Oh, the smell of moolah. With a Water Pollution Control Authority agreement due to expire this summer between Bridgeport and Trumbull, city officials are contemplating charging Trumbull users individually for the first time. This has the makings of a nice neighborly sludge fight.
A little background: Trumbull has sewers, but no sewage treatment plant. Trumbull’s waste is piped into Bridgeport where it is processed at the city’s sewer treatment system. This relationship goes back about 45 years during the construction of the Trumbull Shopping Park, developed by the Frouge Corporation, known today as Westfield Trumbull. Most of Trumbull is now sewer developed.
Bridgeport and Trumbull have been engaged in on-again, off-again, on-again negotiations to create a regional sewer authority that could help the bottom line of both communities. A regional sewer authority would create a mini municipality that purchases the wastewater assets of the communities. Presto: millions of dollars for the municipalities. The problem becomes how much users are then charged to finance the assets purchased by the authority.
The relationship between Bridgeport and Trumbull officials over this issue (and others) has become strained. The city has charged Trumbull through the years based on a negotiated collective town usage with the cost passed on to town wastewater users at a rate set by the town’s WPCA.
Bridgeport has warned Trumbull it’s contemplating charging Trumbull users on a personal basis, creating potential sticker shock. Is this a negotiating strategy to move Trumbull closer to a regional authority agreement? Maybe. Is Trumbull biting? Not yet. If Bridgeport pushes the issue to charge Trumbull users personally, look for a legal battle. Bridgeport is even considering selling off its sewage treatment infrastructure to a private contractor. Perhaps Trumbull could do the same.
Meanwhile, Bridgeport’s former deputy director of development Ed Lavernoich is poised to start his new job as director of Trumbull economic development next week. There’s no discussion of development without the discussion of processing poop. Sitting next to Lavernoich in regional discussions with city officials as a brother in arms will be John Marsilio, Trumbull’s director of Public Works who had the job years ago in Bridgeport.
All of this sets up some steamy negotiations.
I wonder how many Republicans will come out tomorrow. The only precinct that might even come close to 100 votes is Black Rock.
It’s time for Trumbull residents to pay the same amount the residents of Bridgeport pay.
Off Topic: How does a police officer retire with a disability from a job-related injury end up being a police officer in Meriden? Are we still paying him 2/3 of his salary for this disability? How many others are retired on disability from the PD are doing the same job somewhere else?
Andy, you can start with the Bridgeport fire chief and police chief; how in the world did that happen?
Ron, it’s all part of this administration’s policy of we will do what we want to do whether it’s right or wrong.
In the past if you went back to work with the city you needed to subtract your pension dollars from your new salary. The only other way to avoid that is to be paid out of grant money.
This retired cop who went to the Meriden PD in fact committed a fraud.
Ron,
Quit picking on Andy’s friends. Andy likes Rooney so whatever the city can do to help him out is OK.
What about Joe Savino? He retired with a disability pension from the Police Department and then was hired as Harbor Master. How does the city defend that policy?
And what about members of the Bridgeport Police Dept having a Security Company the Bridgeport Police Dept contracts with?
Andy, it is either wrong in all cases or not wrong in any case. No picking and choosing.
Grin,
I had lunch with our favorite lawyer from New Canaan yesterday. I haven’t talked with him in nearly 20 years. He asked about you. Told him the three of us would get together soon.
Grin: Where in any of my postings have I said or lead you to believe I was advocating selective treatment for certain people? Let me square you away on Rooney. Rooney was my driver when I was the LT on squad 5. We have never had a relationship outside of the FD. I stated Rooney and the PD chief should not have both the pension and the salary. I may not have used names but I stated what the rules are. If I knew about the security company and the PD contract I would have stated that in a post; I did not know.
With history as our rationale and guide, Bridgeport should not be interested in entering into any “regional pacts” (translated–“sucker deals”) with any of our neighbors at this juncture–especially Trumbull.
It is obvious, from the Trumbull-Bridgeport school negotiations, et al., we are seen through exploitative, parasitic, disdainful eyes by our “neighbor” to the north. They were only willing to “cooperate” with Bridgeport on a “regional” school if they could keep us out of Trumbull and force Bridgeport to foot the “regional” bill–to the extent they were willing to engage in a land cession/swap and redraw the map of Trumbull(!). (Perhaps they had an ulterior motive beyond the aforementioned more-obvious reason–such as a “good-will” gesture to help sell their pitch for a “regional” sewer pact to allow the continued fleecing of Bridgeport taxpayers?)
Indeed, the beginning of the end for Bridgeport was ushered in with the original Trumbull sewer pact, inked in 1960, to allow the development of the Trumbull Shopping Park (now Westfield Trumbull Mall). This was truly the point at which Bridgeport’s fortunes took an irreversible turn for the worse–the point at which we gave Trumbull the means to steal our tax base and our middle class. This is the point at which our downtown, industrial core and then-healthy neighborhoods began their slow, agonizing death. The companion, state-federally mandated and financed Route 25-8 Corridor dealt the coup de grâce to our neighborhoods and tax base as this latter project (25-8) literally sucked the life out of Bridgeport (up into Trumbull, Shelton and beyond).
This was all done through state and federal lobbying by suburban interests, with the conspiratorial blessing of our own city leadership (e.g., the DTC/RTC, Tedesco Administration–with these elements, future Trumbullites heavily invested in land in Trumbull and Shelton along the 25-8). The end of County government in Connecticut, concurrent with and part and parcel of the aforementioned conspiratorial development scheme, resonated perfectly with the sewer deal and 25-8 plans).
Once Bridgeport was on the ropes, we were there for the taking by the parasitic Gold Coast/suburbs; there would be no turning things around for Bridgeport. (As we can see in retrosprect.)
Fast forward to April 2012, and we find the sewer deal and 25-8 plans of 1960 are the gifts that keep on giving; Bridgeport is down to its last pint of blood, and the blood-letting continues with old, recent and potential development/tax base still trickling out of the city–up Route 25-8 into Trumbull, Shelton and beyond. And still our politicians continue to conspire with the suburbs on regional projects designed to further exploit Bridgeport and keep us down–hence all of the talk of a “regional” sanitary waste system. (Funny how we never hear any discussion of a truly “regional” school system… Bridgeport kids able to freely choose to go to Trumbull, Fairfield or Westport schools!)
Bridgeport, if it is ever to regain its economic health, must end the sewage-treatment pact with Trumbull and flush any notion of regional “cooperation” in this regard down our municipal-policy toilet.
Trumbull et al. have been waging a successful economic war on Bridgeport for 50-plus years; it would be criminal for our current leadership to ignore that fact and continue our disastrous relationship with this hostile municipality into the future–much less allow them to gain complete control of this economic development “ace in the hole” through any further cooperation, per a “regional” system.
Indeed, if Bridgeport is ever to regain its economic health, it will need all of its sanitary waste capacity for the rebuilding of its once-prodigious tax base, and must inform its economic enemy, the municipality of Trumbull, it must disconnect from our sewage system within a reasonable length of time (e.g., 3-5 years). (Would the US give Iran plutonium?!)
Truly, if the Finch Administration inks another sewer deal with Trumbull, or tries to “regionalize” our sewage system, it must be taken to task through the courts and the voting booth by the people of Bridgeport. We must remember our high taxes and failing school system are a direct result of the purloining of our tax base by Trumbull through the parasitic attachment to our sanitary waste system–the latter being the sine qua non of Trumbull’s economic and residential development.
It is time to take back our city from the Gold Coast/suburbs and their Bridgeport lackeys in Bridgeport municipal government. It is time to flush out our political sewers and make clean government a reality in Bridgeport.
Every Bridgeport taxpayer needs to let Mayor Finch (who hails from Trumbull, with his family still based there) and their city councilpersons know we will no longer facilitate Trumbull’s arrogant prosperity through our demise. Bridgeport assets for Bridgeporters only! Trumbull needs to build its own sewage plants and disconnect from Bridgeport’s.
JEFF KOHUT lives.
And he is about to give JML a run for his money with gigabyte usage on OIB.
Welcome back, Jeff.
Hey OIBers. How’s this for a contradiction in policies…
First we have from the CT Post:
Bridgeport ed board endorses school safety measure
BRIDGEPORT — The state-appointed city school board gave its blessing Monday to a plan to keep high school students safe from bullies and gangs on their way to and from school by creating safe school corridors.
The corridors would ring Central, Bassick, and Harding high schools with video cameras and would be staffed by trained volunteers for 15 minutes before school and up to a half hour after school.
Then we have a video on Viddy.com of a fight in the cafeteria in Central High School
www .viddy.com/video/54e2a879-86df-4ad4-8f86-719c599d2a59
Hey Vallas, clean up your own house first before you decide to become Bridgeport’s Top Cop in your spare time.
This guy’s gotta go.
I want Vallas out because I think he has an agenda that is inconsistent with my aspirations for the remediation of the Bridgeport school system. The man should distance himself from Mario Testa and Fabrizi.
However, I do agree with these steps to make the schools safe. Kids who feel safe will do better in class.
But let’s start within the four walls of the schools we have today before running off at the hip and getting the BOE to approve a plan for video monitoring neighborhoods with volunteers from Faith Based Organizations for which we have not identified any funding sources based upon a student getting killed after midnight in an area that would not even be covered by Sheriff Vallas’ plans.
That’s what I meant. “Faith Based Organizations” need to preach about salvation and the good word. They want a role in politics, they pay taxes on their property like you and me.
So Bridgeport is getting shortchanged? We are getting paid a fixed amount instead of based on individual usage for Trumbull?
The WPCA doesn’t charge Bridgeport residents a fixed amount, it’s variable and based on water usage. So why not do so for Trumbull? Why give them a better deal? And then we get our taxes raised? By the way, Bridgeport sewer fees are based on the water usage even if the water doesn’t actually flow into the sewer, as is the case with lawn watering, power washing, car washing, etc. Not sure they do good job of informing on this issue.
Went by Black Rock and not a single voter there. If this is the case at Black Rock I imagine some precinct like Dunbar might not even have one vote all day.
*** donj, do you really think anybody cares about this “dull” sacrificial GOP lamb election? *** FORGETABOUTIT ***
Well ain’t that the shit …