was on the contractor [Perini Corp.].”
Once the foundations were in place, one of Branca’s main responsibilities was PBQD’s ledgers, calculating the exact amount of materials brought to the job site for payment purposes. His bookkeeping practices drew the ire of one contractor, who took exception to Branca’s practice of rounding quantities to the third decimal point instead of the industry-standard first decimal point. Being meticulous was his calling card.
Taking the bridge job forever changed his trajectory. He and his family never left New England.
“I’m in God’s country here. I love it,” Branca recalled thinking. “My children are growing strong and healthy.” He declined an offer from PBQD to work on a project back in New York.
As the Newport Bridge project wrapped up in 1969, his family remained in Newport so his two daughters could finish the school year. Eventually, they settled in Sharon, Massachusetts, where Branca lived until two years ago, when he moved to Smithfield. For about 35 years, he worked for bonding companies that secured his services for projects in jeopardy of going unfinished. Branca credits the lessons he gleaned on the Newport project for the success he enjoyed.
“I came to the job as an engineer with not a lot of real engineering experience,” he said. “On the job, I met professional engineers — not just by name, but by attitude and by performance. And it influenced me. I think by the time I got through with the job, it taught me professionalism that I didn’t know. And professionalism is what carried me through the rest of my life.”

The best-paid summer gig?

With only one summer working on the project with no prior construction experience, Patrick Hayes takes little credit for the finished product.
Yet the lifelong Newporter takes pride in the fact he played a part in it, however inconsequential.
“There is at least one joint on that bridge that I built with my friend without any major ironworker or anybody else,” Hayes said. “I hope it doesn’t have a structural flaw,” he added as an afterthought.
Entering his senior year at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Hayes was looking to make some money that summer of 1968. And there was probably nowhere else a 20-year-old could rake in more than on the Newport Bridge.
He estimated he worked 10-hour days, seven days a week. In addition to overtime, Saturdays were time and a half, Sundays were double time and holidays triple time. “It was a very lucrative summer,” Hayes said. “I went back to college that year flush with cash, comparatively speaking. I made a lot of money for a summer job, that was for sure. But I worked, like I said, every day.”
Like other inexperienced laborers, he was assigned to the crews on the yard that put together pieces of the superstructure that were shipped out on barges.
“It was more hard work than difficult to figure out,” Hayes explained. “You carried the bolts up, you torque them up to the right [tightness] and then you test them — or you’re just feeding the stuff up to the guys who are doing the really dangerous work. You didn’t need an engineering degree to do this work, but you had to have some common sense or you’d get hit by a crane.”
That summer was his only foray into the construction industry. The following summer, the project was done and Hayes was preparing to start law school in Boston. He now specializes in estate planning and real estate law, with an office in Newport.
Tales from the bar
Sure, David Kilroy remembers working on the bridge. But what sticks with him most are the scenes that played out at Leo’s First and Last Stop on Long Wharf.
The bar was the go-to spot for the bridge workers to cash their paychecks and then blow off some steam — and their hard-earned keep.
“Sitting on a table is $200,000,” Kilroy said. “And [the man cashing the checks] had a .45-caliber pistol on the table and he had two bodyguards standing behind him. Some people walked out of that place with 10 bucks in their pocket. They blew all of the thousand bucks. It just evaporated.”
He regaled a reporter with the tale of Big Bob from Boston who broke a man’s jaw, not once, but twice in a matter of a few weeks. “The fights were crazy,” he said.
And just as quickly as people from across the country and beyond flocked to Newport for the job, they vanished once it ended. “It was surprising how fast they disappeared,” Kilroy said.
He learned about job opportunities on the bridge from a newspaper advertisement. At the time, he was working in the blood lab at Newport Hospital, making about $100 a week. PBQD was offering more than $500 a week. It was an offer Kilroy wasn’t going to turn down regardless of whether he was qualified for the job.
He filled out a questionnaire that tested his understanding of basic principles behind trigonometry and physics. “The last question was: Are you afraid of heights?” Kilroy said. “Well, of course, I said ‘No.’”
The truth was he had no idea. “I really didn’t know.”

Lamont eyes new strategy on toll issue
PAUL HUGHES
HARTFORD – Gov. Ned Lamont is just unable to sell state legislators and the public on highway tolls despite his decades of business deal making.
Nothing the former businessman has tried yet has won over a majority of House and Senate members, or changed public opinion.
“I’m ready to negotiate,” he said.
Lamont last week floated a targeted cut to the income tax to entice support. He has acknowledged he needs to do a better job of making the case for electronic highway tolls.
“I’ve tried to convince people this is the best investment we can make to get this state growing again,” he said.
This is something Lamont has been saying for months, and yet he is no closer to getting a tolling plan passed than six months ago when he took office. He is now left to try to get a vote done in a special session.
His changing positions have added to his challenge. First, he supported highway tolls for all motor vehicles, then out-of-state trucks only, and back again to tolls for passenger vehicles and trucks.

Republican leaders reported Lamont and top aides did not outline his new proposal to lower the income tax rate on the first $10,000 of taxable income from 3% to 2% during a two-hour presentation last Wednesday to the bipartisan leadership of the General Assembly.
“This is one way I think I maybe can get some folks to the table and tell the taxpayers I get it,” Lamont said later.
Not Republicans. House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, and Senate Minority Leader Leonard A. Fasano, R-North Haven, said the proposed tax cut is unlikely to attract any Republican votes for highway tolls.
Lamont, Melissa McCaw, the state budget director, and Joseph Giulietti, the state transportation commissioner, advised Democratic and Republican leaders that Connecticut risks jeopardizing federal funding because of the continuing deterioration of transportation infrastructure. Yet, they also undercut that argument.
“Now, I want to be clear. We’re not talking about that right at this moment. We’re talking about a 10-year projection based on what we are seeing coming at us,” Giulietti told reporters.
ONE OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES for Lamont is overcoming the public’s general opposition to paying more taxes, said Ron Shurin, an associate professor of political science at the University of Connecticut.
“It is a difficult case to make,” he said.
Shurin is unsure of what other arguments Lamont can make other than the ones that he has already made.
One of the chief arguments is out-of-state motorists will pay highway tolls. The governor’s office is estimating as much as 40% of toll receipts. Opponents are skeptical of that estimate.
“One of the things that people use to make the case a little easier is we are giving a free ride to people from other states driving through Connecticut, and that is an argument that has some traction, but, again, nobody likes to pay things,” Shurin said.
He said state legislators understand they are likely to face rough re-election campaigns after voting for tolls.
“It is hard to imagine a legislator getting more votes in his or her district because of their support of tolls,” Shurin said. “It is not something you win on. It is something you bite the bullet and take a chance on, and there has got to be enough Democrats because there are not going to be many Republicans who are going to be willing to take that chance.”
Patrick Sasser, organizer of the grassroots opposition group called No Tolls CT, made the same point.

 “The fact of the matter is the people of Connecticut – by a wide margin – oppose tolls, and the lawmakers who vote for them will have to answer to their constituents. Every time they drive under a gantry and have to pay another tax, they will remember who supported this legislation,” Sasser said.
NEARLY 60% OF CONNECTICUT residents opposed tolls in a poll that the Hartford Courant and Sacred Heart University released on May 30. The level of opposition was virtually unchanged from a March poll.
The last version of the tolling plan targeted Interstate 84, Interstate 91, Interstate 95, and the portions of Route 15 that comprise the Merritt and Wilbur Cross parkways. There would be 50 tolling locations between the four highways.
The plan proposed maximum toll rates of 4.4 cents per mile after discounts during peak times and 3.5 cents per mile during off peak times. It provided rates could go up or down 30% to satisfy federal requirements. Also, there were to be discounts for purchasers of a state-issued electronic pass, frequent commuters, and motorists whose household income is within 125% of the federal poverty level.

CT Schaghticoke Indian group wants recognition, land, casino
Emilie Munson

KENT — From the quiet woods cradling the Housatonic River, Chief Alan Russell is launching a monumental, long-shot effort to bring land, community, prosperity and possibly a casino to the Schaghticoke Indians, now scattered around Connecticut and the country.

Russell and 50 other members of the Schaghticoke Indian Tribe will refile its petition for federal recognition in July. That petition may kick off a years-long review process — one that is likely to lock the tribe, the state, the town of Kent and others in a high-stakes administrative and legal battle.

To succeed, the little tribe would need to overcome the certain fierce opposition of Connecticut’s political establishment that has quashed efforts like this before. If the tribe fails, it cannot try again.

“I’m just hoping I’m alive to see something,” said Russell, “Grey Fox,” chief since 1983.

The news comes at a time when Gov. Ned Lamont and Bridgeport city officials are negotiating with Connecticut’s two federally recognized tribes, the Mohegans and Mashantucket Pequots, over a gaming deal that permit the two tribes to open a Bridgeport casino. The facility, long-sought by the city, would be Connecticut’s fourth casino.

If federally acknowledged, the Schaghticoke Indian Tribe would be able to create its own laws as a sovereign nation, receive funding and services from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and operate a casino. Russell and his lawyers profess to have land claims to more than 2,000 acres in Kent, including property occupied by the private Kent School and Bulls Bridge Hydroelectric Plant.

If recognized, the Schaghticokes could fundamentally redefine a bucolic town, acrimonious state/tribe and intratribal relations, the New England gambling market and the troubled history of an indigenous people.

“The people of Northwestern Connecticut should avoid any undue fear about these claims, which have been so frivolous in the past and that have been rejected consistently by the courts,” said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who as attorney general from 1991 to 2001 opposed tribal petition efforts on behalf of the state.

“We have prevailed in the past,” he added. “I’m pretty confident the state will prevail again.”

Lamont and Attorney General William Tong said they will review the Schaghticoke petition when they see it.

Blumenthal, state officials and the town of Kent have experience fighting a tribal recognition effort. They opposed the petition of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, who split from Russell’s faction and briefly won federal recognition but had it revoked in 2005.

The Eastern Pequot Tribe, based in North Stonington, won and lost federal recognition in the early 2000s. The Golden Hill Paugussetts, a small tribe in Trumbull and Colchester, also were denied.

These tribes cannot try again because of new rules released by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in 2015 - a move that was widely praised by Connecticut politicians.

Decades of fighting

The bitter split between Russell’s Schaghticokes and those following Richard Velky, chief of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, prompted decades of feuding and violence between the sects.

The two groups do not agree when the split happened or who is the rightful Schaghticoke leader. They each accuse the other of having members who are not Schaghticoke. Police were called on numerous occasions to deal with conflicts between the groups.

Velky pursued recognition for his part of the tribe with the backing of casino backers who included Subway restaurants founder Fred DeLuca.

“I believe there is only one tribe. It is the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation,” Velky said Friday. “… All they did was copy (our petition).”

Russell’s group, the Schaghticoke Indian Tribe, had its own letter of intent to petition filed with the U.S. Department of Interior dating back to the 1980s. Russell said the Schaghticoke Indian Tribe withheld its boxes and boxes of historical and genealogical documents from the Velky clan.

Now that Velky’s petition effort has died, the Schaghticoke Indian Tribe has crafted a petition document 7,000 pages long tracing their history back to the 1700s using contemporaneous sources, said the tribe’s senior adviser, William Buchanan. The document outlines the genealogy of their members and their claims to land.

This petition was submitted to the Interior Department in 2016. The Department responded recommending technical revisions.

“The last petition filed by this group fell well short of the standards and criteria under federal law to meet the requirements for recognition,” Blumenthal said. He said the Schaghticoke Indian Tribe is a faction of Velky’s group.

The Schaghticokes re-sent the petition on March 13. On April 10, the Interior Department sent recommended changes again.

Russell, Buchanan and their lawyer, Toney Pignatiello, said this week they are cleaning up citations and references and plan to resubmit again in July. They are unsure if that one will be the final version.

“I have yet to see this petition but it would have to be radically different and offer significantly new information for federal recognition to be plausibly considered,” said Blumenthal. “I would be surprised if there was anything new in it.”

The U.S. Department of Interior will review the petition and decided whether to acknowledge the tribe. There are now 573 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and villages. Only two, the Mohegans and Mashantucket Pequots, are in Connecticut.

Fast money

To get their petition over the finish line, Buchanan said the tribe will accept investor funding to pay for legal work. He claimed he has had meetings with every major casino operator in the world.

“They’re all watching this very closely,” said Buchanan.

Russell, 73, is not interested in opening a casino on the wild 400-acres the Schaghticoke’s now have as a reservation. Born in New Haven in 1946, he’s lived on this land since he was four and half, scampering the woods, bluffs and riverbanks to hunt, fish and pick berries.

He’d prefer to use the tribe’s land claims and right to run a casino on the reservation to negotiate a deal with the state to open a gambling facility, financed by a private investor, elsewhere - perhaps Fairfield County.

But the Schaghticokes are poor, Russell said. They see casinos as fast money. Buchanan made a thinly veiled threat to the state: if Russell dies or another chief is elected after the petition is granted, a new leader might not hold the same preservationist attitude as Russell.

Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim said Thursday he’s had no recent conversations with the Schaghticokes. The governor and attorney general said the same.
Primarily, Russell hopes federal recognition can revive a scattered indigenous community. When he was a boy, the Kilsons, the Cogswells and other families lived on the reservation. But as heads of households died, the state burned and bulldozed their houses in the 1960s, preventing families from staying on the reservation, Russell and Velky agree. Russell’s own home once burned in a suspected arson, he said.
Down a long dirt road, only two small houses now sit on the reservation: Russell’s and his sister Gail’s. With the funding and lawmaking capability federal recognition would bring, Russell said he believes more Schaghticoke families would move back from places like Stratford, New Haven, Vermont and Tennessee.
“A lot of the Schaghticokes - some are well-to-do - but most of them are poor. If I can help them in any way, this is the way to do it,” Russell said.