Stamford mayor wants $10M to repair roads. What else is in his capital budget?

Veronica Del Valle  STAMFORD — Mayor David Martin has pitched a $53.1 million capital budget to leaders of the city’s Board of Representatives and Board of Finance. Just over a month ago, the planning board recommended its own vision for projects in the city, but priorities have since shifted.

“There’s been some evolution with regard to (the capital) budget since the planning board made its presentation,” Martin told the Advocate the day before his presentation to the boards.

The city’s capital budget goes hand-in-hand with its operating budget, which Martin also presented to the boards Tuesday.

The heart of the budget remains unchanged, despite the almost $9 million increase from the planning board’s recommendation. The bulk of improvements involve updates to Stamford’s schools and infrastructure, namely roads and new business management software for the city.

Since the planning board formally approved its budget recommendation for the mayor’s office, additional project requests have come in that increased the capital budget total. Martin’s budget added in a $620,000 allocation for widening lanes at Strawberry Hill Road and Fifth Street, a project he expects will break ground over the summer.

Throughout the budget, Martin leaned into infrastructure changes.

Whereas the planning board recommended $4 million in funds for street patching projects, Martin gave a whopping $10 million. In effect, street patching became the second-biggest project, behind new computer software for city employees.

On top of the $10 million for street patching and resurfacing efforts, smaller road-related received little boosts throughout, like an additional $50,000 for guard rails on roads and bridges and an extra $50,000 for tree pit remediation near sidewalks.

So far, the capital budget has kept with one of the planning board’s biggest recBy far, Stamford’s heftiest line item is an ERP system implementation. The $12 million effort overhauls the software used for day-to-day operations like financials and regulatory compliance. Mayor David Martin admitted that Stamford’s software is “wholly behind” the standard for other municipalities.

Another $10 million will go to roadway quality updates, an effort that has gained momentum in the last year. Over 40 sections of road have been repaved in Stamford in the last year, according to the project request from road maintenance supervisor Thomas Turk.

Even with this massive project, Martin says the city still needs several years of road repaving to eliminate its massive backlog of streetscapes.

“I think that in the next year, two years, if we can maintain the amount of spending that we're doing on the road paving, we'll begin to see the quality of roads improve,” he said. “I'm right trying to catch up still.”

Combined, those two projects encompass just over 41 percent of Martin’s proposed capital budget.

Other major items include:

$5.3 million for major bridge replacements

$1.9 million in renovations to the Government Center

$1.5 million to replace city vehicles across five departments

In previous years, entities like the Ferguson Library, Stamford Museum and Nature Center, and the Bartlett Arboretum got the short end of the stick. Outside agencies saw just under $400,000 in the 2020-21 capital budget.

These non-city groups bear a “disproportionate burden of deferred capital projects,” the planning board told Martin in its recommendation letter. Especially after a pandemic year marked by less fundraising and, in some cases, more visitors, the board decided to turn the tide.

Only one outside agency — the residential care facility Scofield Manor — saw project funding cut in Martin’s proposed budget. In fact, both the Bartlett Arboretum and the Stamford Museum saw new allocations that exceeded what they requested initially.

Jay Fountain, who leads Stamford’s Office of Policy and Management, said this is because allocations from the city often help non-profits leverage other funds. A capital budget line item could beget other grants or more private contributions from donors.

This happened with the Bartlett Arboretum.

While the North Stamford greenscape asked for $185,000 from the city in 2020, alternative funding sources trickled in after the planning board released its budget. Early March brought with it a $175,000 state grant for the arboretum's proposed pavilion, and the organization leveraged $85,000 in private contributions.

While the line item’s total ultimately went up, city bonds on that project went down.

All in all, the city brought in more than $1 million in state grants for the mayor’s capital budget.

But even with line items allocated money on the budget, city management analyst Anthony Romano said the road to receiving those funds remains long. Millions of dollars worth of projects are financed through city bonds, something he and Fountain disburse during the summer.

The $10 million for roads doesn’t necessarily mean the money will materialize immediately.

To Fountain, the capital budget works like a pipeline of projects to come, more than anything else.

“Just because $10 million was approved for streets, doesn’t mean it’s automatically there,” Romano said. “We still have to raise the cash.”

New Milford awards affordable housing plan development to East Hartford company

Currie Engel NEW MILFORD — The town announced Friday morning that they have awarded the contract for the development of an affordable housing plan to Goman + York Property Advisors.

The company, based in East Hartford, will be in charge of creating and presenting a plan for the town, which they’ll be working on for the next several months.

New Milford has been moving forward to develop a plan with the hopes of increasing the town’s affordable housing from its current share of roughly 4.7 percent.

The state has encouraged municipalities to hit a 10 percent share in stock of affordable housing.

Now, Gorman + York will be in charge of planning a demographics and future housing needs evaluation in New Milford so that the town can determine the best strategy to expand their affordable housing options.

With over half of New Milford renters demarcated as “cost-burdened,” the town is hoping to eventually provide affordable workforce housing, housing for older residents looking to downsize, and attract young families and new residents to the town.

Already, 400 condo units have been pre-approved for construction but have not yet been built.

The town is aiming to have a plan in place by Aug. 1.

Dan Haar: 2020 job losses were deeper than we thought, but signs are hopeful

Dan Haar  Connecticut’s slog to regain jobs lost in the coronavirus recession grew deeper but with hopeful signs Friday as new calculations showed the state’s economy lost 122,500 jobs in 2020, not 102,700 as had been reported.

The unemployment rate in May and June, after the state-ordered shutdown of many businesses, was also higher than previously estimated. It peaked at 11.4 percent in those two months, the new report from the state Department of Labor shows. Earlier figures showed a peak of 10.2 percent in July.

What matters now, of course, is where we’re headed. The picture, always mixed, is more hopeful than usual as three big forces come together: The gargantuan federal stimulus; the vaccinations and reopening of travel, sports and entertainment; and in Connecticut, a possible trend in which people are moving here in greater numbers.

“The labor market is well-positioned to recover once the vaccine is widely distributed,” Kurt Westby, commissioner of the state Department of Labor, said in a written release.

After a March-April collapse of a stunning 292,000 jobs, including 90,000 in leisure and hospitality alone, Connecticut saw a recovery of tens of thousands of jobs each month for five months. Then the economy hit a brick wall as the virus re-emerged in October.

Friday’s revisions to the 2020 jobs and unemployment picture don’t change that basic pattern but they show a slightly less robust recovery in those summer months. The labor department reported that the state had recovered 167,000 of the lost jobs as of January, down from preliminary, monthly reports that had estimated 183,000 were recovered through December.

Now, data points to businesses looking to hire, with several thousand jobs posted. And the average number of first-time unemployment claims has fallen steadily since July, from 11,000 to less than half that number.

“Clearly, the pandemic has impacted people’s ability to travel and to take advantage of entertainment, and even has caused some folks to delay their elective medical procedures,” Patrick Flaherty, acting research director at the state Department of Labor, in an interview, citing just a few examples of an enforced recession that has hit all sectors. “So there is pent up demand that will lead to economic growth once people are comfortable.”

A labor shortage coming up?

That growth could be dramatic. And it would need to be in order for Connecticut to get back on track. To put the pandemic losses in perspective, the state lost about 120,000 jobs in the Great Recession of 2008-09, and did not fully recover all of them before the pandemic hit.

One reason for the shortfall: Before the pandemic, the unemployment rate was so low — under 4 percent — that employers couldn’t find people to fill jobs.

“On the demand side, conditions are right for very, very strong growth,” Flaherty said Friday. “We may end up having a labor supply shortage again.”

For now, with the number of people collecting unemployment just over 200,000 and the officially reported unemployment rate at 8.1 percent in January, that seems remote. By contrast, the U.S. unemployment rate stood at 6.2 percent in February, with Connecticut due to report February numbers later this month.

And, the labor department reported Friday, the state’s economy has lost 7,000 jobs over the last three months after six straight months of gains. That three-month decline raises an old specter in Connecticut, which has kept the economy flat for the better part of a quarter-century: Engines of job growth remain scarce, the cost of living remains high and Connecticut lacks a large, magnet city to attract young college graduates.

That last issue — the state’s attractiveness — is hard to pin down these days.

We believe, though it’s not clear, that the pandemic made Connecticut a more desirable place to be for many residents of New York City and other places. And the crisis may have slowed the number of state residents heading for the exits, a figure that has averaged about 20,000 people a year, as more people work from home, at jobs located elsewhere.

“It’s way too early to know how the pandemic is going to affect migration,” Flaherty said.

What we know is this: next Friday, March 19, marks the first significant easing of restrictions since October, ordered by Gov. Ned Lamont. And the vaccines are expected to be available for anyone who wants them by late spring.

Moreover, that $1.9 trillion federal stimulus that President Joe Biden signed on Thursday will bring more than $12 billion to Connecticut, directly and indirectly, including $1,400 checks to most taxpayers and massive child tax credits in the form of cash. It will wipe out city and state budget shortfalls, eliminating the need for cuts in government services or tax increases and jump-starting an ailing construction sector.

Getting the numbers right

The revisions announced Friday are part of an annual look-back on the second Friday of every March. Monthly surveys of about 500 households to determine unemployment rates, and about 5,000 employers to determine job totals, are updated with actual payroll data.

The upward change in the unemployment rates of 2020 was expected on Friday, as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles the monthly reports, had previously announced that some people were classified incorrectly in the confusion of the pandemic — when unemployment benefits went to people who were not necessarily looking for work.

As for the revision in the number of jobs, the prior year’s reports have been found to be too rosy for the last seven years in the March revisions. Sometimes the downgrades have been dramatic and by comparison, Flaherty said, this past year’s reports were relatively accurate even though the end result was off by 20,000 jobs.

“We know how difficult it was for many companies to accurately reply to the survey last year,” Flaherty said.

The department reported January figures on Friday, which show a total of 1,570,700 jobs in the state, down 127,300 from January, 2020.

Looking at sectors of the economy is pointless from month to month, as the numbers can be ridiculously inaccurate. Year-over-year, all sectors lost jobs.

The biggest loser, of course, was leisure and hospitality, which includes restaurants — down 39,000, or 25 percent, January-to-January.

The good news: That sector as of January had recovered 51,000 jobs since it bottomed out with a loss of 90,000 positions last May, well over half the entire sector in Connecticut.

Recent approval of CT’s largest solar project revives old tensions

Luther Turmelle  Large-scale solar power generation is once again a hot issue in Hartford, after the Connecticut Siting Council recently approved a solar project in East Windsor that, when completed, will become the biggest installation in the state.

The Gravel Pit Solar will sit on 485 acres of land that includes former sand and gravel pits and tobacco fields, according to Meaghan Wims, a spokeswoman for D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments, the New York-based company behind the project. The project was approved on March 1.

Construction of the solar farm, which is adjacent to a landfill, industrial buildings, other gravel pits and two smaller solar projects, is expected to start as early as next summer, Wims said, with solar panel installations likely to begin in spring 2022. Gravel Pit Solar will begin producing 120 megawatts of power in late 2022.

Gravel Pit Solar has power-purchase agreements with United Illuminating and Eversource Energy, which will buy 20 megawatts of the total amount of electricity the plant will produce, according to Wims.

The project was also selected by Rhode Island officials for renewable energy generation, she said, and has utilities under contract to purchase 50 megawatts. Municipal light and power departments in Rhode Island and Massachusetts will buy the remaining 50 megawatts.

Still, even when it’s completed, nobody will ever mistake Connecticut for any of the states in the southwestern United States, where acres and acres of solar panels silently soak up the sun.

Depending upon who you talk to, the state is either moving ahead too fast or too slow in permitting solar projects.

“The goals that DEEP has set for commercial solar aren’t any higher than they have been over the past couple years,” said Mike Trahan, executive director of the trade group Solar Connecticut. “The state handicaps and puts handcuffs on the growth of commercial solar.”

But there is clear and persistent opposition to large solar projects. There are a half a dozen pieces of legislation before the legislative committee of Connecticut General Assembly that seek to limit the growth of large-scale solar projects in the state, according to Trahan.

State Rep. Mary Mushinky, D-Wallingford, a member of the legislature’s Environment Committee, said Connecticut lawmakers need to send a message to developers of major solar projects.

“The developer here goes where the land is flat and the price is cheap,” said Mushinsky, who is a long-time champion of the environment.

Germany, Mushinsky said, is country that gets solar right. “They have financial disincentives for developing solar on pristine land and incentives for putting panels on parking lot canopies, on buildings and in blighted urban areas,” she said. “What’s lacking here is that we don’t send out any kind of price signals at all to [developers].”

Melanie Bachman, executive director of the Connecticut Siting Council, said East Windsor officials were supportive of Gravel Pit Solar because of problems with off-road vehicles on part of the property.

“They felt that the fencing the project will have around it will put an end to that problem,” Bachman said. The Council is responsible for overseeing the siting of power facilities, transmission lines, hazardous waste facilities and other forms of infrastructure, including telecommunications sites.

When another project by D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments — the 130-acre, 100,000-panel Tobacco Valley Solar project in Simsbury, which started operating in 2019 — was proposed more than three years earlier, it was met with plenty of opposition by local residents.

The Tobacco Valley project is now producing about $600,000 a year in additional tax revenue over the full operating life of the solar array.

State Senator Norman Needleman, D-Essex, a co-chairman of the General Assembly’s Energy and Technology committee, said “there has always been a very dynamic tension between the environmental and agricultural communities over this.”

“I’m always on the fence on this,” Needleman said. “I think we should always be doing more to promote renewable energy. The problem is our [hilly] topography and woods. I’m reluctant to promote the cutting down of trees to build a solar farm.”

Mushinsky said Connecticut is a densely-populated state with little open space. “We should be very careful how we lay out things,” she said.

And in the suburbs, yards filled with solar panels can cause squabbles between neighbors. Karen Zarkades, of Cheshire, said her cousins in Massachusetts live next door to a yard full of panels. “It’s not a happy situation,” she said.

Trahan, the executive director of Solar Connecticut, said the lawmakers’ fears are short-sighted.

“Who is the state of Connecticut to tell a private landowner who they can sell their land to?” Trahan said. “For a farmer who is facing bankruptcy, why should the state stand in the way if they want to put some or all of their land on the market to a solar developer?”

More large solar projects, Trahan said, would help provide Connecticut with a more secure energy future.

“We don’t have oil like Texas or natural gas like West Virginia,” Trahan said. “This can help make us energy independent. We don’t need a [power] line from Quebec to bring hydropower to us at great expense. We can do it all here.”

Some communities, like Wallingford and Cheshire in New Haven County and Bridgeport in Fairfield County, have solar arrays on top of former landfills.

Joel Gordes, a West Hartford-based energy consultant, said having solar energy projects is important because it makes it less likely that foreign terrorists, or anyone else trying to shut down the nation’s energy sources, will be able to do so.

“I am wary of too much wind, because you have transmission line that you need in order to bring it to shore that could be tampered with,” Gordes said. “Solar can be installed in smaller amounts with arrays all over the state.”

CT Supreme Court rules New Haven has to give ex-official her job back. Will she take it?

Mary E. O'Leary  NEW HAVEN — After more than five years and losses for the city, both administrative and legal, the labor case brought by former Mayor Toni Harp is not over yet.

The state Supreme Court is the latest to weigh in, upholding Nichole Jefferson’s Board of Mediation and Arbitration award that reinstates her as chief executive at the Commission on Equal Opportunities, with back wages and benefits from August 2017. But where the case might go from here remains a question as the city seeks a comparable position and Jefferson’s legal team considers her next move.

“I’m happy with the ruling, but disappointed it took so long,” Jefferson said.

The parties have 20 days to put the ruling into effect or file a motion with the court for reconsideration. Mayor Justin Elicker said in an interview New Haven does not intend to take any such legal action.

“The city needs to and plans to abide by the court’s ruling. I have always enjoyed working with Nichole and look forward to working with her again,” Elicker said.

But the parties are far apart on what a settlement should encompass.

Elicker said he estimates Jefferson’s back wages at around $300,000. This does not include calculations of lost benefits such as health care costs and pension contributions.

Jefferson’s personal attorney, Jeff Bagwell, said, in an interview, that he wants a mediator — possibly a retired judge — “to sit with the parties and resolve this situation once and for all. There are any number of excellent retired judges that could bring the parties to a position that would resolve the matter.”

He would not comment on the possibility of a new legal filing, but added, “all options are on the table at the moment until we settle this.”

As with all cases before the Supreme Court, there was a settlement conference, which Elicker said he sought after he took office in January, something that was delayed in scheduling because of the pandemic.

The Harp administration’s last legal move, an appeal to the high court to fire Jefferson, had been filed in November 2019.

“Nichole’s final settlement offer was $2.9 million and that was something that, while we were very open to settling, was too much to be financially responsible” Elicker said.

Elicker said that is why they let the challenge at the high court proceed. “It was clear there was an impasse.”

The litigation before the Supreme Court then continued until the court’s ruling favorable to Jefferson on March 4.

Bagnell said the specifics of a settlement were supposed to remain confidential. He disagreed with the $2.9 million figure. “That was not Nichole’s number,” Bagnell said. “I’m not going to comment on the earlier negotiations.”

“The city has full authority to settle this in a global fashion,” he said.

Elicker said the city’s “interpretation of the court’s ruling is that we need to give Nichole her job or a position that is commensurate with her previous job and we are assessing that right now.”

The current equal opportunity executive director, hired by Harp, is Angel Fernandez-Chavero. His salary is listed at $101,858.

Bagnell said the investigation, started by the Harp administration in 2014, its decision to bring in the FBI, the fight over unemployment benefits and two court challenges - one at the Superior Court and then the Supreme Court “took a real emotional, physical and mental toll on Nichole.”

In addition to the court deliberations, Jefferson won the two appeals overunemployment claims and the FBI, in January 2016, a year after looking into possible improprieties, at the behest of the former administration, found no wrongdoing and dropped its investigation.

Bagnell said they had an “actuary analyze every item of loss financially that she (Jefferson) has incurred along the way. That report has been disclosed to the city. We now stand by it and it will be brought forward ... in terms of what the back pay number is now.”

Jefferson was represented over the 18 months of hearings and deliberations to the arbitration findings released in April 2018, by staff at Local 3144, Council 4 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. It’s attorneys, Kimberly Cuneo and William Gagne Jr., represented her in court.

Jefferson, however, said she hired separate counsel for the unemployment fight and the FBI investigation and cashed in her life insurance to pay for health coverage.

Cuneo’s only comment was that she and Gagne were happy with the Supreme’ Court’s ruling. New Haven’s Corporation Counsel Patricia King said the city has not heard yet from Jefferson’s legal team.

King said the employment reinstatement order by the court “will take a little time, but that is all I can say about that.” The determination that the city can offer a comparable position is on the advice of its labor relations office, she said. The back pay is a straight forward math calculation, she said.

King said they are working to resolve the issues within 20 days of the ruling.

The city, under Harp, had hired outside counsel to bring the case against Jefferson in the numerous meetings before the arbitration board, as well in the unemployment appeals and in the case Jefferson and members of her staff had filed with the state Commission on Equal Rights and Opportunities.

Former Corporation Counsel John Rose, in a partial accounting of the cost to the city as of April 2018, had said it had spent $337,207 on the unemployment issue, as well as the investigation and arbitration. The two court battles took place after that.

Jefferson, who worked for the city for two decades and was CEO’s executive director for 14 years, was put on paid leave in March 2015.

The former administration fired her five months later, charging her with ethics violations in her administration of the Construction Workshop 2, a job training program that provided a pool of workers to be tapped by contractors hired for city projects.

The city brought 11 charges against her to the arbitration panel, eight of which she won, including the two most serious — alleged threatening and bribery, thrown out for lack of evidence.

The Supreme Court addressed two of the three remaining, which the city tailored its arguments around as it pressed its case to fire her, charging that she violated its ethics code and her reinstatement violates public policy that would lead to a lack of public trust in government.

The Supreme Court, in the unanimous opinion written by Justice Christine Keller, focused on two charges.

One involved donations versus fines for contractors who did not follow the hiring rules governing city projects, while the other covered a private consultant company Jefferson had established.

The court said the arbitrators found that the city had authorized Jefferson to solicit donations for the CWI 2 training program from the companies she oversaw and allowed her to perform consultant work for one of them, Gilbane, Inc, in New York.

“Thus the city is hardly blameless in this matter. Indeed, it is evident that the city’s own policies and decision making at critical junctures created for Jefferson an ethical tight-rope that could only end in the ethical lapses and errors of judgment of which the city now complains,” the court wrote.

On the acceptance of donations in lieu of fines leveled for failing to follow the hiring rules, a deputy corporation counsel issued a memorandum stating that “in the absence of specific (legal) authority” arranging for these charitable contributions “could expose the commission, the city … to civil claims and potential criminal charges of bribery or solicitation of bribery … notwithstanding their lack of criminal intent,” the court wrote.

Jefferson had gotten general approval from the Board of Alders to accept charitable donations to CWI 2 and they were reported to the board, the court wrote that the arbitrators found. The arbitration panel determined the issue of donations and donations in lieu of fines were two separate issues, the court wrote.

The Supreme Court, in its narrow review of the case, accepts the fact-finding of the arbitration panel, but it did question the argument.

“Because CWI 2 was itself a city program operated by the commission, and because the memoranda merely allowed the contractors to donate to CWI 2 directly in lieu of paying fines into the commission’s general fund, it is difficult to discern the basis for the city’s contention that the memoranda exposed the city and commission staff to ‘potential criminal charges for bribery and solicitation of bribery,’” the court wrote.

Jefferson, after receiving permission from the city to do consultant work with contractors in New York, formed a private company, Career Compliance Placement, LLC. She testified that she incorporated it in Connecticut because she thought she had to do so as a resident here.

The city said she did not have permission to do this and it could lead to the appearance of impropriety and a conflict of interest. The arbitration panel determined that there was no evidence she did consultant work in Connecticut or intended to hide the company, which was a matter of public record.

The high court said, after reviewing the record, it agreed with the arbitration panel that “Jefferson’s acts, though serious, were not so egregious that an award reinstating her employment but making her whole (in 2017,) essentially docking her two years pay, could not vindicate the public process issues at stake and send a powerful message to other municipal employees and the public at large that similar conduct will not be tolerated.”

The court said the city failed to cite a single Connecticut case or from any other jurisdiction that would justify termination as the “sole acceptable punishment for similar conduct.”

Keller, in the ruling, also cited Jefferson’s employment record over two decades with the city, noting numerous awards and citations, as well as promotions and positive performance evaluations.

Massive Mystic project flouts sensible development

Jim Furlong  The Day on March 1 ran a guest commentary signed by all nine Groton town councilors arguing that the town “needs” a planned major residential redevelopment on bluffs overlooking the Mystic River. Many townspeople beg to differ.

Mystic River Bluffs, as the mega project is called, is the offering of Long Island developer Jeff Respler, whose website has featured mostly modular housing.

Respler’s 60-plus acre “live-work-play” creation would be anchored by 931 residential units and supplemented by shops and offices.

How big is 931 units? It’s 2.7 times the number of units in The Ledges, an expansive and imposing 339-unit apartment at 79 Drosdyk Drive, Groton. The 931 Respler units, if occupied, would likely bring in 2,000 residents, most with cars.

Planners today recognize that a community benefits far more by bringing mixed-use development into already developed areas in downtown settings than by sprawling out into undeveloped areas. However, the Respler proposal would bring heavy density to a quiet and semi-rural area.

It’s the 1950s-style downtown Groton that needs redevelopment.

The Respler complex would be built on land occupied by the abandoned Mystic Oral School for the Deaf. It ultimately would be sold to Respler Homes LLC, the now “exclusive developer,” in accordance with stipulations of the State’s Purchase and Sale Agreement with the company.

The Oral School (the name refers to lip reading) was founded in 1869. The state acquired it in 1921 and declared it surplus land in 2011. It’s also known as the Mystic Educational Center.

The Town Council’s commentary shows high expectations. The council believes MRB would become the town’s third largest taxpayer by attracting newly hired Electric Boat workers and bringing in current EB employees and others who work in Groton but live elsewhere. Other hoped-for opportunities are rehabilitation of Oral School structures to provide offices, a community swimming pool and a theater. Some 37 acres of green space would be retained by the state.

It’s hard to blame the council for being attracted by this vision, but serious questions of reality are being raised. One big one is whether Respler can afford to repair existing key structures, for example the recreational Pratt Building. Planning & Zoning Commission members have assigned low value to what they term mere “old buildings” that are questionable candidates for repair. Can the Respler-promised community swimming pool survive?

Below are specific areas of serious concern.

Size

The currently quiet neighborhoods surrounding MRB are semi-rural and rich in open space. Many residents and other lovers of the area see the Respler plan as a push toward shocking urbanization, incompatible with Mystic. Words like “behemoth” and “seismic” are used to describe the size of the project and the influx of people it would attract.

As one resident said, “Right now, I have wildlife. If this goes through, I’ll have night life.”

Would final approval of this giant — by local standards— inspire copycat mega developments elsewhere in Mystic?

Floating Zone

Respler’s plan would require a “floating zone.” This would replace existing rules with permissive zoning that allows the developer considerable freedom. At present, the developer would be allowed to incorporate 48 acres of land into the floating zone. This is the land Respler is slated ultimately to buy from the state for a dollar. In addition, he has purchased privately an abutting 16-plus acres, which he hopes to incorporate into the floating zone. In fact, the language of the Development Agreement between Groton and Respler encourages such acquisitions. It states: “The developer shall have the right to, at its sole discretion, acquire additional properties, including but not limited to properties abutting the (original) Property, to include in the project.”

If taken literally, this language would allow Respler to buy all of Mystic, with only the Planning & Zoning Commission to stop it. The P&Z commission, rather than the Town Council, has the veto. At present, it appears that Respler intends to build a new access street for the complex — routed through the 16 acres— with new houses. The only question — how many houses — depends on whether they’ll be incorporated into the floating zone or not. The P&Z appears to be leaning against incorporation.

Transparency

The selection of Respler as preferred builder was announced to the public Nov. 7, 2019. Names of other bidders responding to the town’s Request for Proposals were not released. Nor, later, was the Development Agreement, signed Feb. 4, 2020. It was left to a resident to file a Freedom of Information Act application and to shake loose, in January 2021, important documents and reveal them to the rightly aggrieved Planning and Zoning Commission.

Financing

The planned use of Tax increment financing (TIF ) would involve the town in helping finance construction. It would give the Respler group a financial incentive to promote tax-generating commercial development all along the hills above the Mystic River.

There’s a struggle in store.

Jim Furlong is a semi-retired journalist and a long-time conservationist. He lives in Mystic.

Carroll Road Bridge removal proposed

Todd Babbitt, first selectman, announced that the town of Griswold is contemplating a project to remove the Carroll Road Bridge over Pachaug River.  

The bridge replacement/rehabilitation project would receive federal funds under the Federal Local Bridge Program administered by the Connecticut Department of Transportation.  

If undertaken, the project design would be expected to begin in early 2021, with construction likely in 2023.  

Babbitt pointed out that local and state policy encourages early information to citizens on such projects and encourages people to raise any concerns with municipal officials early in the planning process. Persons wanting additional information should call Babbitt at 860-376-7060.  

The cost of the bridge replacement/rehabilitation would receive 80% reimbursement from federal aid, with the remaining 20% paid from municipal funds.  

The federal aid for the project was authorized under the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act administered by the Federal Highway Administration and the Connecticut Department of Transportation.