East Lyme affordable housing complex to break ground

Mary Bierkert East Lyme — Town officials have confirmed that a developer will soon break ground on an affordable housing complex near Rocky Neck State Park.  The project, now known as Rocky Neck Village but which was originally proposed in 2013 by New London-based developers Jag Capital Drive LLC, now has all the permits it needs, Zoning Official Bill Mulholland said last week.  According to a plan submitted to the town, Georgia-based developer Harold Foley of HF3 Development Group LLC plans to build 56 apartment units, 36 of which, or 64%, will be designated as affordable housing. Town Planner Gary Goeschel said that with the addition of these units, he estimates 6% of the town’s housing stock will be designated as affordable housing. When the project originally was proposed in 2013, the Zoning Commission rejected the plan because it would be located in a light industrial zone and residents were concerned about being exposed to chemicals then being manufactured in the vicinity. After the state Appellate Court sided with the developer in 2016, Foley has said he bought the development rights to the project after JAG listed them in 2017 for $1.5 million. According to the town records, JAG still owns the property, but Foley has said he has signed a contract to purchase the property once he obtained all the necessary permits from the town. Foley estimated last year the project would cost about $20 million to construct. The project also received 25,200 gallons of daily sewage capacity from the Water & Sewer Commission last September. Foley did not respond to requests for comment on the project last week, but Mulholland said Foley has indicated that work crews will start mobilizing on the site in the next week or two.Mulholland also confirmed the project has included plans to extend a waterline to the town-owned plot of land where the future public safety building is being planned and which borders the JAG property. The town plans use the waterline to provide public safety employees with drinking water because a deed restriction on the public safety property does not allow the town to use the property’s groundwater. Questions have been raised about the restriction and whether the 650-foot-deep well is contaminated. But First Selectman Mark Nickerson has said the restriction was a "boilerplate requirement" included by previous owner Honeywell with the purchase agreement. Honeywell confirmed this earlier this year. Town Engineer Bill Scheer said earlier this year the town knows the well is not contaminated because Honeywell was required by the Department of Public Health to conduct more than 10 years of quarterly water testing until early 2019, when the building was vacated. The results never yielded unhealthy levels of contaminants, Scheer said, and the town has documentation of those results.

Eversource boss Jim Judge to face legislative hearing as lawmakers outline regulatory reforms

Mark Pazniokas, CT Mirror  With the performance of Eversource Energy suddenly a potent election-year issue, the chief executive of the publicly traded utility has agreed to testify before a state legislative committee whose leaders proposed sweeping regulatory reforms Monday. Jim Judge, the Eversource chairman and president who largely disappeared from public view after a massive power outage, will appear before the legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee, whose leaders outlined bipartisan regulatory review legislation. “My sense is that there is a better understanding of the fact that he didn’t manage a number of things well, including the P.R. side of this, where I think they really screwed up,” said Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, the committee co-chair. Eversource, which delivers electricity to most of Connecticut and large swaths of Massachusetts and New Hampshire as a regulated monopoly, struck a relatively contrite tone in confirming Judge’s willingness to testify later this month about what was a nine-day outage in some places after Tropical Storm Isaias. “While we mobilized the largest restoration effort Connecticut has seen in order to get the power back on for every customer, we understand the frustration our customers and political leaders are feeling,” said Tricia Taskey Modifica, the Eversource media relations manager. “We’ll participate in the regulatory and legislative process to ensure we understand why this storm had such a severe impact, and ultimately to figure out what can be done better.” Judge was roundly condemned for his refusal to join Gov. Ned Lamont in taking questions outside Eversource offices on Aug. 5, a day after 800,000 Eversource customers lost power after a tropical storm veered to the west, leaving most of Connecticut on the windward side of a storm that snapped branches and uprooted trees. At the same press event, the chair of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority said that Eversource badly underestimated the threat of the storm by preparing for between 125,000 and 380,000 outages. The performance of Eversource and to a lesser extent the smaller United Illuminating, which serves New Haven, Bridgeport and 15 other communities, has sparked an investigation by PURA and bipartisan calls for a deep review of how well the utilities perform and the state regulates them. Needleman and his energy co-chair, Rep. David Arconti, D-Danbury, and the panel’s two ranking Republicans, Sen. Paul Formica of East Lyme and Rep. Charles Ferraro of West Haven, outlined a “Take Back Our Grid Act,” less an actual bill than ambitious list of topics to be potentially tackled in a special session next month and the regular session in January. Among other things, the legislation would set minimum staffing levels, increase PURA’s power to impose civil penalties, making the utilities liability for damages caused by certain outages, and impose a rate freeze for two years. With new leadership at PURA and on the Energy and Technology Committee, Needleman said the opportunity exists for a fresh look at complex system. In Connecticut, where residents pay some of the highest electric rates in the U.S., the production of electricity is a largely deregulated commodity sold in a market that is competitive, but only within state-set parameters. The delivery of that electricity to homes and business is a regulated business with two major players that enjoy geographic monopolies, Eversource and UI. “I’m really committed to going back to ground zero on this,” Needleman said. “I think we really need to look at how we got here.”  The hearing was originally called to examine the factors behind an Eversource rate increase, then dramatically broadened after the blackout. “These two events have convinced us that it is time we had a serious conversation on what can be done to protect the ratepayers going forward,” Ferraro said. The part-time General Assembly consistently has proven unequal to the task of reforming the complex system. Eversource and UI are among the most influential interests at the State Capitol, and the complexity of the issue in most years has been an ally to company efforts to maintain the status quo. “We’re just outgunned. We’re outgunned and out-bought,” Needleman said. The hearing is tentatively scheduled for Aug. 27. Lawmakers would prefer to question Judge face-to-face, but a video conference in more likely, given the social-distancing precautions in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. Arconti said a special session could address limited issues involving requiring the utilities to reimburse ratepayers for the loss of food and medicine due to an outage that he says was prolonged by poor planning before the storm and communication in its aftermath. “The breakdown in communication that occurred between the utilities and their customers and the utilities and local election officials of our municipalities was completely unacceptable,” he said. Needleman is currently the first selectman of Essex and Formica once held that role in East Lyme. Both said the utilities’ failed to communicate with customers and local officials. “Let’s try to bring some relief now and take a deeper dive in next year’s legislative session, talking about things like reinventing utilities and grid modernization,” Formica said. Judge was jubilant in a message to shareholders in March about the company’s reliability and profitability, assuming them Eversource was coming off its “most successful year ever.” The Eversource trustees agreed, paying Judge a $3 million bonus that swelled his compensation for the year to $19.8 million. Shareholders didn’t object. The stock price had soared from $65.04 to $85.07, a gain of 31 percent over 12 months. And the reliability of the company’s electric distribution system was in the industry’s top 10 percent.

Hartford’s $26M Main-Park St. redevelopment to break ground

Joe Cooper Developers of a long-awaited apartment and retail community near the corner of Park and Main Streets in Hartford’s South End will begin construction on the $26-million project Tuesday morning, city officials say. Mayor Luke Bronin announced late Monday  he will join developers Spinnaker Real Estate Partners, of Norwalk, and Hartford-based Freeman Cos., and city and state leaders to break ground on the 126-unit complex at 11 a.m.  The city has eyed redeveloping the 2.3-acre site, near the historic Barnard Park, for decades because it's seen as a key gateway between the city's South End neighborhood and downtown. Upon completion in 2021, the mixed-use development will include two buildings on blighted, city-owned properties with approximately 90,000 square feet of residential space and 23,460 square feet of commercial space, officials say. Plans show the infill development featuring 18 studios, 84 one-bedroom and 24 two-bedroom units; a 9,000-square-foot rooftop lounge; and a rear surface parking lot with 125 spaces. A development agreement between the city and the developers ensures that 20% of the one- and two-bedroom units are reserved for low- to moderate-income earners.  The development will be funded by $16 million in bank financing and $8.4 million in loans from the quasi-public Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA). Other financing is expected to come from $1.6 million in equity and a deferred $900,000 developer fee. The city originally selected Hartford nonprofit CIL to lead the redevelopment project.  But the city and the developer were unable to agree on a construction timeline and other financial terms, and the city in Aug. 2018 selected Spinnaker and Freeman Cos. to take over the project after a competitive bidding process. This story is developing. Check back later for updates.

Lamont tells CT agencies to prep deep cost cuts for next budget

Keith M. Phaneuf  Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration has directed agencies to find ways to cut spending by 10% or more in the next two fiscal years as it anticipates a lengthy, coronavirus-induced, economic downturn. The administration, which will be asked to explain to the legislature’s Appropriations Committee on Monday how it already has saved hundreds of millions of dollars more than anticipated amid a pandemic, also raised the prospect of reduced aid to cities and towns. “The post-pandemic economic reality … is one where revenues may take several years to return to pre-pandemic levels,” Office of Policy and Management Secretary Melissa McCaw, Lamont’s budget director, wrote recently to agency heads. State finances are projected to run $2.5 billion in the red this fiscal year, which began July 1. But Connecticut’s emergency reserves have grown since the pandemic began, and they are expected to exceed $2.8 billion once the audit of the 2019-20 fiscal year has been completed in September. The bigger problem, according to McCaw’s office, is projected deficits topping $3 billion in each of the next two fiscal years. Lamont must propose a plan to legislators in February to balance that biennial cycle, which runs from July 2021 through June 2023. A $3 billion shortfall is equal to about 15% of annual operating costs and approaches the unprecedented $3.7 billion gap Gov. Dannel P. Malloy inherited when he balanced his first budget in 2011. Malloy and the legislature relied on more than $1.8 billion in tax hikes and a union concessions plan to cover much of that deficit. A routine part of preparing a two-year budget includes exploring options to cut services, though a 10% reduction isn’t always under consideration. Developing cost-cutting plans doesn’t mean the governor necessarily will propose them, nor that the legislature will adopt them. But McCaw directed agencies not to propose new or expanded programs, and to avoid seeking inflationary adjustments except in circumstances mandated by law.“We are entering a time of restraint in terms of what we can reasonably propose for new initiatives or expenditures,” McCaw wrote to department heads. “As a result, we will need to be flexible and creative in meeting the needs of the state.” McCaw also requested “responsible proposals for restructuring and reducing” municipal aid and Medicaid-funded programs — two areas lawmakers traditionally are reluctant to cut — though she didn’t target a cut of 10% or any other specific level. For the past two years, Comptroller Kevin P. Lembo’s office has been forecasting a major surge in state employee retirements in 2022 and 2023, and McCaw also directed agencies to find ways to capture that potential payroll savings by managing with fewer personnel. “Our budget development task therefore demands a deeper commitment to reducing costs, maximizing efficiencies, and coming up with new ideas to improve our financial situation with more predictability and stability while continuing to deliver high quality services to the state’s residents,” McCaw wrote. She is expected to appear via teleconference Monday afternoon before the legislature’s Appropriations Committee to discuss fiscal challenges facing Connecticut now and in the future, as well as the limits on how states can use federal pandemic relief. But McCaw is expected to face questions, too, about how the administration saved so much money during the last fiscal year, which ended on June 30. Lawmakers have been questioning agency heads all summer trying to understand how agencies managed to save so much money during the pandemic. The legislature tasks the Executive Branch annually with achieving savings targets through attrition or other efficiencies once the budget is in force. The savings goal for the just-completed fiscal year was $209.2 million in the General Fund, which covers about 90% of all operating costs in the overall budget. The Lamont administration estimates it saved $544.1 million, or two-and-a-half times the target. McCaw said much of that involved programs that couldn’t operate at all, or ran in reduced fashion, during the early stages of coronavirus outbreak.Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague and Rep. Toni Walker, D-New Haven, co-chairs of the Appropriations Committee, have been pressing McCaw for details for months, saying they still don’t understand how so much funding went unspent during a crisis. Walker could not be reached Friday for comment. Osten said she is concerned not only about the funds saved last fiscal year, but also about Lamont’s plans for the future, adding that Connecticut’s vulnerable populations, municipal aid, and job training programs must be protected. “We need to ensure the safety net for our residents is not shredded,” she said. “We want to make sure that we’re still able to protect our residents as they go through this very difficult economic time frame.”