Tracking the rail project in Wallingford

As published in the Record Journal, Monday August 8, 2011

By Mary Ellen Godin
Record-Journal staff
mgodin@record-journal.com
(203) 317-2255

WALLINGFORD — Travel speeds, downtown traffic, land acquisition and changes in the Judd Square area are some of the concerns being raised by the public over plans for commuter rail service from New Haven to Springfield, Mass.

Plans call for upgrading signals along the 62-mile stretch, which could begin as early as next spring. But locally, the public voiced concerns at a meeting last week over a proposal to move the train stop to Judd Square, with an elevated platform and parking for 200 cars.

The state Department of Transportation held the first of many informational sessions last Thursday with residents and town officials over where and how to lay out the new station. The rail line will increase commuter and inter-city service while also providing high-speed Acela transit along the corridor.

Springfield will become a central connector with service to Boston, Vermont and finally to Montreal. The project consists of double tracking 62 miles of track, upgrading the signals, building new stations in North Haven, Newington and Enfield, relocating Wallingford’s station and building new elevated platforms, walkways and parking garages in each town.

“Nothing has been set in stone,” said DOT Project Manager John Bernick.
He asked town officials to create a panel to act as an advisory board throughout the project.

Wallingford has the most crossings of any municipality along the corridor — 10, eight with signals and two unsignaled gates. The most heavily trafficked areas are Parker, Hall, Ward and Quinnipiac streets. The town now has five or six trains passing through per day. The rail project calls for 25.

Public officials have said they are concerned that more trains, which can go as fast as 110 mph, would pose a safety threat to residents and disrupt nearby businesses.

City Councilor Jerry Farrell opposed Amtrak’s taking any land from Most Holy Trinity Church. Bernick assured him that wouldn’t happen.

Farrell also he had concerns about 25 trains roaring through a very densely populated section of town every day. The crossings are at grade. He was assured that just because the trains had the potential to reach 110 mph didn’t mean they would travel that fast through Wallingford or other high density areas. “No matter where you place it or combine it, grade crossings are going to be a problem,” Bernick said.

A traffic study conducted by Wilbur Smith & Associates reviewed the traffic signals at Parker, Hall, Ward and Quinnipiac streets and gave several of them failing grades should the anticipated commuter and intercity service start with no changes in existing traffic routes. Solutions include some road widening in certain areas, signal changes and right-turn-only lanes.

Residents of Judd Square and the nearby area expressed concerns that their parking, already in short supply, would be impacted. Bernick said no parking would be taken away and Amtrak plans to use land now housing a warehouse for that purpose.

There were only rough schematics of the site, parking garage and walk-up from Route 5 because project leaders hope to gather more public input on the location of the new train platform and design specifications. Judd Square is not a definitive site — moving the stop several blocks to the north has also been discussed — but is the best for the project, Bernick said.

Councilor Craig Fishbein questioned the cost of the project and the amount Amtrak receives annually in subsidies to support its operation. He said that without an obvious demand by people working in other towns, he didn’t see how the operation could sustain itself. The cost of the project is set at $647 million, and a $110 million shortfall is expected for the Hartford-to-Springfield leg, which planners expect will come from the federal government.

“You would be better off giving the money to the people,” Fishbein said.

Bernick replied that demand has already been proven and the project will offer significant economic development opportunities to communities with train stations. He also said increased usage of Metro-North has made it the most profitable service in the U.S.

Other benefits are that the ability to travel to Boston and New York in one to two hours could make office space in Meriden or Wallingford more attractive. Shuttle buses to and from industrial parks are also a possibility and the station will connect with the public service bus lines.

The public meetings in the cities and towns along the rail line will become part of the environmental impact study expected this fall. Upgrades to the signals could begin as early as next spring, Bernick said.

Gail DeLucia, president of the Judd Square Homeowners Association, got on board with the project after she learned the residents would not lose any parking. She was careful to say she was speaking as an individual and not for the group. But the sluggish economy and job market offer more reasons to invite commerce and create jobs.

“We have to look to the future,” DeLucia said, “or we don’t get any solution.”

Muscular Dystrophy Fundraiser - No more Jerry, but Jim Zandri is still raising funds for MDA

As Published in the Record Journal, Tuesday August 9, 2011

By Russell Blair
Record-Journal staff
rblair@record-journal.com
(203) 317-2225

WALLINGFORD — Jim Zandri said it was Jerry Lewis who inspired him to start his own muscular dystrophy fundraiser, which continues for its 15th year next month.

“His involvement inspired me to do what I did,” Zandri said.

Lewis, who has been the face of the Muscular Dystrophy Association for nearly 60 years. won’t be hosting this year’s national telethon for the first time since 1966, but Zandri said he doesn’t think the departure will hurt fundraising efforts.

“The cause is still there, this is still needed,” Zandri said.

Before last week, when Lewis’ departure was announced, the MDA had already prepared changes to this year’s telethon. The event, which used to last 21 hours, will shift to prime time, from 6 p.m. to midnight on the Sunday before Labor Day. Traditionally, the telethon began Sunday night and continued into Monday.

Steve Fredrickson, executive director of the MDA’s New Haven district, said the changes were adopted for a number of reasons.
“We wanted to bring it into prime time,” Fredrickson said. “It’s the 21st century; we’re trying to capitalize more on Internet donations.”

Fredrickson has been with the MDA since January. He said he joined because he believed in the organization’s mission.

“Sunday I had my first chance to go to an MDA summer camp, and really see our funds at work,” Fredrickson said.

Zandri said that Lewis’ departure didn’t change too much in the planning of the event, and that he’d expected Lewis, 85, to step down from the association in the next few years.

“At some point it had to continue on without him,” Zandri said.

In a statement, R. Rodney Howell, MDA chairman of the board, said, “Jerry Lewis is a world-class humanitarian and we’re forever grateful to him for his more than half century of generous service to MDA. We will not be replacing him as MDA national chairman, and he will not be appearing on the telethon.”

The MDA has become synonymous with Lewis, Zandri said, but it was important that the organization create its own identity. It’s been a slow transition, but Zandri said that he thinks people are aware of the MDA for reasons other than Lewis.

“There’s a need for a transition,” he said. “It’s a new generation. My kids don’t know who Jerry Lewis is.”

Zandri expects turnout for the event to be the same as in years past.

“Most people come regardless,” he said. “I don’t expect anybody to abandon the cause because Jerry Lewis is gone. People support the cause because they’re affected personally by it.”

Fredrickson said that the MDA is expecting viewership of the telethon to be up this year because of the primetime hours.

Zandri’s telethon party will be hosted at Zandri’s Stillwood Inn, 1074 S. Colony Road, from 5:30 p.m. to midnight on Sept. 4. For a $50 donation to the MDA, guests have access to a buffet, an open bar, dancing and a silent auction. Zandri said that in 14 years, the local event has raised more than $300,000.

“There’s no gimmick,” Zandri said. “It’s just a donation, and it’s a good time.”

Lemonade? Don’t try it!

This op-ed piece was written by Rich Lowry who is the editor of The National Review. It was published in the Record Journal on Sunday August 7, 2011

There’s no more poignant symbol of American childhood than the lemonade stand, evocative of long, lazy summer days and pie-in-the-sky entrepreneurial dreams.

It inevitably was a subject for a Norman Rockwell print, with a brassy kid confidently hawking cups for 5 cents each. If Rockwell were to update the image today, he might have to include an officer of the law nosing around the stand to ensure its compliance with all relevant ordinances.

In various localities around the country this summer, cops have raided and shut down lemonade stands. The incidents get — and deserve — national attention as telling collisions between classic Americana and the senseless pettifogging that is increasingly the American Way.

There should be an easy rule of thumb for when enforcement of a regulation has gone too far: When it makes kids cry.

Setting up a lemonade stand has always been the occasion for early lessons about the importance of hustle and perseverance, and some business basics — like location, location, location. It shouldn’t be the occasion for dealing with the unreasoning dictates of The Man.

Police in Coralville, Iowa, a few weeks ago conducted a sweep and shut down three lemonade stands, some within minutes of their opening. The offenders had started their renegade operations the weekend of an annual bike ride across the state. The town requires vendors to have a permit during the days of the event. None of the perps did, including one 4-year-old girl who shamelessly made $4 before police intervened.

One mother said she could only laugh when the police told her the cost of a permit was $400. Uncomprehending, her kids cried. They figured only the inadequacy of their handmade signs could have made the city’s law enforcement want to put them out of business.

A Coralville civic eminence subsequently explained that the ordinance was in place to protect the health of the bike riders, who are apparently robust enough to bike 472 miles but might be felled by 6 ounces of lemonade.

In McAllen, Texas, two kids were shut down and their grandmother threatened with a fine on similar grounds. Audaciously, the youngsters started selling lemonade for 50 cents a cup in a park without a health permit or licensed food handlers to prepare or serve their lemony libation. Hoping only to fund the upkeep of their two hermit crabs, these two children had stumbled into a murky world way over their heads.

In Midway, Ga., three girls were told they needed a business license, peddler’s permit and food permit to set up a lemonade stand on their front lawn. It might have taken all summer just to navigate the bureaucracy necessary to begin selling the lemonade. The chief of police explained why she had to act to protect the public from the unauthorized sale of the unknown substance purporting to be “lemonade”: “We were not aware of how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade, of what the lemonade was made with.”

Chances are that it was made of the usual dangerous cocktail of lemon juice, sugar and water. If children — or their parents — aren’t to be trusted to prepare lemonade, presumably people lured by the prospect of a cool drink on a hot day can calculate the risks on their own and take their pocket change elsewhere if they feel safe only with professional-quality product. Invariably, the parents of illicit lemonade stand vendors protest to the authorities, “but they’re just kids.” That should be a clinching, self-evident argument. But not when an unbending legalism is ascendant, and there’s a law for everything. It’s in this spirit that we pat down children in the security lines of airports.

People in authority are afraid ever to be caught rendering common-sense judgments.

For now, the lemonade-stand crackdowns are a bridge too far. They usually bring cries of public outrage and embarrassed backpedaling from officials. So belly up to the lemonade stand — while you still can.

Some object to Simpson parking deal - Petition campaign seeks to force referendum

As published in the Record Journal, Thursday August 11, 2011

By Robert Cyr
Record-Journal staff
rcyr@record-journal.com
(203) 317-2224

WALLINGFORD — A group of residents is trying to collect thousands of signatures to fight the town’s half-million dollar investment to improve an uptown parking lot during a 30-year use agreement.

The Town Council approved the agreement with four property owners Tuesday night. It gives the town the authority to make improvements worth $500,000 to the lot and make it available for public use, but it also requires the town to provide maintenance for 30 years. Robert Gross, who has run unsuccessfully for the council as a Democrat, began a petition drive Wednesday to overturn the council’s decision under the referendum provision of the Town Charter. He has until Sept. 8 to collect signatures from 2,491 voters — 10 percent of the registered voters in town. If he meets his goal, the council has 30 days to rescind the vote or else the matter will go to a town wide referendum.

“I don’t care who owns the property — I don’t feel that the town should pay to pave and maintain a privately owned parking lot,” Gross said. “It’s up to the people to decide whether this is a reasonable issue or not. This is just democracy at work.”

But there’s more at stake than the town simply sprucing up the 130-space parking area behind four businesses on Simpson Court, off North Main Street, said William Comerford, who keeps close watch on town government and is a member of the group Concerned Citizens of Wallingford.

Comerford claims the business relation­ship between a town councilor and one of the property owners involved in the agreement represents a conflict of interest.

“We feel the people need to know what’s going on,” he said. Town Council Vice Chairman Jerry Farrell Jr. recently opened a law business on the second floor over TD Bank North, 2 North Main Street, adjacent to the parking lot. The building is owned by a limited liability company that owns a portion of the lot and lists John McGuire as its principal. McGuire is also listed as principal of the company that owns a neighboring building, home to Body & Soul Day Spa, 26 N. Main Street, according to state records.

Farrell denied any conflict, saying he doesn’t pay rent on the business space he has been using for the past two months for his legal consulting firm.

“I’m not Jack McGuire’s tenant, I’m there as a guest,” Farrell said. “I don’t pay him any money, so I don’t see any particular gain or advantage for me to voting on it.”

Town Engineer John Thompson said Mayor William W. Dickinson Jr. told him to hold off on any improvements to the lot until the matter of a potential referendum is cleared up, but to continue preliminary work. The council approved the project with a bid waiver, allowing the town to get started right away without a competitive bidding process, Thompson said.

The first step in repairs will be to fix a long section of concrete wall that supports the lot and has been damaged by freezing and water. Work will also include paving, grading and drainage improvements.

“If the wall failed for some reason, it would compromise our whole investment,” Thompson said.

Dickinson said the project is being paid for by revenue from the Wallingford Electric Division, and the town pays nothing to use the space. The town has traditionally plowed and maintained the lot, along with three others it leases, he said.

Republican Councilor Craig Fishbein voted against the lease agreement, and said it was unwise to invest town money in a privately owned property.

“In this economy, $500,000 is a lot of money, and I think it could’ve been spent better elsewhere,” he said. “It’s a tough decision because you’re trying to portray a safe, well maintained downtown area, but the long-term outlay is bad. On top of the outlay, we have the ongoing cost of maintenance.”

Democrat Nicholas Economopoulos was the only other councilor to vote against the lease.

“I don’t think we’re in a position to improve private owners’ property; they’re some of the more affluent people in town,” he said. “There is not one item of proof, one report, that those improvements will help the town or increase people shopping in that part of town.”

But Mario DiNatale supports the agreement. The local businessman owns East Side Market on East Center Street and the former Town Hall at 350 Center St., now occupied by offices.

“The lot is used by everybody, so maybe it’s not so bad,” he said. “They’re not paying anything, so if the town’s going to use it, they should fix it.”

Parking is already available in the lot behind Simpson Court, but the area is in poor condition and not well lighted. Still, Don Blynn wonders why the project is necessary, since the lot is already getting a lot of use.

“I’m going to vote no on the half-million dollars,” said Blynn, who was having dinner with his wife Ginny Wednesday at Half Moon Cafe on Simpson Court. “The parking lot fills every night anyways.”

Ginny Blynn also thinks “the money could be spent better somewhere else,” she said, “like paying for sports or schools.”