2009 Master Transportation Plan

http://www.ct.gov/dot/lib/dot/documents/dpolicy/mtp/2009mtp.pdf

ConnDot recently released its 2009 Master Transportation Plan. Give it a read, and share your comments.

Some notes of hope for the budget

After my pessimistic take on the Governor's speech, Heidi added on the comments some notes that should make things look a bit less bleak:

Yesterday, the Governor brought David Osborne of Reinventing Government fame to speak with legislators about the need to look at what government should do, how much money we want to raise, what programs have the biggest impact and their costs, and eliminating low-impact programs. You can hear his address on CTN here.

A coalition introduced a Blueprint for Connecticut's Future that recommends strategic cuts, enhancing revenue, using the federal stimulus and the rainy day fund, and reducing tax credits. Read the Blueprint here.

The Better Choices for Connecticut coalition released its recommendations to eliminate the projected deficit through targeted increases in the income, sales, and corporate taxes, tightening up tax expenditures, and using the federal stimulus and the rainy day fund. Read more here.

The budget is bleak, fortunately there are many smart, creative people looking for solutions. Let's work together to embolden our legislative and gubernatorial leadership to be tough and act in our long-term best interest.

Obviously, the wrong thing to do

NYT: Downturn forces transit cuts as ridership grows

If there is a reason the stimulus package needs to include money for transit, is this one. It is pretty astonishing (and completely irrational) that in a context where Americans are driving less and using transit more, state and local governments are forced to cut service in order to balance their budgets. Transit makes sense, both in the short term -people are using it now- and the long term, to create a more sustainable, smart growth friendly future.

Obviously, we must go beyond keeping what we have. Places like Meriden will benefit immensely to be a 30 minute rate of both Hartford and New Haven with departures every 30 minutes, for instance. The station is right in the middle of downtown in all three places, so commuting from Meriden will be highly attractive, sending property values and economic activity to a very depressed area almost inmediately.

The infrastructure is there, the money could be there, the technology is there. It is the perfect low-cost, high-return investment.

Removing Market Barriers to Green Developmen

Removing Market Barriers to Green Development Northeast-Midwest Institute, US EPA, Delta Institute http://www.nemw.org/RemovingMarketBarriers2GreenDevReport.pdf

This report provides an overview of the market barriers to green development and outlines principles and action projects to promote widespread adoption of green development practices. 

The Governor's Speech

The governor was on TV today, telling everyone how resilient we people of Connecticut are and how the new budget to be formally introduced in Wednesday will be pretty painful. The speech was short and consequently short on details, but had three important points to pay attention to.

First, the budget will have cuts. Big cuts, for the tone of what the Governor said. That's not a surprise, considering the very dismal situation of the state budget. It is important to point out, however, that despite the usual talk about efficiency and making government smaller because "we can't afford what we have" Connecticut has a pretty average public sector. Actually considering how wealthy the state is, the problem might be that we have a regular-size state budget but a pretty dismal appetite to tax according to it.

Which brings us to the second point, the no new taxes part. Raising taxes across the board during a recession it is indeed a fairly bad idea; the problem in Connecticut, however, is that a strong cuts-only, no new taxes position could indeed mean new taxes somewhere else. This is speculation on my part, but if the state cuts the money for education or PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes; the state's way to compensate towns that host non-profits) this would just shift the burden to local governments.

This would comply with the no increase in taxes on the state side, but would just put a lot of pressure on cities and towns to either raise property taxes or cut budgets even more harshly. We already pointed out that the property tax system is actually pretty terrible; anything that increases the state reliance on this tax is a bad idea. We will get back to it when the full budget is unveiled, just to see if this is actually going to be on the proposal.

Third, we at 1000 Friends have some good, detailed proposals to get the state out of this crisis stronger and better prepared to the challenges of tomorrow, so let me insert a shameless plug to our legislative agenda. The state should try to focus its priorities on growing smart, not just on seeing what can go to the chopping block in cuts that always hurt the same people.

We've got a few cities that could use this kind of leader!

February 1, 2009

BRADDOCK JOURNAL

Rock Bottom for Decades, but Showing Signs of Life

By DAVID STREITFELD

BRADDOCK, Pa. — As Americans wonder just how horrible the economy will become, this tiny steel town offers a perverse message of hope: Things cannot possibly get any worse than they are here.

Hunched on the eastern edge of the Monongahela River only a few miles from bustling Pittsburgh, Braddock is a mix of boarded-up storefronts, houses in advanced stages of collapse and vacant lots.

The state has classified it a “distressed municipality” — bankrupt, more or less — since the Reagan administration. The tax base is gone. So are most of the residents. The population, about 18,000 after World War II, has declined to less than 3,000. Many of those who remain are unemployed. Real estate prices fell 50 percent in the last year.

“Everyone in the country is asking, ‘Where’s the bottom?’ ” said the mayor, John Fetterman. “I think we’ve found it.”

Mr. Fetterman is trying to make an asset out of his town’s lack of assets, calling it “a laboratory for solutions to all these maladies starting to knock on the door of every community.” One of his first acts after being elected mayor in 2005 was to set up, at his own expense, a Web site to publicize Braddock — if you can call pictures of buildings destroyed by neglect and vandals a form of promotion.

He has encouraged the development of urban farms on empty lots, which employ area youths and feed the community. He started a nonprofit organization to save a handful of properties.

In an earlier era, Braddock was a famed wellspring of industrial might. The steel baron Andrew Carnegie put his first mill in the town, the foundation of an empire that helped build modern America. With the loot and guilt Mr. Carnegie piled up, he also built a library here, the first of more than 1,500 Carnegie libraries in the United States.

Immigrants came to work in the mill, and through ceaseless agitation won union representation that enabled their children — helped by the library on the hill — to achieve a better life.

A local boy, Thomas Bell, celebrated this hard-won success in his autobiographical 1941 novel “Out of This Furnace.” The story recounts the strivings of three generations in Braddock’s mill and their transformation from exploited and maligned “Hunkies” from Eastern Europe into full-fledged Americans.

This year, the town will be featured in the film version of another work of art, Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Road.” Set in a post-Armageddon America where food is so scarce that many survivors turned to cannibalism, “The Road” was shot partially in Braddock.

A town whose story has evolved from building America to making Americans to eating Americans for dinner might seem a hard sell. So Mr. Fetterman, who is paid $150 a month, also promotes Braddock as a place to buy extremely cheap real estate.

Erik and Shannon Gustafson heeded that call. The couple were living in Chicago, where Mr. Gustafson was a part-time commodities trader, when they heard about Braddock last winter. They settled on a two-bedroom house whose owner warned them that it had black mold and was probably a tear-down. Her price: $4,750.

The Gustafsons paid the money and discovered that the mold problem was overstated. “Space is cheap here,” said Mr. Gustafson, 30. “We can afford to focus on our hobbies.” He is a graphic designer; she is a photographer.

Joel Rice, a furniture maker, bought a 15,000-square-foot former car dealership that he is converting to a showroom, workshop and home, with a greenhouse on the roof. The building cost $70,000, perhaps a tenth of what he would have had to pay for a tiny shop in Oregon, where he was living.

It will take at least two more years to clear the debris and put in new wiring, plumbing and fixtures. But Mr. Rice, 38, is undaunted. “If all our effort here crashes and burns,” he said, “it won’t be because we held anything back.”

Unlike many stricken steel towns, Braddock never lost its mill. Part of the U.S. Steel system, it still employs nearly a thousand workers. But they no longer live in town, and the stores followed them to the suburbs. Eventually, only the stubborn and those without resources remained.

“Even the bars and liquor stores closed,” said Ron Kutnansky, who was born in Braddock in 1953 and lived there and in North Braddock for decades.

A custodian at the University of Pittsburgh, Mr. Kutnansky finally moved out three years ago, after his home was broken into for the third time. “It’s a fairly big shame what happened to Braddock,” he said. He sold his house for a dollar, no regrets.

As Mr. Kutnansky was leaving, a political novice was starting to shake things up. Mr. Fetterman, now 39, is hard to miss, at 6-foot-8 and 325 pounds, with a shaved head and goatee. He has a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard but came to Braddock in 2001 to work for a county youth program. He won the May 2005 Democratic primary by exactly one vote. (He faced no opposition in the general election.)

The mayor wears his commitment to Braddock not on his sleeve but under it: On his right arm are tattooed five dates memorializing killings in Braddock during his time in office. The victims included a man delivering a pizza and a 2-year-old girl who was assaulted and then dropped into a snow-covered playground. She froze to death while trying to walk home.

On his other arm is a large 15104, the town’s ZIP code.

This impressed many of the younger residents. “I was shocked, because he’s not even from around here,” said Jeremy Cannon, 23.

Mr. Fetterman’s official powers are limited, partly because of Braddock’s “distressed municipality” status and partly because it is technically a borough overseen by a borough council. The council president, Jesse Brown, did not return telephone calls for an interview.

Mostly, the mayor offers encouragement, ideas and energy. With the financial help of his father, who owns a commercial insurance agency in York, Pa., he also makes direct and indirect investments in local real estate. He set up the nonprofit organization, Braddock Redux, and gave it $50,000 to buy a former Presbyterian church to serve as a community center.

Last year, Mr. Fetterman gave the organization another $12,000 — money he says he got by draining his 401(k) — to buy a duplex and another house next door. The next step was securing a grant from the Buhl Foundation in Pittsburgh to refurbish the buildings for six at-risk teenagers who, at 18, were too old for foster care. Run by two members of AmeriCorps, the group house will open this month.

“Where a lot of people would see a series of negatives — a bankrupt community with deteriorating housing, foster kids aging out of the system and confronting a lack of employment — John saw potential,” said Frederick Thieman, president of the Buhl Foundation.

One of Mr. Fetterman’s biggest coups was persuading a small alternative energy company, Fossil Free Fuel, to secure a warehouse on Braddock Avenue.

“This is a very welcoming place for a business, because it has so few,” said Fossil Free’s co-owner, David Rosenstraus.

All this is movement in the right direction, but the uninhabited buildings are still falling down. Dozens are scheduled for demolition. “If struggling communities don’t preserve their architecture,” Mr. Fetterman said, “there’s no chance of any resurgence down the line.” Sometime soon, he worries, Braddock will pass the point of no return.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Green Building Bill slated for Public Hearing

The Public Safety Committee will receive testimony the raised bill 6284 

To require the State Building Inspector and Codes and Standards Committee to revise the State Building Code to include a model energy code and green building standards for certain new construction or renovation projects. 

The hearing is scheduled for Tuesday 2/3 at 11 in Hearing Room 2C of the Legisaltive Office Building. 

General Assembly		Raised Bill No. 6284
January Session, 2009		LCO No. 2661
		*02661_______PS_*
Referred to Committee on Public Safety and Security
Introduced by:
(PS )

AN ACT CONCERNING ADOPTION OF A MODEL ENERGY CODE AND GREEN BUILDING STANDARDS.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened:

Section 1. Section 29-256a of the general statutes is repealed and the following is substituted in lieu thereof (Effective from passage):

(a) On and after [January 1, 2008] July 1, 2010, the State Building Inspector and the Codes and Standards Committee shall revise the State Building Code to [require] adopt a model energy code requiring that buildings and building elements, including residential, be designed to provide optimum cost-effective energy efficiency over the useful life of the building. Such revision shall meet or exceed the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers Standard 90.1 for new construction.

(b) Notwithstanding subsection (a) of this section, on and after July 1, 2010, the State Building Inspector and the Codes and Standards Committee, in consultation with the Commissioner of Public Safety, shall revise the State Building Code to [require that any (1) building, except a residential building with no more than four units, constructed after January 1, 2009, that is projected to cost not less than five million dollars, and (2) renovation to any building, except a residential building with no more than four units, started after January 1, 2010, that is projected to cost not less than two million dollars shall be built or renovated using] include provisions requiring certain buildings, that qualify as a new construction or a major alteration of a residential or nonresidential building, to meet or exceed building construction standards [consistent with or exceeding] concerning the thermal envelope or mechanical systems, including, but not limited to, indoor air quality and water conservation, and the lighting and electrical systems of the building. Such provisions shall reference nationally accepted green building rating systems, including, but not limited to, the [silver building rating of the] Leadership in Energy and Environmental[Design's] Design rating system, [for new commercial construction and major renovation projects, as established by the United States Green Building Council, or an equivalent standard, including, but not limited to, a two-globe rating in] the Green Globes USA design program, as established by the Green Building Initiative, the National Green Building Standard, as established by the National Association of Home Builders, or an equivalent rating system approved by the State Building Inspector and the Codes and Standards Committee. [The inspector and the committee shall provide for an exemption for any building if the Institute for Sustainable Energy finds, in a written analysis, that the cost of such compliance significantly outweighs the benefits.] Such requirements shall include a method for demonstrating compliance at the time of application for a permit or for a certificate of occupancy, including, but not limited to, private third party certification or verification of compliance with the relevant portions of such rating systems.

This act shall take effect as follows and shall amend the following sections:
Section 1	from passage	29-256a

Statement of Purpose:

To require the State Building Inspector and Codes and Standards Committee to revise the State Building Code to include a model energy code and green building standards for certain new construction or renovation projects.

[Proposed deletions are enclosed in brackets. Proposed additions are indicated by underline, except that when the entire text of a bill or resolution or a section of a bill or resolution is new, it is not underlined.]