Mayor Bill Finch today delivered his annual address to the Bridgeport area business community at the Holiday Inn Downtown. News release from Mayor’s Office:
Bridgeport is continuing to grow and build thanks to the City’s efforts in waterfront recapture, economic development and education reform, Mayor Bill Finch told local and regional business leaders during his annual address at the Bridgeport Regional Business Council’s annual luncheon.
“Even in the most challenging times, you stick to your vision, you stick to your plan. You continue to build and you continue to grow,” said Mayor Finch. “As result, our population has grown. Our grand list has grown. Our number of schools has grown. Our number of parks has grown.”
During his speech, Mayor Finch demonstrated how his vision for the City is rooted in the work of Frederick Law Olmsted, renowned landscape architect who designed both Seaside and Beardsley Parks.
“Olmsted’s work is summarized by the ‘Genius of Place.’ He identified the unique attributes of each location; then preserving and enhancing them,” said Mayor Finch. “In Bridgeport, we’re preserving every positive aspect of our City. We’re enhancing our beautiful natural environment and creating new opportunities for the success of our greatest resource–our residents.”
Mayor Finch highlighted the positive momentum the City is experiencing in Steelpointe Harbor with the announcement of Bass Pro Shops as the development’s first anchor tenant. “Bass Pro Shops, and the other new tenants who will join them, will expose millions of people to Bridgeport for the first time and show them a side of our city that they have never seen, an urban environment uniquely intertwined with nature.”
The Eco-Industrial Park, which the Mayor calls the “embodiment” of the City’s BGreen 2020 initiative to bring jobs, save taxpayers money and to fight climate change, was also highlighted during the speech. The Mayor named each of the new green businesses who have moved to Bridgeport because of the Eco-Industrial Park.
The Mayor’s speech also focused on developments in Downtown and Downtown North that will bring hundreds of new apartments and several new businesses to the local economy, including the completion of 333 State Street and the work currently in progress in the Golden Hill section of Downtown.
Picking up from last year’s annual address, which focused on school reform, Mayor Finch provided an update on the “positive changes in the classroom and around our schools,” including the creation of a “Safe Corridors Initiative” to help students get to and from school safely. Mayor Finch also spoke about the City’s school construction program, which will invest “nearly a quarter of a billion dollars into our local economy.”
Mayor Finch thanked the business community for their help in funding the City’s largest gun buyback program, which helped take nearly 800 guns off the streets.
Mayor Finch,
The words sound good but the true test will be your new budget proposal. This city has outrageous taxes already and you must not propose a budget that would further increase property taxes. If you do, your credibility will be shot and your plans will not be realized. Actions speak louder than words. Higher taxes would result in lower property values and less of an ability to attract and keep both businesses and people of means in the City. It’s not rocket science. When will we see real spending cuts, right-sizing actions and meaningful restructuring of the City’s finances? The clock is ticking. It’s time to get to work and start doing the heavy lifting. We may need a state-appointed Financial Control Board to make the kind of progress we really need. Where do you stand on that option?
Mayor Finch’s vision is for this city to be a suburb of well-healed commuters to Stamford with the middle class and the poor vanished. The only recent “business development” was a small expensive supermarket and a Popeye’s on Boston Ave … Pure residential real estate development does not pay the bills and it certainly doesn’t lead to any employment that would lead to a decent future for the residents of our poorer neighborhoods who barely scrape by.
The people in the audience must have needed hip waders to listen to this sewage.
Well it makes you feel good about where you live. I wonder who actually wrote his speech. I hope everything Mayor Finch is striving for comes to fruition. I will always put my city before politics.
*** The usual pep-rally speech over the usual baked chicken luncheon, attended by the usual pretenders, business panhandlers, city pols and employees, all looking for something for nothing while drinking the city’s political kool-aid. Clapping at every mention of long-overdue urban steps forward for back-dated new schools, more unrentable economic housing developments, political eye candy neighborhood lots turned into urban mini-parks, and the grand opening of new “four star” restaurants like Popeye’s Chicken coming soon to a district near you! However no mention of unfunded city pensions, higher taxes, job cuts and layoffs, flatline school system budgets, red-line city debts along with budget tilt–millions in O/T. And who’s to blame for the upcoming financial city dilemma that will be affecting the Park City? The governor and the State of CT of course! But why spoil the ice cream desert for everybody, no? *** DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE! ***