April 2, 2014

Bristol officials cringe at New Britain comparison

Most every time a Bristol official seeks to point to a place that's failing to do what government should, they target nearby New Britain.
Case in point: At Monday's budget hearing, Finance Vice Chairman John Smith said the city has to be willing to pay for a quality educational system and other quality of life necessities.
"If we don't do that, there's a community not too far to our east which has never done that," he said, adding that it's the kind of place where they snatch $10 million out of the water department's surplus and borrow money to buy textbooks.
"I don't ever want to be like that community," Smith said.
City Councilor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu said that New Britain has become a city with a group that is "extremely well off" and a much larger "strata of people living barely at the line of poverty."

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