Connecticut Postings

The city’s NRZs are speaking out about the number of halfway houses and group-living facilities in the city. Here is an abridged version of their release:

“From the late 70s to today our communities have become the home of a substantial number of residential programs that our neighbors would not allow in their towns such as rooming houses, half-way houses, and inmate facilities. The big homes and empty industrial sites in the historic Hollow, West and East Sides, East, West, and South Ends were perfect for residential community groups.

While it may make best sense to put these facilities throughout the region (including the suburbs) in a representative fashion it quickly became clear that putting a half way house in through suburban zoning commissions and communities was increasingly difficult since they fought anything that wasn’t consistent with what they envisioned their communities to be.

So aiming at Bridgeport minority communities where renters and absentee landlords were unresponsive and Zoning boards allowed for spot zoning became the easy answer.

Fast forward to today and you have yet another community group that wants to put an incredible 120 bed inmate half-way house in the South End across from a park for families and two blocks from a burgeoning charter school. Some suggest Bridgeport has reached its event horizon so it doesn’t matter. We disagree.

We believe Bridgeport can still recuperate and so we have decided to fight back. We believe the policy of utilizing federal and state funding for residential facilities and programs that the suburbs find undesirable and have up to now been regularly placed in Bridgeport, almost exclusively in its minority neighborhoods is unjust to all Bridgeporters, more specifically people who live in those communities.

We, and other urban communities for that matter, must send a message to the capitals in Hartford and Washington, letting them know that these policies are unhealthy to cities that are carrying the burden while suburbs resist taking on little if any responsibilities.

Of the eight regional facilities in southwestern Connecticut like the one that’s being proposed in Bridgeport six are already in Bridgeport and none in the entire Fairfield County suburbs.

We’re not making the argument that the facility isn’t necessary, or that it should be smaller and more manageable, or placed in another more affluent Bridgeport neighborhood. We’re saying – Not one more unit should be placed in Bridgeport. We’re sending a message to all policy makers that it is time our suburban neighbors step up and share the responsibility. That’s why we will speak out against the application for a 120 bed inmate facility proposed on February 28th before the Planning and Zoning Commission.”

NRZ Leadership Committee
Rev. Carl McCluster
Chairman, South End NRZ

Frank Borres
Chairman, West End NRZ

Joe Ianiello
Chairman, Black Rock NRZ

Paul Barnum
Chairman, East End NRZ

Paul Mendes
Hollow NRZ

Tom Burns
Mill Hill NRZ

Three bills in the Connecticut General Assembly could help stop the spread of bed bugs. The blog New England Bed Bug Forum gave a full run down. In summary:

- Bill No. 540 would require landlords to tell tenants if there has been a bed bug infestation in the unit in the past year.

- Bill No. 5874 would require rental furniture to be inspected and certified as bed bug proof before it is rented out.

- Bill No. 5858 would require re-manufactured mattresses to carry proof that they have been inspected for bed bugs.

There is a public hearing scheduled for the second two bills tomorrow.

Metro North ticket machines out at Fairfield train station

Les Hale, 86, mayor of Ansonia from 1967-69 and father of the city’s current police Chief Kevin Hale, died Friday night.

“We will miss his quiet kindness, wry humor and his enduring good character,” said Mayor James T. Della Volpe.

A Bridgeport man was arrested Friday after police said his 9-week-old son was hospitalized with broken ribs and a brain injury

Bassick High School’s The Pride of the Lions, a student made documentary that has already won in its category in a New York film festival last summer, has been accepted to the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France this May 2011!

Kathy Silver, the media teacher who helped direct the film, said she thought it was a joke when she got the phone call telling her the film had been invited. The school is raising about $1,200 in entry fees for the honor.  Anyone who wants to contribute should contact Bassick High, (203) 576-7350.

The film, that chronicles the plight of the school’s football and soccer teams, both which play without home fields, is also scheduled to be screened in a Las Vegas film festival in March, a Los Angeles film festival in May and a Miami festival in September.

As far as education goes, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s budget address Wednesday poses as many questions as it answered.

Housatonic Community College President Anita Gliniecki worries about the bottom line and wonders who will manage her information technology infrastructure, data collection and federal grant paperwork requirements if the community college system is merged with the Connecticut State University System and Department of Higher Education into a new Board of Regent.

“Central office now pays for a lot of services that I don’t have to pay for,” said Gliniecki. “Is it all going to flow back to me?”

It looks like higher education as a whole is being cut by about 10 percent by the Malloy budget.

The plan to push the 16 technical high schools from state to local control, has Bridgeport Schools Superintendent John Ramos wanting to know more. The community college system serves about 10,500 students and costs the state $159 million dollars a year. The plan is to shift four of those schools a year into the control of their local districts or regional service centers. A pecking order has yet to be determined, nor any indication local control will allow rules of those schools to change. One of those schools is Bullard Havens Technical High School in Bridgeport. Ramos said he knows some city students would prefer a technical high school training but do not meet the state entrance criteria. Could a city run Bullard Haven’s change that criteria?

“The idea has possibilities, I suspect.  I will keep an open mind about it and look forward to the details,” Ramos said.

A third concept that needs further clarification is Malloy’s call for reform of the teacher tenure rules to give local school districts flexibility in keeping teachers they want, namely new teachers over veteran ones.

In a statement released by John Yrchik, director of the Connecticut Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union, Malloy won kudos for acknowledging some teachers have already have “stepped up to the plate” in making salary concessions in contract negotiations. But he said the governor’s reference to changes in the Fair Dismissal Law – ie tenure laws — were unclear.  “CEA is waiting to see specific proposed language when it is released from the governor’s office probably later this week,” Yrchik said.

We just heard about a possible kidnapping on the Bridgeport police scanner, so while our night cops reporter tried to get the information I called Elaine Ficarra, Mayor Bill Finch’s communications director, to ask when the city’s new public safety information officer will begin.

Ficarra tells me Tim Quinn — who was recently appointed to the position by Police Chief Joseph Gaudett at an annual salary of $69,909 — started last week. Huh? So, when were they planning to tell us…the press?

Ficarra was then kind enough to pass along Quinn’s city cell phone number. When our cops reporter called Quinn, however, he was polite but told her he couldn’t start for another two days because he didn’t have a desk phone yet. Umm…huh?