Angel Carrion wanted to celebrate his nineteenth birthday – July 2 – with his family.

After that, he would turn himself in his alleged role in shooting three people on Shultas Place in Hartford’s south end April 23.

At least that's what a former Echoes From the Streets writer told me about Carrion. She called one night, sounding pretty serious.

"I can't talk about it on the phone," she said. We met at Sully's. She pulled me to a remote part of the Tiki Bar, and spun a tale I found too fantastic to believe.

"He's not armed and dangerous like they said on tv," she said. She flashed a cell phone photo of him – 5-8, 207 – trying on a too-small blue dress, smiling for the camera.

"He wants to go outside, but he can't," she said. If he went out during the day, he feared the cops might get him. At night, he was afraid that the posse he was beefing with wanted to kill him.

"I brought him lunch today," my friend said. "He wants to turn himself in, but he's scared there's a hit out on him in jail. And he can't afford the $30,000 retainer lawyers want."

His May 9 arrest warrant carried a $1 million preset bond.

"Could you help us?" she asked.

Link...

Officer Jim Barrett is a good cop, as close to a beat cop as Hartford's Asylum Hill neighborhood will ever get.

Technically, he is our Community Service Officer, going to neighborhood meetings, handing out his cell phone number and listening to our concerns. But one can easily find him on the streets, too.

The last time I attended an Asylum Hill NRZ meeting, I saw Barrett give a crime report. The gritty portrait he painted differed from the rosy picture pitched by the higher-ups in the Mayor’s Office, the Superintendent of Schools and the Hartford Police Department.

I’m sure he took some heat about this, and he didn’t deserve to. That night, before the meeting, I managed to ask him a few questions about his two tours of duty in Iraq with the Connecticut Army National Guard’s 1048th Light Truck division.

Grant Barrett his reticence because the stakes that his statements about Iraq could be misconstrued are much higher. Upsetting Chief Daryl Roberts and Mayor Eddie Perez is one thing, pissing off Gen. David Petreus and George W. Bush is another.

Barrett says he remains neutral about his service in Iraq.

“I don’t have an opinion about the war,” Barrett said. “I don’t follow the politics of it. I care about my soldiers and the mission and I want them to be safe. My concern is bringing my guys back home safe. I do what I have to do.”

Read more of the Adventures of Officer Jim Barrett ...

If city leaders wanted a realistic attempt at charter reform for November's ballot, when we would have enough voters to reach a quorum, now would have been the time to consider proposals.

Of course, the proposals major democratic reforms are too tricky for our democracy, so instant runoff voting (IRV) or publicly financed municipal elections are off the table.

Even more pedestrian measures like expanding the size of City Council cannot gain an audience with the powers that be.

If Mayor Perez took seriously democracy and people power, he would push the city to expand city council, and assign councilors to district representation. Councilman Ken Kennedy has suggested something similar, but his ideas unfortunately have been ignored.

Suppose we made those districts the same as the NRZs, and made the city councilors the paid heads of the NRZs. Understanding that only 13 NRZs service the 18 recognized neighborhoods in Hartford, suppose we created a few new NRZs to deal with those areas, and perhaps, we added a few at large members of council.

New Haven and Waterbury, both cities smaller than Hartford, have respectively 29 and 15 people serving on their Boards of Aldermen. Perhaps if we expanded the legislative scope of Council, the elected officials could better serve neighborhood concerns.

Most importantly, it could counteract the hoard of executive power in the Mayor's Office. Essentially, City Councilors would not only deal with the decisions of city governance, but their offices could become paid organizing centers for building neighborhoods.

An analogy would be community policing, but community governing, and creating centers of political gravity on the streets, not just Main Street. As important, the city would create a farm system of political talent to serve in the legislature, the mayor's office, and other elective seats.

Link to comments from Matt Ritter and Bernie Michel...

Sometimes, the universe blesses us with access into foreign worlds we normally can't see.

For example, when you google "Mayor Eddie Perez" - my website - the40yearplan.com - is one of the top ten hits. And it seems that people mistake my content critical of Perez for that of the Mayor’s own site.

At first, I though some jokester, trying to have a good laugh, sent me various e-mails from the “Contact Us” page of my site, pulling my leg about my page being the Mayor’s.

I mean, after Jon Lender this month broke the hidden story from a few years back about lawyer Maureen Duggan’s “anonimus” whistleblower parking attendant letter to state ethics chair attorney Rosemary Guiliano about Alan Plofsky at the Ethics Commission, I don’t put anything by anyone.

Link...

Luis Cotto, City Councilor extraordinaire, checks in with this post from the Hartford Democratic Town Committee Meeting last night. He calls it "As the World Turns, Hartford Style." I only ask, is our democracy really this pathetic?

5th District {drumroll} - by a margin of 8 votes to 5, Abe Giles won the nomination for the upcoming elections. He gave a somewhat forgettable speech but the memorable moment came when madam deputy speaker rose and said “Everyone get ready to pull up your sleeves…I’m not planning on giving up my seat.” The battle has begun. Sources told me that her fall from grace was inevitable when she backed I. Charles Matthews for city Mayor against El Alcalde this past year. This is soooooo Hartford. Let’s wait til one of our elected officials gets a position of leadership where Hartford can just maybe be best served and then kick them out.

More from IONHartford...

If neighborhood revitalization zones have no power as Asylum HILL NRZ chair Bernie Michel claims, then why would State Representative Art Feltman have submitted a bill to strip an NRZ's power to comment on housing projects for persons with developmental disabilities?

Feltman’s House Bill No. 5637, An Act Concerning Local Review of Community Residences in Multi-Family Buildings, died on the vine. Nor will it likely be resurrected next year because Feltman is retiring from public service.

But the raging storm that Hartford 2000 and its member NRZs kicked up in response to Feltman's proposal reveals that Feltman seems to have reacted poorly to problems he had in dealing with NRZs, and that H2K and the NRZs got bent out of shape for no reason.

In short, they all acted with the requisite human folly required of players on the political scene in Hartford.

Link...

Good governance is good balance. Politicians, bureaucrats, and citizens all make trade-offs, both under the table and overtly.

So on balance, Ed Vargas is a good candidate for First Senate District in Hartford.  He speaks of policy, particularly education, with rare fluency. Vargas’ flaws go down a lot smoother than do those of his opponent, his one-time ally, Sen. John Fonfara.

First time I met Vargas a decade ago, I was a Hartford newbie reporting for the Advocate. I encountered Vargas at the head of the teachers’ union picket line behind 10 Prospect Avenue, leading a protest about an aspect of society’s general disrespect for education.

When I met him Tuesday morning May 6 at First and Last Bakery and Café on Maple Avenue for an egg sandwich and a cup of coffee, he’s a new incarnation of himself.

His deep voice still exudes a gravely confidence. He's shaved his beard. And he's retired from teaching. He's cut back the time he puts into the union. He is focusing his energy on the campaign.

Link...

Editor's Note: This column ran in print in March, 2006, and I am just getting around to posting it now. Luckily (or not, depending on your point of view), the city moves slowly, and the foreclosing precedings on the house are still in process, and this opinion still holds water.

Foreclosure proceedings on the historic Wright and Barnes houses at 140 Retreat Avenue have begun, according to Hartford tax collector Don LeFevre.

This is the first step for A Methadone Proposal. The next steps go like this:

• The Hartford Dispensary buys, renovates and expands the Wright and Barnes Greek Revivals.
• The Dispensary moves into a medical region where it belongs and sells its land on Main and Buckingham to a developer.
• The developer builds a mixed-use four-story brownstone to match the Linden, with a grocery on the first floor and apartments and offices above.

Seems simple and beneficial to everyone, but getting parties to agree is the problem.

Link...

It's what I'd feared: those of us who want to tear down the Aetna Viaduct – the decked portion of I-84 that slices through downtown Hartford – are likely seen as wackos, according to former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist.

Norquist was in town last week to discuss his wacko-ness: He led the successful effort to rip down a few miles of elevated highway in Milwaukee, thereby creating a few billion dollars in real estate and less pollution, less cars, less traffic, etc.

His outside voice validated our compass headings regarding transportation. After he finished, I asked him about another Hartford challenge: how to deal with crime and public safety.

"Bill Bratton and Rudy Guiliani," Norquist said. Plus, everyone needs to be serious in the fight against crime.

I'm not sure I agree 100 percent with Norquist's assessment of the Big Apple as a beacon for crimefighting. Nor would Amadou Diallo or Abner Louima. But the crime rate in the five boroughs has dropped while Hartford's seems to rise.

And isn't Hartford already employing Bratton's revolution in computerized crime tracking and community policing? Sure it is.

As part of the effort, HPD created Conditions Teams, mobile groups of police officers who can shift duties in neighborhoods to respond to the largest gathering threats.

At this time, the looming storm clouds hang over Weaver and Hartford Public High Schools, so that's where the Conditions Teams are stationed.

Link...

F irst, the good news: The Hartford has promised it won't knock down 40,000 square feet of 1926 Georgian Revival office building formerly owned by MassMutual in Asylum Hill, nor will it create any more surface parking at the site, according to Josh King, a PR flack for The Hartford.

King swore to these edicts at the monthly meeting of the Asylum Hill Problem Solving Revitalization Association (aka the NRZ) Monday night April 7, 2008 at the Asylum Hill Congregational Church.

To refresh the NRZ's collective memory, King explained that in December, The Hartford negotiated an option to purchase the historically significant property. At the same time, it applied for a 90-day waiting period for a permit to demolish 600,000 square feet worth of office edifice on the 16-acre campus.

For those with long memories, we can recall MassMutual's promise to stay in Hartford forever when it tore down Fraser Place row houses for surface parking, only to leave a year later.

The NRZ, like a vacant lover vacuuming a partner's identity, listened to The Hartford's coy, careful whispering.

"Let's be clear," King said, "The manner in which the news broke was less than optimal."

Translation – The Hartford failed to foresee the angry reaction to its proposal, and now it needs to make peace with upset neighbors. Now it wants a stamp of community approval for its profit-mongering.

Link...

O kay. In the news business, when someone beats you to a story, generally, it's nice if you acknowledge that you got your ass kicked.

For example, Ed Vargas, a soon-to-announce candidate for John Fonfara's seat for Senate, called me the other day. Ken, he said, I know that you've written a lot about franking privileges, so I hope you saw the story in the Courant about John Fonfara using tax dollars to promote a corporate event.

I won't give the for-profit giant Fonfara shilled for the benefit of being named. Suffice it to say that their logo looks like the Death Star. But, hats off the Courant for beating me to the punch.

Now only if they would do the same when we bloggo-terrorists scoop them on real news reporting. See, I'm kind of sick of not be treated as an equal.

And oh yeah, one more thing about Josh King of The Hartford: he was an advance promo man for President Bill Clinton. It explains the ooze coming off of him at the NRZ meeting Monday night. There is always room for members of the DLC at the corporate table...

Link to more on War, Torture, Bikes and Broadwater...

M uch of what has crossed my desk today is of interest, a strange occurence, almost a defeat of Sturgeon's Law.

First, I got my quarterly newsletter from the great folks at the Hartford Catholic Worker. Sarah Karas' piece about Frances Crowe and Juanita Nelson offers inspiring words from writer Marianne Williamson:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us...As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Liberation, then should apply to our burgeoning prison populations. The Catholic Workers suggest that with crime and punishmentrestorative justice is an answer.

Next, a friend sent me an email about Brian Toolan, the former editor of the Hartford Courant. He is now the business editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer. When a head honcho like Toolan takes a lower job in the journalism hierarchy, one wonders: he either needs work (which is fine), or he wants to work and can't find anything to suit his prior experience (which is bad for journos).

Elsewhere, Heather over at Urban Compass went to Hartfprd City Hall this morning for the conference by watershed maven Mary Rickel Pelletier and Nancy Stoner of the National Resources Defense Council.

And Christine Stuart at CTNewskunie quizzed John Larson a question or two about Benedict Lieberman. Colin McEnroe goes to town on Lieberman's statement yesterday about the hyperpartisanship of the Democratic Party.

And if it is a home invasion, expect M. Jodi Rell to swoop in and make political gain of it. She said it is a "random act that has absolutely no rational reason behind it." Aside from the redundancy of "rational reason," McEnroe on his radio show made a fine point: can't the Governor even give the victims a few minutes to collect themselves after the tragedy?

More on Gov. Rell...

C leaning off my desk to study for labor law, I came across this gem, from the Feb. 21 minutes of the Hartford 2000 Monthly Meeting:

C. Discussion Items

 

1. Mayor's Visit: Folks were glad that Mayor Perez came to the January meeting, spent so much time with us, and had prepared himself to answer our questions. We believe that the relationship between the Mayor and H2K has improved over the past year. Folks were, however, disappointed that he never reached the Group B questions and folks felt he had been less than specific in some of his answers. It was also agreed, however, that we need to be more assertive in focusing his attention on specific questions and in identifying what, exactly, we are asking him to do.

That says it all, really.

Who counts the votes for Mayor Eddie Perez and his supporters at the Democratic Town Committee meetings?

Eddie won't say who his people are, but before the election for the coveted DTC chairmanship Tuesday, March 11 at City Hall, someone counted and figured out that Perez supporter Sean Arena needed a few more to win and succeed outgoing DTC chair and Perez lieutenant Noel McGregor.

Arena's opponent, challenger Jean Holloway, the executive assistant to City Councilman Ken Kennedy, had her team counting, and on Monday night, they calculated she had 30 votes out of 59 Town Committee members, enough to capture the powerful post.

But on Tuesday, Arena had the 30, Holloway lost her majority, and she withdrew her candidacy. So Arena won by default.

Holloway supporters were crying foul because two of her supposed "yes" votes from the Town Committee's Fifth District, Mamie Bell and Ludella Perry Williams, both resigned Tuesday under somewhat mysterious circumstances.

Replacing Williams was North End power broker and Perez ally Abe Giles and taking over for Bell was Giles' grandson Miles Wiles. Giles had resigned from the DTC a few months ago, and was replaced by his wife, Juanita Giles, who napped intermittently during the meeting Tuesday night.

Giles has testified in front of the grand jury investigation into the alleged corruption in Mayor Perez's administration.

Link...

En the days before the war, activists stuffed Hartford City Hall's second floor Common Council chambers. The protestors carried signs and filled the tiny room to the brim in hopes that their presence would embolden City Council to pass an anti-war resolution before the invasion of Iraq.

Unfortunately, then-councilor Elizabeth Horton-Sheff's resolution failed, 5-4. Mayor Eddie Perez didn't stand behind it, and some councilors, even though opposed to the war, said their duty wasn't foreign policy.

Fast forward to Monday, March 10, 2008, approaching the fifth anniversay of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and now Working Families Party councilmen Dr. Larry Deutsch and Luis Cotto put an anti-war resolution on the table, item #39.

This time, it was a normal Council meeting setting with a few dozen chairs empty in Chambers. A couple of anti-war activists like Green Party stalwart Dave Ionno sat quietly, without waving any signs.

But this time, the anti-war motion passed in a 6-0 vote with two abstentions.

Link...

This is the best we can do.

I joined about 40 other people in the Ayslum Hill Congregation Church Monday night for the monthly meeting of the Asylum Hill Problem Solving Revitalization Association (aka the NRZ), a regular ritual of frustration and futility.

This meeting didn't fail to disappoint. Unfortunately, I walked in a few minutes late, which I hate to do. I didn't miss much, though as NRZ chairman Bernie Michel gave the report for HPD Community Service Officer Jim Barrett.

Barrett, who is recently back safe and sound from his National Guard tour of duty in Iraq, unfortunately couldn’t be at the meeting. But if this meeting represents the kind of democracy we are trying to export to Iraq, he's better off in Mesopotamia.

I first heard Agenda Item number two, Judge Curtissa Cofield, who is the presiding judge at the Community Court on Washington Street. She discussed problems on the street and how her court deals with them.

Link...

Ed. Note: Heather Brandon blogs on Urban Compass about Springfield and Hartford, and this is a decent post about Mayor Eddie Perez and the silver bullet theory of economic development.

A few months after a recommendation from the Urban Land Institute to develop an existing and possibly outdated sports and entertainment arena in downtown Hartford, now known as the XL Center, Mayor Eddie Perez offered up last week a new report from consultant HOK Sport that recommends razing the old center and building a new one at a possible price tag of $400 million.

An article in the Courant today by Jeffrey Cohen reported:

The future of the center has been a hot-button issue since 2005, when the arena’s steward, the Connecticut Development Authority, decided to study its options. In the process, the authority’s consultants—which included the consultants hired by the city—told it that the center was outdated, too small and not right for major league professional sports.

In contrast, Perez’s study wasn’t as much focused on the health of the center as it was on the feasibility of building a new arena downtown. That study said that the Hartford area has the right demographic mix to support major league professional sports and a new arena.

But its corporate support is uncertain, and an “NHL franchise may struggle to generate sufficient revenues from the corporate sector.”

The article also notes that, as promised in his inaugural address, Perez is “assembling a task force that will gauge whether there is enough corporate support to pay for suites, seats, and advertising to make such a venture worthwhile.”

Click Here to go to Urban Compass...

Tongues have been wagging across the city the past few weeks about the curious hiring of Andrea Comer as council aide for newly-elected Councilman Matt Ritter.

It piqued my interest, too, so I set out to learn a bit more.

I'll start with Comer's political history. She used to work for Mayor Eddie Perez, campaigning for him in the fall of 2001, and then joining his mayoral staff. She left his office in August 2002 and claims there was no bad blood between them.

She transferred to the school system for a short period of time, exiting her job as spokeswoman when former Superintendent Tony Amato departed. Comer then went to the city's Health and Human Services Department.

In October 2005, Comer took a leave of absence from HHS to care for her father, Thomas Burton Jones. Shortly after that, she was elected in November 2005 to the Board of Education, chaired by Perez.

When Mr. Jones passed away in December 2007, Mayor Perez attended the funeral and issued a proclamation commemorating Mr. Jones' passing.

Comer has also been president of the North End African American Alliance, worked for New Haven mayor John DeStefano and before serving Ritter, she was a project manager for the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven.

And last year, she launched an ill-fated primary challenge for City Council. After she was disqualified on petition technicalities, Comer volunteered for the campaign of I. Charles Mathews in his quest to unseat Perez, and she was a vocal critic of the Mayor and his management style.

So, in the loyalty-oath climate fostered by Perez and his chief of staff Matt Hennessy, astute watchers have characterized the hiring of a former staffer turned Mayoral opponent as an overtly hostile act against Perez.

Yet while the Mayor never issued an ultimatum, Ritter acknowledged that Perez expressed reservations about hiring Andrea Comer as his council aide.

"He mentioned the Board of Education thing," Ritter said. "He did mention not only her running for Council, but that she worked against him. But he never gave me an ultimatum. We had an honest conversation and he ultimately said 'It's your decision.'"

Link...

Terry D'Italia, public relations officer for the Hartford Public Schools, wants us to send him story ideas for The Hartford Educator, a 16-page tabloid sponsored by Hartford Public Schools.

So, Terry, here goes.

For those not familiar with the quaint little paper - half in English, half in Spanish - it is yet another public relations vehicle from Eddie Perez's office that gives the school board chair yet another opportunity to weave his narrative on the taxpayer dime. Here is the .pdf.

The Spring 2007 issue (first edition of the second volume) features stories about the construction progress on Hartford Public High School, summer school, a new credit union at Bulkeley High School and parents who strengthen the school system, like Perez-supporter Sam Saylor.

Color photos grace the cover, and sharp black and white photos on the inside. Of course, one color image shows Mayor Eddie Perez giving the state champion girls high school basketball team from Bulkeley free tickets to the Big East Women's tournament back in March.

The Educator is a professionally produced, slick development tool that I can see fundraiser Kelvin Roldan carting to meetings with high level donors, in hopes that they will read the favorable stories and say, geez, Hartford has neat stuff going on, we should give them money.

But the stories are so tilted towards the Perez camp that anyone with half a brain would know they don't represent reality. For example, the story on HPHS construction ignores the problems that have plagued the project.

Or the cover feature "Summer School in the City" focuses on the mandatory kindergarten through grade three programs while neglecting mention of the fiasco about canceled programs for middle schools.

Link...

Adam Bulger over at the Hartford Advocate beat me to the punch in writing about the Aetna Viaduct. Urban Planner Toni Gold beat us both to the punch back in February, but Adam wrote about it this past week.

His was a good story, although I must say both Adam and Joe Barber, who he quoted, are friends of mine. I would have liked Adam to have included a disclaimer in the story that he and Joe Barber are friends and housemates.

Before I get too tall on my high horse, it is possible that I have quoted Joe Barber in columns and not put that disclaimer in myself. But in the future, I think we all need to be more forthcoming about relationships that must be disclosed.

With that painful journalistic bit out of the way (it sucks having to say stuff to friends, especially when I am in Liverpool right now and can't really call him for an explanation). So if I get one from Adam, I'll post it.

What's really important here is that a contingent of city leaders want the Connecticut Department of Transportation to address the destructive rift of highway separating Frog Hollow and Asylum Hill.

Walking around Birmingham, England on Friday afternoon, the photos posted here represent some ideas that might benefit the city and the DOT as they begin discussions surrounding improving the cleave between neighborhoods.

Spaces underneath elevated highways needn't be horrible pedestrian spaces, but can be creatively designed to invite foot traffic. The Colt gateway to the mighty Connecticut River should take note of this too, as the space under I-91 is calling for something more than cold blue steel rafters and dirt floors.

In this photo, also from Birmingham, city planners painted a bridge on Bridge Street in a Victorian decorative motif, making the bridge easy on the eyes.

The city of Providence has done something similar at the bottom of Wickenden Street, with murals around giant pillars supporting Interstate 195.

Link...

Hartford might be able to learn a lesson from the Heartland. The industrial revolution built Youngstown, and when capitalism realized that it could get the steel cheaper overseas, Youngstown crumbled.

In the past several decades, Youngstown has lost 60 percent of its population, according to a piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday (h/t to scoop). Faced by the devastation of emigration from this steel hub, city planners today are seeking answers.

One solution they have hit upon: "an economic development plan that boils down to controlled shrinkage," wrote Timothy Aeppel of the Journal.

Let neighborhoods empty out, then when they become desolate and unpopulated, the city has an almost rural place that can be torn up and turned into gardens and parks.

Link...

What Mayor are you going to get that is going to be perfect?" asked George Cruz, director of Hartford's San Juan Center.

I suppose he's right. I'm not really thrilled with any of the candidates right now.

And after our conversation Monday afternoon, April 30, Cruz had me thinking: we're all human, and in this particular theatre alongside the muddy banks of the Connecticut, the foibles of our species will dominate the story lines.

So in this week's presentation, "Why do we fight over crumbs while the warmongers escape scrutiny?", our beloved Hartford players act out the theme of divide and conquer, with sub-plots of greed, dishonesty and a dose of hope.

The story begins with billboards, about a half dozen of them up on a hill called Mount Trashmore. Mayor Eddie Perez decided the city could generate revenue for the general fund by plunking a bunch of advertisements into the grassy slope that is the mound of trash on Interstate I-91.

Link...

My friend emailed the other day, telling me it was probably time to move off of Laurel Street. Aside from the long list of sex offenders who live on this humble byway, we have our fair share of crime.

This true tale of human depravity, another in the long line of tales of man's inhumanity to man (or woman, in this case) happened just a few days ago, a short walk from my house.

The Hartford Courant has the sordid details, but in sum, it seems as if four people brutally murdered Alexandria Clouse-Desmond, 18, stuffed her in a cardboard box, placed a bag over her head and put her in a closet.

In the list of grotesque group homicides, it's not quite Auschwitz, but it certainly ranks alongside the tragedy of Maryann Measles. People didn't move out of New Milford after a crew of miscreants gang-raped, strangled and dumped the 13-year-old's body in the Housatonic River. So I think I'll stay put.

I tried to take a pretty picture, because beauty lurks everywhere.

Elsewhere on Laurel Street...

Ed. Note: Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Defense announced another nine American soldiers died in Iraq yesterday. Here's a short story about one who I hope is still alive.

The Hartford Police Department admits that it lacks sufficient officers to patrol city streets ruled by gang violence and teen gun battles.

Now, here comes George W. Bush to make things worse by stealing four of our officers to patrol the insurgent streets of Iraq for 18 months.

Bush's war of choice has called two Connecticut Army National Guard companies to duty. One of them, the 1048th Medium Truck Company, will escort military convoys across the desert with the 82nd Airborne Division.

The 1048th counts Asylum Hill Community Officer Jim Barrett and three other of Hartford's finest among its ranks. The 1048th also contains officers from police departments of surrounding towns, according to Barrett.

Governor M. Jodi Rell, for all her bickering with Mayor Eddie Perez about state police support for beleaguered city law enforcement, will send these two Connecticut companies off to hell with a celebration at the state house on June 25.

Link...

This Sunday afternoon April 29 at Hartford Public High School, Mayor Eddie Perez will welcome the accreditation examiners from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, or NEASC.

NEASC placed the country's second oldest public high school on probation back in December 1997, when Perez was making his name at the Learning Corridor, and HPHS now has the chance to clear its historical name.

But this is not only a pass-fail exam for the Pub, it's for Mayor Perez, too. The buck has to stop with him, the self-anointed chairman of the board of education and the chairman of the school building committee.

After taking a 90-minute tour of HPHS Monday morning April 23, I met wonderful professionals who have dedicated their lives to serving students. But they are also deeply concerned with the present and future status of the edifice.

I also saw many, many construction problems that would give me pause if I were an inspector looking to certify the best educational practices at the Forest Street structure.

Link...

I have a dream. And I’m not stoned. I want to rent 2,000 square feet of ground level retail on Pratt Street, and in giant green neon letters above the storefront, advertise "Marijuana."

You’ll walk in, buy a coffee, a cup of tea, or a fruit smoothie. After you’ve wet your whistle, you can step to the other counter, where your friendly host will show you the evening’s supply of weed. Once you’ve selected an indica or sativa, you can retire with a few friends into comfy chairs and blow bong hits in peace.

Yep, I’m openly advocating the legalization of herb here in Hartford. Conservatives like Bill Buckley have been encouraging this for years.

Link...

As if Mayor Eddie Perez needed any more problems to weigh down his leadership of the school system, I just found this gem, which seems to have slipped under the local news radar:

"Schools in Washington, D.C., and Hartford, Conn., are among those lagging in keeping up with safety inspections and cleanliness reporting for student cafeterias, concludes a report issued by a watchdog group Tuesday [Jan. 30, 2007]."

WebMD reported on the study by the Center for Science and Public Interest, in which Hartford received the lowest score, 37, out of a possible 100. Hartford was ranked nine points lower than second-worst Washington, D.C. Top scorer Fort Worth, TX rated an 80.

Link...

Nothing like a solid P&Z meeting to get your blood flowing. Or at least a healthy dose of city Planning Director Roger O'Brien.

Normally, local Planning and Zoning meeting are snoozers, where volunteer citizen commissioners plow through the minutia of land use policy and application. But like all flawed human institutions, occasionally, a controversy arises.

The bi-weekly Hartford Planning and Zoning Commission's get-together Tuesday, March 27 at the conference center at 260 Constitution Plaza was one of those thrilling democratic dust-ups, worth as much play-by-play as I'm about to do.

First off, there weren't enough agendas to go around. I showed up for the zoning change at 1400 Main Street (from Firestone to McDonald's? - more on that in the future), but that was postponed. I quickly realized the main event on the evening's scorecard was the approval of city's 10-year Capital Improvement Plan.

Link...

Correction: State Rep. Doug McCrory works full time for the Hartford Board of Education, half time as a vice principal at an elementary school, and half time as a minority recruitment officer. The 40-Year Plan regrets any inconvenience the error in reporting may have caused.

To avoid any appearance of impropriety in the recent hiring of State Representative Kelvin Roldán as a $90,000 a year fundraiser for the Hartford school system, Roldán should voluntarily agree to work half-time and take a commensurate salary.

Roldán's new job (documented here first) as a cabinet-level official in Superintendent Steven J. Adamowski's office - after Roldán lead the search committee to find the new superintendent - set off red flags for nearly everyone. Or at least those of us with an ethical compass.

The situation got Courant columnist Helen Ubiñas' dander up, in a column she called "Protége's Promotion a Blunder."

"So what do we have now?" Ubiñas asked in Sunday's paper. "A guy who works for the superintendent helping decide how much money the schools are going to get from the state. And a guy who can vote to raise or lower corporate taxes working with companies the schools lean heavily on."

Link...

Mayor Eddie Perez will announce his official bid for re-election at some point in the future, he said Monday night after delivering his State of the City address to an overflow crowd in Hartford City Hall Monday evening.

"I haven't made a definite decision as to how we are going to do it," he said, but made clear it will happen. "Today is about the state of the city."

And the state of the city is fantastic, where not a mistake was made or a bad thing happened, according to his speech, which – minus the minor-league oration - sounded like a re-election stemwinder.

But Council President John Bazzano argued that the speech wasn't about presentation.

"We don't worry about delivery, it's content," Bazzano said. "It was all things important to the city: housing, police, education, quality of life issues."

Link...

Joe Barber revealed another step towards a city inventory when he handed me a book last week called “A Hartford Primer and Field Guide.” Produced by the wizards at Trinity College’s Cities Data Center, the Primer indicts state-subsidized segregation through its in-depth factual presentation.

The Primer, whose second edition was self-published in December 2003, covers 10 areas like local economy, health, housing, politics, and poverty, and it contains a thorough index, all in under 200 pages. Originally created in 2001 by Professor Ivan Kuzyk to link Trinity to its host city, the Primer has assumed an almost cult status among city devotees.

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State Sen. Eric Coleman (D-Hartford-2) has proposed or co-sponsored 33 bills so far this session. His mass mail piece, aka franking,sent out at our taxpayer expense this week, focuses on two main issues: Health Care and Energy.

Now, when isn't a photo of a stethoscope in a trusting hand with the headline "Increasing Access to Affordable, Quality Healthcare" a sure vote getter? He wants to "promote preventive care" and "Expand HUSKY coverage." Who doesn't? Tell me how we pay for it, Senator.

And it's a safe bet to talk to inform constituents about "Smart, Affordable Energy for Today and Tomorrow." Sadly, Sen. Coleman avoids any talk about reducing our reliance on fossil fuels or what he is doing as a representative to work towards a solution.

But, hey, it's a free campaign ad. I prefer instead to go straight to the source, and look at the 31 other measures he is involved in.

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W ay back, last fall, when Thornton for Governor ruled my existence, a crew of Green campaigners joined a team of Trinity College students for the Connecticut River Watershed Council's 10th annual Source to Sea cleanup at the Park River over by New Britain Avenue in West Hartford.

I wrote a column about it way back when, but never really followed up and described what we ended up doing.

In my mailbox today, I saw the CRWC's newsletter detailing the trash hauled from the mighty Connecticut by 1,685 volunteers at 68 locations from northern Vermont to southern Connecticut.

Yikes is all you can really say when you read the list.

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A successful businessman told me if elected mayor of Hartford, he would immediately commence inventorying assets and people. Before he could reasonably recommend a course of action, he said he needed to see what available resources, strengths and weaknesses existed around which to create a plan.

It is also worth asking the actual value of the entire city, and I’m not just talking the grand list, which represents only taxable personal and business property like houses and vehicles. In places like Rome, they count statues and trees.

A stench of desperation now emanates from the second hall executive offices in City Hall.

I entered the hallowed halls at 555 Main Monday to pay taxes (a few days late – sorry, January was a topsy-turvy month – but I covered the interest), and the odor was unmistakable: fear.

Desperate people in positions of power do bizarre things to hold onto their fiefdoms. Mayor Eddie Perez has shown the all-too human tendency to overexert himself, and this past week demonstrated exactly how troubled the Mayor really is.

Understanding that political differences exist between Gov. M. Jodi Rell and myself, yet considering that we breathe the same air, share the same roads and enjoy the same sights in Hartford, there comes a time when previous disagreements must be set aside and bridges built, and coalitions made.

It is in this tradition of compromise, and this search for common ground that I say "Thank you" to Gov. Rell for expressing what many of us here in Hartford think about Mayor Eddie Perez's lust for his high school by the highway: It is a bad idea. Link...