New Haven Independent

Posted by: egg on your face | January 2, 2010 1:45 AM

The first was on friday. What happen on thursday?I think evan james jackie put you up (sugar honey ice tea)creek.

Posted by: Disgusted voter | January 2, 2010 6:14 AM

Trust? Why should I trust this man? "Trust" equals higher taxes, fancy schools that cannot produce results and poltical cronyism at its worst. King John was here when I moved to NH and he'll still be here when I move out (this year). I'm voting for "change" with my feet.

Posted by: angelo reyes | January 2, 2010 4:41 PM

DISGUSTED VOTER I HAVE A FEELING THAT ANYWHERE YOU GO THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SOMETHING NEGATIVE TO SAY SO PLEASE DONT LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT.

Posted by: Bill Hosley | January 2, 2010 4:52 PM

The key to Connecticut's future is healing its wounded cities. The key to that is restoring Democracy which requires competition and at least a two (if not 3) party-system. New Haven has neither and has become a liberal ghetto that depends on suburbs who have a hard time trusting or loving a polis where it has neither representation (given that the State (= burbs) pays a substantial share of the cost of the city's budget, may not be a bad idea) or another way of being heard.

Nine terms would hardly make sense for a statesman. Mayor DeStefano really needs to do something else before long.

How about directing the New Haven Museum? He loves NH history, knows New Haven inside and out and might have the connections and ability to make something of a remarkable treasure that could be the essence of the New Haven experience and a pathway to a stronger civic sphere.

What do they say ? "suffering breeds character, character breed faith, faith will not disappoint" - I am sure he is qualified.

Make change!

Posted by: Norton Street | January 2, 2010 6:47 PM

Bill,
Can you elaborate on how New Haven is dependent on suburbs?
It seems to me that the suburbs are dependent on cities; they send their homeless to cities, the don't provide their share of affordable housing, they use city services without paying city taxes, they clog up city roads with their vehicles, they receive their paychecks within the city but spend most of all or it in other places, etc. If anything, the amount that cities get from the state in PILOT is far too little. If Connecticut continues to keep its out-dated system of small municipalities then the state should pay much more to the cities. I am in favor of adopting a regional approach to governance that would put an emphasis on rejuvenating our urban centers and reusing/reorganizing the sprawling suburban trash-scape that has ruined much of this states woodland and farmland. Suburbia is bankrupting this country; the amount of subsidizing it takes to support, continue, maintain, and sustain suburbia through massively expensive highways, new roads with power lines, sewers, and basic infrastructure needed for these low density garbage plots dwarfs the amount spent on subsidizing poor people in urban areas.
Although I agree there should be many different political views represented, I'd say 3 at a minimum and 5 substantially represented views would be better.

Posted by: Fix This Mess | January 3, 2010 1:03 AM

If we get a Dem governor we should finally see some sort of property tax reform. PTL. I can't believe the cities are asked to limp along with only the revenues raised by property tax, with so much of the property exempt. We desperately need to reform this archaic, unfair tax which is crippling New Haven and restore a county-like regional approach. Besides this reform, let cities institute their own sales tax or other revenue generators. Btw, the state should bring back the tolls on each of our borders, using the e-z pay technology to minimize disruption to traffic flow and start recouping funds needed for our infrastructure. And will some news outlet please start covering the state legislature. No one knows who their state reps or state sens are or what they do. Yet the Hartford folks have all the money. When they get into a jam they just reduce aid to the cities, or cut back on pilot payments. The state reps and state sens have the best jobs around - they have all the money and no one is watching them or even knows who they are.

Posted by: Rep. Pat Dillon | January 3, 2010 4:49 PM

Bill, you made a divisive, inflammatory statement. It doesn't help any of us to go down this road. But just in case someone reads your comment and is persuaded by it, it demands a response.

"a liberal ghetto that depends on suburbs"
How exactly is that, Bill? At minimum we are all interdependent. But I'm not even sure of that.
Look at the top 10-20% of wage earners, and most board members, of New Haven institutions - where do they live? The shoreline, Woodbridge, Orange, Bethany. Those people make decisions that can determine our fate. How much "say" do we have in what they decide?

City employees in bargaining units take home salaries, benefits, pensions, and live in ring towns and suburbs too.

You'd be on firmer ground arguing that "the suburbs" - whatever you mean by that - are dependent on New Haven for jobs. And those jobs are increasingly in organizations that pay no property tax, so New Haven property owners are subsidizing those jobs at steep cost. The state does pay something to the city in PILOT - too little - but that is spread across taxpayers statewide and not directly from your "suburbs."

New Haven, like most cities, is also a service center for the homeless and needy from area towns.

As for "liberal ghetto" - if you are claiming suburbs are superior to cities perhaps you should avoid the word "ghetto."

Posted by: To Pat Dillon | January 3, 2010 11:33 PM

Rep. Pat Dillon would make better use of her time and voice if she were to condemn the corruption in New Haven and the waste of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds. Did Dillon condemn what DeStefano did to the New Haven firefighters, which will cost the city millions? Does Dillon condemn the declaration of New Haven as a sanctuary for illegal aliens? Does Dillon condemn all the big jury verdicts against misbehaving city officials? The shady deals that went down with LCI and the missing money? Other shady "contracts" and of course, the enormous expense of urban race politics. There is a reason why people in the suburbs earn more, Ms. Dillon - they got tired of the crime and corruption of the cities (almost always run by liberal democrats) and opted to live in towns where they can better control how their hard-earned money is spent and more closely supervise government.

Posted by: Booger McIrish | January 4, 2010 6:05 AM

New Haven. LOL.

Posted by: Suburb fan | January 4, 2010 9:12 AM

To "TO PAT DILLON",

Right On! Yes! We suburbanites EARN our money and believe in government accountability! And I am pretty sure that all the folks who work in New Haven government and public services actually LIVE in the city, right? No one who has ever been involved in corruption in New Haven lives in the suburbs because suburbanites would never do such things, and after all we know how well suburbanites manage their own government.

And if you don't believe THAT MS. Dillon and all of you city-dwellers, just look at our exemplary Madison police force, or how we arrested the mayor of East Haven for, well, being the mayor; or look how we have just run out of cash in West Haven, or look how we rewarded the teacher union in Branford when our kids aren't learning as much; And whats wrong with a few "friendly" kisses by the new school boss in Milford? (He isn't as bad as the last one we sent packing with a LARGE cash settlement.)

So Rep. Dillon, we would appreciate that you hold your comments to yourself until after you visit the suburbs and see just how well-managed governments run!

Posted by: Norton Street | January 4, 2010 11:55 AM

Talking about suburbs and cities without historical context is fairly useless.
Suburbs are a direct result of industrial cities. The cramped, dirty and generally awful tenements of worker housing in the 18th and 19th centuries in industrial cities needed a solution. One idea was to create trolley lines that would carry workers from their houses to the workplaces. This way people could live in more spacious conditions while not breaking their backs to get to work. This was enacted beginning in the later 19th century and was continued through until the early to mid 20th century. This mutated pretty quickly, however, with the introduction of the affordable T-Model automobile. Suburbs began being designed around personal automobile use, which is where the windy streets come from. This has been the model for a large portion of the last century. Examples of older suburbs that were designed around trolley lines are Beaver Hills, lower Westville, Edgewood, and parts of the east side of the city. Examples of automobile suburbs are upper Westville, Woodbridge, Orange, North Haven, etc. The difference is obvious-the older suburbs are filled with a gridded series of tree lined streets with gracious sidewalks and beautiful house of varying styles, sizes, densities, materiality and price, while the newer suburbs rarely have adequate sidewalks or ordered street trees, or good architecture that is unique.
Well, we no longer have a manufacturing economy and we no longer have industrial cities, so what purpose do suburbs provide?
Suburbs were being built quickly by developers because the federal government subsidized large projects and they subsidized working class families looking to move out of cities. Suburban communities quickly and easily sold. After this era ended in the 60s, developers began spending less and less money on the actual communities and more money on marketing, which convinced entire generations to buy inferior homes based on meaningless rhetoric like "lots of space", "safe neighborhood", "good community", etc. Marketing also relied heavily on advertising and focus on emotional exploitation of nature, even though these new developments were built over farmland and forests. Beginning in the late 60s, cities were becoming increasingly dysfunctional and crime plagued. Jobs were going over seas and to the suburbs and old city housing was becoming populated with increasingly poor and undereducated minorities who came a decade or two late for manufacturing jobs, which had gone to India and China. Suburbs now mainly served as a place to get away from new urban problems that actually stemmed from the increased investment in suburbanism over urbanism. The more people invested in suburbs, the worse cities got, and so more people invested in suburbs, which just got really out of hand quickly.
Crime in urban places peaked in the late 80s and early 90s, and will most likely not return to those levels anytime soon. Crime is increasing in suburban communities and has been for a few decades. As a result of that, the newest suburbs are being built outside of inner-ring suburbs and are extremely low-density. The income segregation is enormous in this country.
We should really begin to think about the choices we've made about where we invest our time, money and residency, because the current model simply does not work in the long-term.

Posted by: City Hall Watch | January 5, 2010 9:52 AM

The mayor's speech was fine until he inserted Scripture, lifting a verse out of context to try and create some higher meaning. He overlooked the last two verses in doing so which talks about the results of slovenly husbanding of resources and responsibilities. As for trust, the mayor shouldn't use big words he doesn't understand.

Posted by: City Hall Watch | January 5, 2010 12:40 PM

Just for clarity:

Proverbs 24:26
"An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips."

Proverbs 24:29
"Do not say, "I'll do to him as he has done to me; I'll pay that man back for what he did."

Proverbs 24:30-34
"I went past the field of the sluggard,
past the vineyard of the man who lacks judgment;

31 thorns had come up everywhere,
the ground was covered with weeds,
and the stone wall was in ruins.

32 I applied my heart to what I observed
and learned a lesson from what I saw:

33 A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest-

34 and poverty will come on you like a bandit
and scarcity like an armed man. "

Thus sayeth the Lord, Amen.