BRISTOLTODAY.COM

CT Humane Society under fire

2010-01-05T18:50:00.001-05:00

Consumer reporter George Gombossy has an interesting story about possible problems at the Connecticut Humane Society. Read it on his ctwatchdog.com site.
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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Colapietro challenger emerges

2010-01-05T16:58:00.000-05:00

A political newcomer – Jason Welch, 37, of Bristol – is taking aim at the office held by 17-year incumbent state Sen. Tom Colapietro, a Bristol Democrat.

Welch, an attorney, said Tuesday that it’s crucial the state set itself on a course for future growth by cutting both spending and taxes.

“I don’t think we have a lot of time to get the ship righted,” Welch said during an interview at the Riverside Avenue office of city Republican Chairman T.J. Barnes.

Colapietro, who has represented the 31^st District since 1992, said he’s never heard of Welch, but “everybody’s got a right to run.”

“I don’t really care who runs against me,” he said. “If they think they can do better, and they can convince voters, they can have the job.”

Read Wednesday's Bristol Press for the rest. I'll put a link up when the story is online.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Dodd seeks to preserve jobs

2010-01-04T23:08:00.001-05:00

Read my story here about U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd's tour of a Bristol factory Tuesday.
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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

The downtown hearing tonight

2010-01-04T23:06:00.001-05:00

Don Monti, president of Renaissance

Here is reporter Jackie Majerus' main story as well as a sidebar about the selection of Jennifer Janelle as a key player to negotiate the deal with the Long Island-based Renaissance Downtowns.
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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

McCauley injured in line of duty

2010-01-04T22:59:00.000-05:00

City Councilor Kevin McCauley, a Bristol firefighter, apparently shattered his ankle on a fire call over the weekend, according to a couple of colleagues.
McCauley slipped on some black ice while responding to a Middle Street fire call, they said, and went down with all of his gear on.
Mayor Art Ward told the crowd at tonight's downtown hearing that McCauley was on a call and broke his ankle.
He's said to be in real pain and facing some pretty serious reconstruction surgery.
I'll try to talk to McCauley Tuesday to get the real story. Let's hope he's back on his feet soon.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Dodd backs rail and busway, which may be an impossible choice

2010-01-04T16:04:00.002-05:00

As U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd headed for the door of a local spring company on his way to Berlin, someone asked how long it would take to get there.

“It would only take 20 minutes by train,” piped up Mike Nicastro, president of the Central Connecticut Chambers of Commerce.

Dodd laughed.

The senator said that New Britain is pushing for completion of a busway between the Hardware City and Hartford while Bristol is lobbying instead for commuter rail along an existing track.

“We ought to be able to have multiple choices,” Dodd said, with both options chugging forward to help improve the region’s transportation infrastructure.

But it doesn’t appear possible to have both the busway and a revived passenger rail service.

A stretch of track between New Britain and Newington doesn’t have room for both the busway and the rail, transport officials have said, so it appears that only one alternative can move forward.

See the whole story here.
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Dunlap eyed for Board of Finance slot?

2010-01-04T15:34:00.003-05:00

The word floating around political circles is that Mayor Art Ward plans to tap his former campaign treasurer, Bob Dunlap, for another term on the Board of Finance.
Ward merely smiled coyly when I asked him about it.
He said he would let me know his pick on Thursday, when he sends it out to the City Council.
But there's no doubt the mayor is at least talking about the possibility of selectin Dunlap for the volunteer post on the powerful finance panel. Dunlap served on the board until 2006.
Ward flirted with the idea back in 2008, but ultimately didn't pick Dunlap, who was fined for failing to follow campaign finance laws properly during the 2007 race.
Dunlap lost his finance panel seat during former Mayor William Stortz's term. He was regarded as a conservative on spending and usually allied with the more tight-fisted members among the city's fiscal overseers.
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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Colapietro denies violating election law

2010-01-01T22:05:00.001-05:00

Shortly after November’s city election, state Sen. Tom Colapietro declared that he would continue to see reelection “as long as those Republicans keep calling me names.”

Colapietro’s comment to The Bristol Press, which came during a long discussion of the budget situation, was reported within months on the Bristol Blog and later in a piece in the newspaper.

But that wasn’t the end of the story.

Last month, the chair of the city Republican Party, T.J. Barnes filed an election law complaint against the longtime senator for allegedly failing to establish a campaign committee within 10 days of his declaration of an intent to seek reelection.

Barnes said in a December 7 letter to the state’s Elections Enforcement Commission that he believed Colapietro violated election law and should be punished accordingly.

Colapietro said recently he was flabbergasted at the complaint.

“I didn’t announce. That’s an outright lie,” Colapietro said.

The senator said he made an offhand remark to a reporter who passed it along to readers accurately.

But, he said, he never made any sort of formal declaration of his intentions.

“Enough is enough,” the veteran senator said. “This is really ridiculous.”

“After 17 years, this is all they could find? I must be pretty pure,” Colapietro said.

He said he couldn’t believe the GOP was so desperate to nail him within something that it would force the commission to squander its time and the taxpayers’ money on a complaint that is so clearly frivolous.

Kevin Ahern, a staff attorney for the commission, wrote to the senator on December 17 that its staff would review the complaint to see if there was “legal sufficiency” to pursue it further.

He told Colapietro there was no need to take any action yet.

Ahern said that if the commission believed that it needed to gather more facts, it would let Colapietro know.

If the commission decides a violation of election law occurred, it may assign a hearing officer and schedule a date to probe the facts of the case.

State law requires that candidates for state office establish a campaign committee within 10 days of announcing their intention to run. Colapietro has not yet done so.

He said that when he makes a clear, formal announcement, he’ll follow the law as he has always done.

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Copyright 2010. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Manslaughter, DUI charges lodged in Sunday accident

2009-12-30T15:47:00.000-05:00

Driver in fatal accident charged today.
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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Jay Leno takes a jab at Bristol business

2009-12-30T13:49:00.000-05:00

A liquor store in Bristol got some free publicity this month when Jay Leno, whose television show airs nightly on NBC, showcased one of its commercials in his “Bad Ads” segment.
Crazy Bruce’s Liquors’ 30-second spot was featured along with crummy commercials from political candidates and other enterprises across the country.
The spot itself features a man singing – badly -- about the store’s products to the tune of “The Beer Barrel Polka.”
Leno said the liquor store commercial appeared to feature “a small business owner who may have been sampling his own wares.”
The store, which has locations in Bristol and West Hartford, apparently didn’t mind much.
Crazy’s Bruce’s website proudly features the spot under the headline “Home of the world’s worst commercial.”
It has links to both the commercial and to Leno’s jab at the spot.
It even has a poll asking people whether they think it’s the world’s worst commercial. As of Wednesday afternoon, only one in four agreed that it was.
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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

GOP selects new town committee next week

2009-12-30T11:35:00.002-05:00

City Republicans will pick a new GOP town committee at caucus sessions slated for 7 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 7.

The caucus, which will be held in the City Council chambers at City Hall, will pick 42 people to serve on the volunteer committee for the next two years. Each of the city’s three districts picks 14 members to serve on the committee.

All registered Republicans are eligible to attend – and to seek one of the committee seats.

For more information, call Tom Barnes, the city’s GOP chair, at (860) 573-4279.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Emergency shelter opened at senior center

2009-12-29T17:04:00.004-05:00

Note from Mayor Art Ward:
As a result of the gusting winds and extremely cold temperatures, the gymnasium at the Bristol Senior Center was opened as a temporary shelter for those experiencing power outages and was staffed by members of the Bristol CERT Team.

At the time, the city was experiencing over 18,000 wind-related power outages throughout the city and extremely high winds were causing street light outages and falling limbs in many areas.

Authorities have informed us that most, if not all, of the power should be restored within the next two hours and that the gusting winds should diminish within the next 3 to 4 hours,

We will continue to monitor the situation until we deem that the shelter is no longer needed.

Update at 6:20 p.m. -- Read reporter Freesia Singngam's story about the weather woes.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

How would YOU illustrate a Bristol in 2035 story?

2009-12-29T16:56:00.001-05:00

Anybody have any suggestions?
And if you're a budding artist, cartoonist or other illustrator, assuming you can work fast, you could offer up a vision of the city 25 years from now that we could use with the story. C'mon, artistic-minded folks. My stick figures just don't cut it.
Maybe, though, Bristol will look like this scene from Youth Journalism International's Senior Cartoonist Justin Skaradosky:

That was Justin's image of what might happen in Bristol if the Press vanished.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Power out in Plainville & part of Bristol

2009-12-29T15:57:00.000-05:00

The wind knocked out power to nearly everyone in Plainville and 15 percent of Bristol, too, according to Connecticut Light & Power's outage report website.
That means, God forbid, some people may not have power for their computers and are thus, heaven help them, unable to read the Bristol Blog. Let's hope most of them have charged-up laptops so they can stay with us.
Don't worry, folks, help is on the way. The power company is pretty good at getting the juice flowing again.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Yet more unnecessary secrecy from the police

2009-12-28T18:58:00.004-05:00

Give the police this: they're consistent.
But just as it was wrong for them to refuse to name the man who allegedly ran over Henry Waye on George Street last March, killing the boy, it is wrong for them to decline to identify the driver who plowed into Jeff Dziob at his Rosemary Lane home yesterday. Dziob, 38, died, leaving a wife and two children behind.
The police said she's in the hospital so they can't identify her, a totally irrelevant point.
Telling the public who was behind the wheel during an accident is not the same as accusing them of a crime. It's just telling the community vital information that we have a right to know.
All of this unnecessary secrecy just breeds gossip and discontent.
The police need to reconsider a dumb policy.

Update Tuesday, 9:50 a.m. -- Channel 3 in Hartford identifies the driver as 49-year-old Fran Ablesk.
The TV station also has another story about a standoff with police in Bristol last night.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Twitter feeds about Bristol

2009-12-28T17:53:00.000-05:00

On the right side, I've added Twitter feeds showing the five most recent Twitters, by anyone in the world, that mention "Bristol, Connecticut, "Bristol, CT" or "Bristol Press."
Please be aware that while most are inoffensive, occasionally something sordid is sent out by some twisted soul. There is no way for me to weed out the worst. It is what it is.
But I have watched for awhile and I think the vast majority of what will scroll by is either interesting or at least inoffensive. I apologize in advance for the inevitable something awful that some of you will eventually see.
In the meantime, have a taste of Twitter, by those too lazy even to blog.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Taxpayers can charge it

2009-12-28T12:17:00.001-05:00

The city's taking credit cards for property tax payments, if you're foolish enough to pay the extra fee to do it. Here's the story.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Public hearing on Jan. 4 about Renaissance selection

2009-12-28T12:15:00.000-05:00

The city's providing a chance for everyone to weigh in on the Bristol Downtown Development Corp.'s pick to lead the revitalization of the former mall site. The hearing is slated for January 4. Click here for the story.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Tom Barnes tapped for BDDC

2009-12-28T12:12:00.000-05:00

With former Mayor John Leone's resignation from the Bristol Downtown Development Corp., filling the empty board of directors seat falls on the mayor and City Council.
But it looks like Mayor Art Ward's choice to appoint Tom Barnes to the slot is unlikely to prove a problem. Read the story here.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

What Bristol was like 100 years ago

2009-12-28T12:09:00.000-05:00

On New Year’s Eve at the dawn of 1909, the city’s dignitaries gathered as usual on the first floor of Hose Company No. 1 on School Street around long tables where they gulped down hot coffee and feasted on steaming clams.
They were from a generation that knew Civil War veterans, who were dying off at an alarming rate, but already familiar with automobiles puttering along city streets. Click here to read the rest of the story.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Happy Hollydays

2009-12-23T22:30:00.000-05:00

Don't miss reporter Jackie Majerus' Christmas Eve story about Holly, a dog that's finally hit the jackpot after a decade of sometimes horrible abuse. See it here.
And, yes, the big sap on the left in the picture is Frank Johnson, longtime Zoning Commission chair and head of the Bristol Downtown Development Corp.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Barbara Franklin backs Foley for governor

2009-12-22T14:57:00.001-05:00

Former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Barbara Franklin, a Bristol resident, is among the prominent Republicans that gubernatorial hopeful Tom Foley listed among his backers this week.

Foley, a former ambassador, is pushing to win the GOP's endorsement in May for his campaign to succeed outgoing Gov. Jodi Rell, who is stepping down.

There are a handful of contenders from both parties for the state's highest post, though it remains unclear why anybody would want the job.

Mills eyes budget woes

2009-12-22T10:46:00.002-05:00

Here's what Republican city Councilor David Mills had to say about the budget situation following yesterday's meeting with department heads at City Hall:

It was a very sobering meeting today, but nothing unexpected. I really believe that the unfunded or partially funded mandates need to be publicized. They are continually being referred to, yet very few know or understand what they are.
The mandate outlined today by Dr. Streiffer concerning professional development of staff that could cost upward of $400-$500,000 for our community is ridiculous. It is another example of our legislators being totally out of touch with their constituents.If 30-40% of his budget is mandated by the State, then any costs have to be deducted from the remaining 60% which is very limiting. Translating this into dollars means 30-40 million dollars are set in our local budget by the State, and this is only for education.
Unfortunately, most of the burden to reduce budgets fall on the municipal employees.We should look at all possibilities before staff reductions are considered.Contracts have been negotiated in good faith, and when salaries were not increased substantially in the past, employees were offered more attractive working conditions or increased benefits in lieu of additional monies.
These benefits are now very expensive, and make up a large portion of our budget. They are also subject to negotiations which puts the burden on our Mayor and Personal director as well as the Union negotiators.It is not a pleasant position to be in, but I am confident that everyone is up to the task.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Renaissance looms for downtown?

2009-12-21T21:59:00.003-05:00

Bristol Downtown Development Corp. on Monday named Long Island developer Renaissance Downtowns as its choice to tackle the city-owned former mall property.
“Finally we’re at the start,” said BDDC board member John Lodovico. “We’re at the gate.”
The 5-1 vote came after Don Monti, president of Renaissance and Bristol developer Ed D’Amato Sr. told BDDC board members that they’d reached an agreement --D’Amato would withdraw his application to be the city’s preferred developer and Monti would make D’Amato part of his team.
“We’re just stepping aside so this thing can go on,” D’Amato said.
Monti said D’Amato’s company has expertise in Bristol.
“They would provide us with consulting services throughout the process,” said Monti. “There is no formal partnership.”
Board member Jennifer Janelle cast the sole vote in opposition, saying she wanted to have more than two developers to choose from.
Read the whole story in Tuesday's Bristol Press.
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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Colapietro still says no Sunday liquor sales

2009-12-21T17:35:00.000-05:00

Press release from state Sen. Tom Colapietro, a Bristol Democrat who is co-chair of the General Law Committee and a staunch critic of proposals to allow the sale of alcohol on Sundays:

SEN. COLAPIETRO TAKES ISSUE WITH NEW REPORT ON SUNDAY LIQUOR SALES

HARTFORD— State Sen. Thomas A. Colapietro (D-Bristol), the Senate Chairman of the General Law Committee and a longtime opponent of the Sunday sale of alcohol in Connecticut, wrote today to his General Assembly colleagues and criticized a recent Program Review and Investigations Committee report which concluded in part that Connecticut could anticipate an additional $7-$8 million annually in excise and sales tax revenues from the sale of wine and spirits if Sunday liquor sales were allowed.
“Once again the powers that be have convinced the Program Review Committee that Sunday sales will be a so-called boon to Connecticut,” Sen. Colapietro wrote today in part. “Nothing can be farther from the truth.”
“The only real beneficiaries will be those who make the alcohol and others such as the grocery stores who will not hire one single person. All they have to do is pull their curtain down,” Sen. Colapietro said. “On the other hand, the package store is a small business that pays taxes on their buildings, payroll, etc. They would have to heat their store in the winter, cool it in the summer, give up their family day off or pay more to keep someone there.
“There is only one way to gain revenue, and that is to sell more booze. Is that the legislature’s intent? I think not! Do we really want to put small businesses out of business?
“I do listen to my constituents, and not one wants to give up their only day off and give up their customers for convenience. The border towns do not have a legitimate argument,” he concluded.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com