The Danbury Police Department and the Danbury Public Schools were shocked and saddened by the recent passing of Police Officer Robert Dinardo.

Over the next several days Officer Dinardo’s family, the police department, the public schools, as well as the community at large will mourn the passing of one of our favorite sons.

I knew Officer Robert Dinardo, we had been friendly for years. I admired Bob’s athletic prowess, his dedication to sports, and his passion for athletics.

But most of all I admired his commitment to the children of our city through the DARE program, through coaching, and through his work as a community resource officer at Broadview Middle School.

The City of Danbury has hundreds of workers that serve the residents of Danbury in a variety of capacities. Bob Dinardo was one of our best employees. Upbeat, positive, always a friendly smile, or a pat on the back.  He loved to work and it showed. Bob never, ever, missed work.

Over the next several days people who were close to Bob will share their thoughts and remembrances of his life. They will tell us of a life well lived,  a life that made a profound difference in the lives of thousands of children. A proud family man with a beautiful family, a dedicated hard working professional.

In short, they will tell us of the indelible mark that Officer Dinardo has made on all who knew him.

The thoughts and prayers of the entire city are with his family.

May God hold Robert Dinardo in his warm and loving arms.

From time to time I will be turning over this blog to someone in the community, a department head, or a community activist to share their thoughts about Danbury, or to discuss future projects or plans for our city.

Todays guest is Andrea Gartner, Director of CityCenter Danbury.

Andrea, the floor is yours:

Thanks Mayor!

Danbury has always been a place about community and nowhere can the community celebrate better than downtown. At CityCenter, we are working hard to create our downtown as a destination for arts, culture, entertainment, and more.

And it’s working!

This month, the Connecticut Film Festival from June 2-7 brought in a flurry of activity and thousands of attendees and filmmakers and while data is not yet complete, expectations are that the 4500 number of participants from last year will be exceeded. On May 25th, Memorial Day saw throngs of people lining the streets of downtown with police stating it was the largest attendance in years. In February, the Chili Winter Warm-Up in partnership with the Westerners Baseball Team and the Danbury Arena brought in over 650 attendees! CityCenter Danbury is on the map in a way it hasn’t been for decades.

My staff and I welcome the challenge of continued growth even in these uncertain economic times and we feel now, more than ever, that CityCenter Danbury is an important place for the residents of our community to visit and enjoy. Our programming is interesting and affordable – with many events family-friendly and free to the public. Through our varied calendar of events, we are bringing people to our great city.

Encouragement and support from the community has helped to give us the resources to heighten our visibility and take initiatives to a new level in downtown Danbury. Asked to serve on the Mayor’s Task Force for Downtown’s Redevelopment Plan, I’ve been engaged in discussions on the future plan for downtown. CityCenter recently participated in a grant proposal to the CT Historic Trust for a feasibility study on the Palace Theater. We are receiving more calls of interest from people curious about downtown. CityCenter’s elevated profile has gotten the ball rolling: we have reached out to city officials, property owners, business sponsors, non-profit organizations, civic groups, university students and administration, local artists and musicians to broaden the discussion about the importance and necessity of creating a vibrant downtown life and how to do get there.

And the dialogue continues to expand. As the metropolitan area for the Housatonic Valley, we want to know what does the community want its city to deliver? It’s not just up to CityCenter Danbury property owners or the City of Danbury to reshape the region’s downtown. What do the residents of the Greater Danbury area want to see in their city? Come visit us this summer for our free Concerts on the Green Summer Series every Friday and Saturday night beginning July 10th. Try one of new restaurants in town. Share your thoughts with the Mayor’s Main Street Redevelopment Task Force. Explore the diversity which truly makes Danbury an interesting city to visit and a great place to live….and let us know what you think! As always, your comments are welcome………. andreagartner@citycenterdanbury.com

Dear Congress,

Your most important task-  job one, is the economy.

With the exception of national security, everything else must wait.

We are losing jobs and people are losing their homes at a rate not seen since the Great Depression.

You and President Obama have acted with great expediency in response to the Great Recession by passing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).  ARRA and the 700 billion dollars in funding allocated for its implementation was created to stimulate our economy by investing in infrastructure and getting “shovel ready” projects moving at the state, county, and municipal level.

There is just one problem, almost 6 months later, we are still waiting for the money with no sign of it showing up anytime soon .

In fact, the distribution of funds has been so slow that in Danbury we will miss the summer construction season. No paving, no housing, no new jobs created at a time when we need it the most.

While the infrastructure money represents a fraction of the stimulus funds, it is the most important to create jobs and sustain jobs. It is the most stimulative of the stimulus program. It is the one area that you should have funded the most and should have funded first.

The problem?

The enemy of all good governmental intentions, bureaucracy.

Most of the money is tied up with redundant paperwork, arcane rules, and reporting requirements that require a PhD to fill out.

In other cases the State of Ct. is taking an “admin fee” out of our stimulus dollars to tell us how to spend it on projects that we designed to begin with. For example, a one million dollar grant for  replacement bridge may mean that Danbury will only receive nine hundred thousand dollars.

The balance is pocketed by the state.

I know you didn’t intend for it to be this way.

There is a way to turn this mess around. Scrap the infrastructure side of ARRA now. Expand CDBG (Community Development Block Grant), a tried and true system to distribute infrastructure dollars and adjust the rules for spending so that the money is flexible in a community.

Get rid of the “shovel ready” requirement since it has already been 6 months and any project that wasn’t “shovel ready” in January, is probably “shovel ready” now. This will allow for diversity in projects that will hire more people. For example, many communities are opting to pave with their infrastructure money because of the “shovel ready” requirement. Good for asphalt plants, bad for carpenters, sheet metal workers, steel workers, plumbers, electricians, you get the picture.

It is not too late, you can still fix it, but, the clock is running…

For the first time that I have been alive, we will no longer have a daily paper printed in our 44 square miles.

While I know that the newspaper industry has changed and the economy has delivered a crushing blow to all print media in the country, I am sad to see the printing of our paper move to Bridgeport.

I also know that talented people like publisher David Dear and editor Art Cummings are working hard to ensure that the News-Times will remain an anchor of our community, but change is still difficult.

The paper is not going away, just evolving to compete in a new economy. It is a necessity for survival.

To understand the historical significance of this event, one must understand our local daily paper and the stories that it has shared with our community have been the focus of discussion for decades. Those stories were written in the news room on Main St., and then sent to the printing presses in the same building on Main St.

Was there ever a “Stop The Presses!” moment in the News-Times? Not sure, maybe the election of 2000? The staff would know better than I. Needless to say, its kinda hard to yell “Stop The Presses” all the way to Bridgeport.

Those moments are probably gone forever in the newspaper industry anyway.

The web, has taken over as our town crier.

So what does an excited editor say in the 21st century newsroom?

Stop the download? Stop the server? Stop the transmittal of the data? Stop the email?

It just doesn’t sound the same, there’s no drama to it. But, that’s progress and in this economy, that’s necessity.

There have been many talented people who have written for, produced, and delivered the News-Times over the years ( including me, I was one heckuva of paper boy).

James Montgomery Bailey is one of my favorites. Known as one of America’s first newsmen, he founded the Danbury News and his humorous writing was popular in the late 19th century.

In honor of the silent presses at 333 Main St., here is a short story by Mr. Bailey-enjoy.

Putting Up A Stove Pipe
by James Montgomery Bailey
(a.k.a. the “Danbury News Man”)

Putting up a stove is not so difficult in itself. It is the pipe that raises four-fifths of the mischief and all the dust. You may take down a stove with all the care in the world, and yet that pipe won’t come together again as it was before. You find this out when you are standing on a chair with your arms full of pipe, and your mouth full of soot. Your wife is standing on the floor in a position that enables her to see you, the pipe and the chair, and here she gives utterance to those remarks that are calculated to hasten a man into the extremes of insanity. Her apron is pinned over her waist, and her hands rest on her hips. She has got one of your hats on her head, and your linen coat on her back, and a pair of galoshes on her feet. There is about five cents’ worth of pot-black on her nose and a lot of flour on her chin, and altogether she is a spectacle that would inspire a dead man with distrust. And while you are up there trying to circumvent the awful contrariness of the pipe, and telling that you know some fool has been mixing it, she stands safely on the floor, and bombards you with such domestic mottoes as, “What’s the use of swearing so?” “You know no one has touched that pipe.” “You ain’t got any more patience than a child.” “Do be careful of that chair.” And then she goes off, and reappears with an armful more of pipe, and before you are aware of it she has got that pipe so horribly mixed up that it does seem no two pieces are alike.

You join the ends and work them to and fro, and to and fro again, and then you take them apart and look at them. Then you spread one out and jam the other together, and mount them once more. But it is no go. You begin to think that the pieces are inspired with life, and ache to kick them through the window. But she doesn’t lose her patience. She goes around with that awfully exasperating rigging on, with a length of pipe under each arm and a long-handled broom in her hand, and says she don’t see how it is some people never have any trouble putting up a stove. Then you miss the hammer. You don’t see it any where. You stare into the pipe, along the mantel, and down on the stove, and off to the floor. Your wife watches you, and is finally thoughtful enough to inquire what you are looking after, and, on learning, pulls the article from her pocket. Then you feel as if you could go outdoors, and swear a hole twelve feet square through a block of brick buildings; but she meekly observes: “Why on earth don’t you speak when you want any thing, and not stare around like a dummy?”

When that part of the pipe, which goes through the wall is up, she keeps it up with the broom while you are making the connection, and stares at it with an intensity that is entirely uncalled for. All the while your position is becoming more and more interesting. The pipe don’t go together, of course. The soot shakes down into your eyes and mouth, the sweat rolls down your face, and tickles your chin as it drops of, and it seems as if your arms are slowly but surely drawing out of their sockets.

Here your wife comes to the rescue by inquiring if you are going to be all day doing nothing, and if you think her arms are made of cast-iron; and then the broom slips off the pipe, and in her endeavor to recover her hold, she jabs you under the chin with the handle, and the pipe comes down on your head with its load of fried soot, and then the chair tilts forward enough to discharge your feet, and you come down on the wrong end of that chair, with a force that would bankrupt a piledriver. You don’t touch that stove again. You leave your wife examining the chair, and bemoaning its injuries; and go into the kitchen, and wash your skinned and bleeding hands with yellow soap. Then you go down the street after a specialty man to do the business, and your wife goes over to the neighbors with her chair, and tells them about its suffering from your abuse, and she drains the neighborhood dry of its sympathy long before you return.

Many people have asked me if I thought the Connecticut Film Festival was worth the state and local investment of taxpayer dollars.

It is a good question.

One that should have a public discussion.

The short answer is that I believe the festival was worth our dollar, however, it must do more for our community to have us continue to invest taxpayer dollars in the event.

As an outside observer, I was thrilled with the attendance at many of the seminars that took place in City Hall.

The people who attended the seminars were interested in the movie industry, screenwriting, or some other aspect of the business. They were there for all of the right reasons. The presenters were exceptional and were enthusiastic about their craft.

I personally fielded several calls from people coming to the festival from as far away as Los Angeles wanting information regarding entertainment and activities in Danbury.

I spoke to several hotels who indicated they had seen an upsurge in activity for the week of the festival.

All good evidence of success.

That tells me that people affiliated with the industry were here, but the festival was lacking in fans to attend some of the films (I attended Saturday nights screening at the Palace of “The children of invention”- nice crowd 80-100 people).

The fan attendance at the films was not as strong as last year. That is just an observation, I don’t have any actual attendance numbers.

Over the next several weeks we will begin calculating numbers of attendees as well as spin off of economic investment in our community.

Later, I will meet with the organizers of the festival, Wayne Shepperd who has been serving as our Director of Economic Development, and City Center stakeholders to discuss the future of the festival.

I believe that the Connecticut Film Festival has tremendous potential for Danbury.

Like any major undertaking, it needs to continue to improve to have our city continue its partnership.