Happy Stinko de Mayo from my cat Stinky.
Okay, with Times Square bomber news dominating, on to more mundane matters: city finances. The city’s issuing $95 million in Tax Anticipation Notes to pay short-term bills. When the budget gets tight, especially toward the end of the budget year, the city will borrow to pay bills and pay off the notes as tax collections arrive for the new budget year starting July 1. Gotta meet payroll, gotta pay vendors, gotta keep the lights on.
City Councilman Bob Troll Walsh reports the City Council Monday night received a new financial report for the current fiscal year that ends June 30.
“We are looking at a revised deficit of $1.3 million. For the January/February report the city is showing an additional loss in revenue of $1.3 million and a reduction in expenses of $2.5 million leaving a projected deficit of $1.3 million. Through December’s report the single biggest revenue deficiency was the change in the Pequot/Mohegan Fund which was funded by the state at a level that was $2.7 million lower than what was budgeted and what was received in the prior fiscal year. The biggest new drops in revenue are JP Morgan Chase rent being $268K lower than the budgeted amount of $304K due to their vacating office space at 999 Broad St. In retrospect, this amount never should have been budgeted. Given that much of a difference the city knew or should have known that since a new lease had not been approved then in all likelihood they would be moving out. Sale of city-owned properties was budgeted at $1.1 million. Eight months actual revenue is $37K. The city is lowering its estimate to $150K.” Ouch.
Life’s A Holiday
You wanna visit a cool, hip, newly renovated Holiday Inn? Come to the OIB party and no room required. (Well if you wanna get a room, fine by me.) That’s right next Tuesday May 11, 5:30 p.m. at the Blue Martini bar Bridgeport Holiday Inn downtown. First cocktail on OIB plus food for your mood and the best gossip in town. Park in the garage behind the hotel on Middle Street downtown. Validate your ticket at front desk. Then join us in the Blue Martini. Tell your friends and favorite politicians. Ya never know who’ll show up at an OIB party. Bring cameras, take notes, fill out your delegate scorecard.
Adult Education graduation ceremony tonight at Central. From Superintendent of Schools John Ramos and Director of Adult Education John Fabrizi:
Bridgeport Adult Education Graduation Notes Increase in “Drop-Ins”
Need for education credentials spurs adults to go back to school
BRIDGEPORT — April 28, 2010 — Today the Office of the Superintendent of Schools in Bridgeport, CT announced that the Bridgeport Board of Education’s Department of Adult Education will hold graduation exercises on May 5, 2010 for 210 graduates from the Accredited Adult High School Diploma program. “The accredited adult high school diploma is on the same level as a diploma from one of the regular high schools and receives the same recognition” said Dr. John Ramos, Superintendent of Schools.
Record Number of Graduates
This year’s 210 graduates is up dramatically over the past several years. According to the director of adult education, John M. Fabrizi, demand for the full range of adult programs has grown steadily recently. “People have been asking me if the growth of our student population is due to students dropping out of the regular school programs,” Fabrizi said, “But there’s a different reason. Our students come to adult ed for a variety of reasons: to learn English in our ESL programs or to improve their basic skills. But—and this is key—adults who have been out in the work force are finding they need to have a high school diploma to get ahead—or even to get a good job in the first place.” Fabrizi, a former mayor of the city, and a veteran educator even before that, adds, “I like to tell people that our students should be regarded as ‘drop-ins’—they need to complete high school and we help them do it.”
Denise Clemons, Assistant Superintendent of Schools recognizes the diversity in the programs and the adults attending Adult Education. Our graduates this year range in age of 19 years old to 64 years old. There’s a lot of diversity, but the goal is the same for all of these graduates, “earning a high school diploma.”
Pomp and Circumstance
The graduation exercises feature a full program of music, speeches, awards, and finally presentation of diplomas. The Central High School Choir will adorn the event with numbers from its musical repertoire. In addition to school personnel, representatives of state and local governments as well as area universities and community colleges will participate as speakers and presenters. Among the dignitaries, Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch will lead off the speakers’ program, followed by Mrs. Barbara P. Bellinger, President of the Bridgeport Board of Education. The Superintendent of Schools, Dr. John J. Ramos, Sr., will give the keynote address. Speeches by Paul Flinter, bureau chief of Health/Nutrition, Family Services and Adult Education at the State Department of Education, and Ajit Gopalakrishnan, Education Consultant at the Bureau of Adult Education, will close the speakers’ program.
Recognition and Awards
The Bridgeport Board of Education and the Department of Adult Education are proud of all of these graduates, who have overcome so many obstacles to attain their high school diplomas, and take special pride in announcing that a member of this year’s graduating class, Maria Medina, has been honored by the Connecticut Association for Adult and Continuing Education (CAACE) as the “Adult Learner of the Year” at its recent conference in March 2010. Similarly, it should be noted that Bridgeport Adult Education teacher, Dolores Crawley, was honored at the same conference as “Educator of the Year.” A double-header for Bridgeport!
The program continues with student speakers and the presentation of academic awards and scholarships. Traditionally, awards are made by the Bridgeport Education Association and by the Bridgeport Council of Administrators and Supervisors to those students who excel in the five subject areas of English, History, Mathematics, Science, and General Achievement. Additional student awards are presented by the Adult Education Staff. Housatonic Community College presents a tuition scholarship of 6 credits to the incoming graduate. This year marks the first appearance of Porter and Chester Institute on the graduation program; Porter and Chester is presenting a $1,000 scholarship to the graduate enrolling there. Another extraordinary first, the University of Bridgeport is awarding a full four-year scholarship, worth over $100,000 to one of the graduates. The recipients of these awards are not notified previously, they come as a total surprise.
The ceremony closes with the awarding of the diplomas and the recessional.
Graduation exercises for adult education will take place in the auditorium at Central High School, 1 Lincoln Boulevard, Bridgeport, CT at 7 p.m. Wednesday evening, May 5, 2010.
Good news, but when will it open with BOE finances tight? From Mayor Finch:
Discovery Magnet School ‘Topping Off’ Ceremony
WHAT: A “topping off ceremony” will be held as the last beam is placed on the new Discovery Interdistrict Magnet School. Mayor Bill Finch, Supt. of Schools John Ramos and other invited guests will be signing the last beam as it’s raised into place on the superstructure.
WHO: Mayor Bill Finch; Supt. John Ramos; Bridgeport Board of Education members; members of the Bridgeport School Building Committee; local and state legislators; representatives from O & G Industries, The McCloud Group, and Svigals and Partners architectural design firm and community partners
WHERE: Discovery Interdistrict Magnet School, 4510 Park Ave. Bridgeport, CT 06604.
Next to the Discovery Musuem
WHEN: Thursday, May 6, 2010, 11:30 a.m.
ABOUT:
Steel construction of the Discovery Interdistrict Magnet School began in early March. The new K-8 magnet school will emphasize a science and technology curriculum for around 500 students from Bridgeport and adjoining school districts. The 68,333 square-foot facility, designed by Svigals & Partners of New Haven, is expected to garner a Leadership in Energy Efficiency Design (LEED) Silver Rating, the greenest school building in the district to date.
Happy Stinko de Mayo!
Congrats to Kate Ramunni, Staff Writer at the CT Post for her story Exclusive: Documents found near bomb suspect’s former Shelton home. Good old-fashioned footwork and digging through garbage yielded this story, which was a lead story yesterday on the NY Times website.
Let’s see 1.3 million deficit from last year and a projected deficit or shortfall of $6 million in the new upcoming budget. Wonderful. How are Curwen, DePara and Sherwood going to bury this one? They expect to fix this with employee givebacks? Bullshit. We heard from Bob Walsh, where are the other 19 council people? l=Let me guess many of them are working OT on their city jobs.
And these A**holes are giving themselves a raise. The people of Bridgeport should protest and stop paying their taxes. (Example DiNardo.) Where are they then going to get the money? God Help us.
OK, The Times Square Bomber was from Bridgeport many years ago, before Bosnia broke into the headlines, the FBI broke up a gang of Croatians stockpiling weapons in some garden apartment off Boston Avenue and years and years before that (as written by one Leonard Grimaldi in Only in Bridgeport), a famous NY mobster used to come to town when the heat was on him in the Big Apple.
Is there a pattern here?
Maybe we’re trying to market the city to the wrong people. We already have a niche market and don’t even realize it!
When I read about all these cell towers in Bridgeport I foolishly thought they were talking about cell phone towers.
No, Mr. Gilmore is suggesting a more nefarious meaning to the term cell.
Yes, a shout-out to my former colleague Kate Ramuni. Good reporting all around and a great scoop.
But The Post yet again demonstrates collectively it’s often clueless about the basic geography of Bridgeport’s neighborhoods, saying that Sheridan Street — one block south of Boston Avenue and one block west of Harding — is on the East End as opposed to the East Side. This after saying the junkyard in Stratford on Old South Road — smack in the town’s South End — was in Lordship. Sheesh.
A fool’s errand I know, but one of my fervent hopes in life is that someday my hometown paper will get my hometown’s neighborhoods right.
Maybe when some of their reporters, besides Torres, and their editors move into Bridgeport, they would be able to understand that the Klein is not Downtown. They don’t even know what the “Teardrop” is!!!
Off-topic, but I just had to share this. I can picture this so clearly, I hope CTN caught it. If it weren’t so sad, it would be funny.
Scenes from the Capitol: Bat removed, lawyers remain in pre-dawn session
Mark Pazniokas
May 5, 2010
At 2:55 a.m. today, a bat made its entrance in the House of Representatives, circling the ornate, high-ceilinged chamber to the amusement and discomfort of legislators.
And then things got weird.
House Republicans bitterly objected to the prospect of beginning a debate on a major energy bill at 2:55 a.m., a debate delayed by a just-concluded, seven-hour GOP filibuster of an education bill.
Knowing that they faced an adjournment deadline of midnight tonight, Democrats insisted on going forward. Rep. Vickie O. Nardello, D-Prospect, the co-chair of the Energy and Technology Committee prepared to explain the bill.
House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero, R-Norwalk, stood and made a motion to adjourn, a prerogative that belongs to the House majority leader, Denise W. Merrill, D-Mansfield.
Rep. Peter Tercyak traps the bat (Mark Pazniokas)
The bat swooped low.
“It’s a sign,” someone shouted.
Legislators laughed.
Cafero did not.
He asked for a roll call vote.
On a vote of 102 to 38, the motion failed. Two Democrats, Shawn Johnston of Thompson and Deputy Speaker Marie Kirkley-Bey of Hartford, voted with the GOP to call it a day.
Nardello again prepared to begin debate, but Johnston interrupted and announced he was recusing himself over a potential conflict of interest. He is a meter reader for CL&P.
Smiling, he exited the chamber. Other legislators theatrically waved their hands, beckoning for recognition to announce their own conflicts, real or imagined.
House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan, D-Meriden, ignored them.
The bat made another circle. All eyes looked up. Nardello stood with a microphone, but she could not be heard over the excited chatter.
Donovan banged the gavel.
“Can we please have order in the chamber?” Donovan asked. “I know it’s late.”
Pause.
“And there’s a bat flying around.”
Again, Nardello prepared to begin debate, following the script followed to introduce every bill: She asked for permission to summarize the bill.
“Mr. Speaker, I object to summarization,” Cafero said.
Translation: Fine, if you want to debate this bill in the wee, small hours of the morning, then we’ll begin with the House clerk reading the entire thing aloud.
Merrill moved that the House suspend its rules.
Translation: Oh, yeah?
“Point of order. I ask the gentlewoman to cite the rule to which she is referring,” Cafero said.
Translation: You’re bluffing.
“Oh, this is bad,” Rep. Cameron C. Staples, D-New Haven, said under his breath.
Gary Coleman, the clerk who would have to read the bill, stripped off his bow tie, leaned back in his chair and stretched like an athlete about to begin a marathon.
Everyone reached for their rule books. Lawyers materialized.
The bat made another circuit, this time making a loop through the House gallery, where a maintenance worker stood ready with a net, presumably for the bat.
After another loop, dodging a wild swing of the net, the bat gave up, dropping like a stone behind your correspondent, just to the right of the speaker’s rostrum.
“Is it alive?” yelled Rep. Toni E. Walker, D-New Haven.
It was. It quickly attached itself to the wall, wings folded.
Rep. Peter Tercyak, D-New Britain, charged with a blue recycling bin, trapping the bat. A member of the maintenance staff knelt beside him, speaking low into a radio. The police arrived.
“Step back,” an officer ordered.
The bat was taken away.
The lawyers remained.
Donovan told the chamber that the House could override Cafero’s objections to summarization by a two-thirds vote.
At 3:36 a.m., Cafero withdrew his objection.
Donovan exhaled and said, “Thank you everybody.”
Sounds like they were having a Bat Mitzvah!
New Gallup poll shows Republicans are not pumped up to vote in the general election like they were 2 months ago. Republicans do not have the lead on the generic ballot any more!!! It is a Tie now 45%-45%. All the trial part was is a Hype group and a group that divided their party!!!
As much as I disagree disagreeing with my former colleague Mr. Fredericks from The Post-Telegram and The Bridgeport Light, Sheridan Street is not part of the East Side, but part of the East End as reported by Mr. Burgeson in The Connecticut Post. You can say Sheridan is part of Mill Hill, a neighborhood place name in the East End. The area is all east of Pembroke Pond/Lake/Creek, ceded to Bridgeport from Stratford around 1890. (Calling Charlie Brilvitch …) This was all listed in the Post-Telegram stylebook back in the 1980s if Mr. Frederick had cared as a reporter to read about his hometown and geographical definitions of same.
Can’t help The Post on Lordship/South End. Sorry about that 410. That was kinda dumb.
And as long as Mr. Gilmore is rummaging through the attic of famous Bridgeport activities of mayhem, I was wondering myself when the bomber incident was reported, and the vehicle (without VIN) was traced to a junkyard in “Bridgeport CT,” if said vehicle had anything to do with the old Marra operation.
Silly me.
Jeez–I can see this neighborhood boundary line discussion getting as heated as the true national boundaries of Post-WWII Europe!
I suspect all of the boundaries mentioned here are wrong in today’s world. The new immigrants of Bridgeport might be viewing the city a little differently than people of yesteryear. We should ask them, we all might be surprised.
I bet they don’t even use the same neighborhood names (Sorry South End, North End, Black Rock, East Side, East End, Brooklawn, Whiskey Hill, yada yada yada!)
Boycott British Petroleum PLC. Boycott British Petroleum PLC. Boycott British Petroleum PLC. Boycott British Petroleum PLC.
What, an oil platform blew up in Remington Woods?
And speaking of neighborhoods, what should be Little Ireland? The old St. Augustine’s Cemetery on the East Side?
Ah, the ill-informed and comically wrong but swaggeringly confident bluster of Jim Callahan, how I’ve missed it over the years.
So Mr. Pennsylvania, that would make Harding High School on the East End? Be a big surprise to my late mom and the thousands of other graduates of that East Side institution over the decades. And the former East Side Middle School, that in the East End too Jim?
Jimmy, Jimmy, stick to what you know best, and it ain’t Bridgeport.
Good grief. Fredericks and I agree! When did Harding move to the East End?
Lennie, I wanted to share with you and the rest of the OIB fan club I received my notice today of the National Association of Letter Carriers Annual “Stamp Out Hunger” Food Drive this Saturday, May 8. For those not familiar it is a simple concept, leave a bag/box of non-perishable food next to your mailbox in the morning and when your letter carrier delivers the mail he/she will pick up your donation. The collected food is then distributed to local food banks, pantries and feeding sites in our communities. Your donation will help to feed the hungry in our community, whose ranks grow every day. It is an important and well-timed event as the cupboards are usually sparse this time of year. This is the largest single-day food drive in the country and has been conducted for over 20 years. I don’t know how many millions of pounds of food the Letter Carriers have collected over these years but a big tip o’ the hat and thank you to them for their efforts.
Oh, and that vaunted Post stylebook was, like The Telegram of yore, so riddled with mistakes it was largely useless. Besides Jim, when you were born and raised and still lived on on the East Side at the time, as opposed Milford via North Mudpuddle PA, you don’t need to read a book to know where you’re at.
SuBy Qualifies! Scary!!!
That’s what I’ve always liked about mugs from the East Side. Even when they fire a shotgun at you, they end up hitting the second floor porch of the next building over.
Sheridan Street is on Mill Hill in the East End.
I love it when Irish guys argue.
*** It’s obvious that SuBy’s court decision was a “politically” connected one if someone actually looks close enough! However I would love to see & read the judge’s final decision and court transcripts on what exactly moved him to this final “pandora’s box” decision! *** It’s too bad the media has decided to “continue” probing this story about the Times Square Bomber & his “loose” come & go ties to Bpt. in general. Everyone regardless of race, gender or religion comes from, or has been somewhere sometime for whatever reason in their life travels. It does not, nor should, particularly mean anything negative about these places, schools, or businesses that have happened to come in contact with people like the Times Square Bomber. I hope the city of Bpt. or U.B. does not end up getting more “negative” type press or criticized for just being there, during one idiot’s negative life journey! *** And regardless of whether it’s the East Side or the East End, everyone knows the “best side” has always been the “West Side”! (wink) *** FORGETABOUTIT *** Upcoming News in Bpt. related to Mayor’s China Trip? Possible study to create a small business type “Chinatown” in Bpt’s downtown area? Also a temp. “Panda Bear Exhibit Visit” to Beardsley Zoo & Tai-Chi lessons for Seniors on weekends, all possible for only a slight city tax increase! *** “Enlightenment Anyone?” ***
Before I was John from Black Rock I was John from the East Side–Grew up on Pembroke St. north of the tracks and went to Harding. Later I lived about a block from where this jackass lived on Sheridan St. As far as I’m concerned Sheridan St. and Harding are definitely in the East Side.
Just one Slovak guy’s opinion.
I thought the East End started at Boston and East Main and went north towards Trumbull & Stratford border just past treeland.
So what do you call everything below that? Duh!!!
I’m sure Mr. Callahan recollects that story the Bridgeport Light published back in 1989, the hundredth anniversary of the annexation of the former Borough of West Stratford. The Mayor and Board of Aldermen voted at the time the name would be officially changed to ‘East End,’ and its borders were indeed Old Mill Creek and Yellow Mill Pond on the west and Bruce Brook on the east. The former East Bridgeport had previously been annexed to the city in 1865, with its name officially changed to ‘East Side,’ bounded by the Pequonnock River on the west and the Stratford line (Old Mill Brook/Yellow Mill Pond) on the east. Thus the perception of Harding High School being located on the East Side is incorrect, and the same of course goes for Sheridan Street. Too bad our local ‘experts’ had to be put in their place by a lowly Pennsyltuckian!
I thought about asking Charles Brilvitch, my favorite and most reliable neighborhood expert to settle this, but I’ve decided not to do that. Charles might plant a neighborhood within a neighborhood within a subsection of a neighborhood and then I’ll really be confused. Plus, if my mother finds out that she was really an East Ender when she thought growing up she was an East Sider, I’ll get a calamari across my coolie.
Back in 1865 what I consider the East End did not exist it was woods and swamp. This area was not developed until around WW1 for the area up to Huntington Tpk. The rest of the area was developed in the early ’40s.
The East End was a rural section of the Town of Stratford comprised of farmland and woodlots prior to the 1860s. Farmhouses were almost all located along Boston, Stratford, and Newfield Avenues; Cental/Palisade Avenues linked up with Evers Street and Silver Lane to provide access to outlying areas. But with the development of industry (primarily sewing machines) on the East Side, a housing development known as ‘Lake Village’ was laid out along Seaview Avenue, Grant, Sheridan, White, and Mead Streets (all patriotically named for Union generals) for factory hands who wanted cheap building lots with low Stratford taxes. This development was such a success that a second called ‘Deacon’s Point’ followed it in 1866 (Deacon, Holly, Williston Streets and Seaview Avenue). And in 1869 an even larger tract was laid out into lots (‘Sea View’) along Jefferson and Adams Streets and DeKalb Avenue. By 1872 these communities had banded together to form the Borough of West Stratford to provide for fire protection and the establishment of Lincoln and Summerfield Schools. By 1889 there was a sufficiently urbanized population and enough industry (the Holmes & Edwards Silver Company, largest of its type in the country, was at Seaview & Crescent) for the voters to elect to join the City of Bridgeport. But TC is right–there was a large dairy farm on Huntington Turnpike as late as 1940. Confused enough, Lennie???
Dazed and confused, but I like it.
In the ’40s there was a pig farm where Nob h=Hill condos are located I never saw that one but the farm you refer to was located on Silver Lane. There were 3 houses on Silver Lane and then the farm and the farm house. The farm was owned by the Sullivan Family. I don’t remember the cows.
OMG … and here all my fellow Harding classmates and I thought we were going to school in the East Side when in reality (at least according to Callahan and WhiteRoller) we were going to school in the East End. Well it was the sixties and back then reality could be a lot more flexible than it is now. So maybe that explains it.