Hartford News - Southside Media

01/29/2025

Let The People Have Their Say
Two of the city’s long-term concerns are the effectiveness or lack of the same: policing and education. For both, what is needed is more input from the residents before leadership appointments are made.
COMMENTARY BY ANNE GOSHDIGIAN
Questions, anyone? Last week Hartford’s mayor announced his appointment of a new Chief of Police, Tyrell McCoy from Philadelphia, subject to confirmation via a vote by the City Council. When former Chief Jason Thody resigned in March of 2024 after what was a contentious 6 years during which he earned little public support and an eventual vote of “no confidence from the rank-and-file HPD officers and their union. Thody was appointed by former mayor Luke Bronin in 2019 after his previous appointee, Chief David Rosado, resigned after one year on the job, allegedly due to conflict with Bronin whom Rosado felt was micro-managing his HPD leadership. Before Thody was confirmed, there were two public question and answer sessions that were well-attended where Hartford residents held his feet to the fire with a bombardment of questions regarding his previous tenure as an HPD officer who had made several missteps both on and off the job, and even others about his personal life. It wasn’t pretty, but the two sessions made for some interesting political theater. When Thody resigned, he was replaced by HPD Officer Kenny Howell as interim COP, where he has spent 10 months leading the department. Was he a potential candidate for the new COP job? And were there any others? No disrespect to Tyrell McCoy, whose qualifications appear to be solid. However, if there were candidates within HPD did the city administration consider or interview them?

Some residents have voiced their disapproval/disappointment of the mayor for not holding a public Q&A with his choice for the ‘top cop” job before his appointment was announced. The announcement itself was somewhat odd in reference to its location—not at City Hall and not at the Public Safety Complex that houses HPD—but at Barnard Park on South Green, where Arulampalam and McCoy stood with a small handful of the mayor’s close associates for media coverage. There was no community presence and, I am told, no representation from HPD. A Hartford Courant article that followed the announcement quoted the mayor : “Arulampalam said the process of naming the next chief was the most “resident and community-led process” the city has ever engaged in. This included speaking with hundreds of adult and youth residents from “every spectrum, every community in this city.” Well, if that’s the case and it was indeed a “resident and community-led process”, it seems that process was pretty much kept under wraps. No, Mr. McCoy should have been introduced to the people of Hartford at a City Council l public comment session, or preferably at the Hartford Public Library Downtown where he could listen and respond to the residents’ questions, concerns, and ideas regarding policing in Hartford. I’m hoping Chief McCoy will be successful in his new position, and that he will welcome input from city residents. It would be beneficial if he chooses an open-door policy that eliminates the need for a layer of buffers between himself and the citizens, as is the case at City Hall when a resident requests a one-on-one with the mayor.

More questions from the public should—and really must!-- be forthcoming this spring when the search begins for a new Hartford Superintendent of Schools, as the current SoS Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez will end her 10 years in that role at the end of the current HPS semester. During that decade, many of the Hartford public schools have seen a deep decline for a variety of reasons—understaffing due to teacher frustration, dissatisfaction, a dumbing down of the curriculum, and salary issues has resulted in hundreds of HPS educators resigning or retiring. There are also budget issues that have resulted in programs and services being cut. Standardized test scores have remained below grade level, some AP courses have been eliminated, and some of the school buildings themselves are rife with problems of health and safety. The search for and appointment of a Superintendent is the responsibility of the Board of Education, which consists of 9 members—5 appointed by Hartford’s mayor and 4 elected. The BOE holds public meetings throughout the year where anyone can attend and sign up to speak to the Board. Most of those speakers come from the ranks of teachers and other in-school staff, union leaders, and sometimes the students themselves. But not frequently enough does the BOE hear from the parents and guardians whose children attend HPS. This is problematic, and the lack of their questions and input is detrimental to raising the level of student achievement and supporting the work of educators. PTO meetings are underattended in Hartford, compared to those in the towns surrounding Hartford. Sadly, many parents accept a child’s school report that shows they are being promoted to the next grade or will be graduating from high school. What they don’t know (because they don’t question) is that the child has trouble with reading , writing and math ; that the course was passed because 50 is now a passing grade at HPS; that the student is often disruptive but has not been disciplined for it nor has the parent been notified.
The traditional “open houses” in the first semester of every school year used to be have hundreds of family members touring the school hallways with their kids, and then having a one-on-one with each of their child’s subject teachers where the parents hear how their child is performing and then given advice on areas of needed improvement. Hartford teachers have told me that those traditional open houses are barely attended any more, and a teacher at a desk in his/her room on that evening will only see one or two parents, and sometimes…none. Parent involvement in the city schools is at a very, very low level, and this is a huge problem. Their non-presence, their silence, their lack of questioning their child’s education. Now is the time when they need to step up and speak out during the BOE’s SoS search, that will usually hold a public forum or two where the candidates for the job will each be able to put forth their qualifications, biography, ideas and more, and then take questions from those present. Stay tuned, parents, and stay involved in your children’s schools and their educations. It’s vital to their future.

01/24/2025

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01/23/2025

Brave New World?
Hartford’s top administration along with city-based insurance companies and Hartford Healthcare is toying with a plan to make the capital city an AI hub.

COMMENTARY BY ANNE GOSHDIGIAN
Artificial Intelligence. That’s an oxymoron for the ages that has been floating around nationwide including at the State Capitol for a few years now, and it gives me the creeps. “Intelligence”, in my view, refers to a trait found only in human beings and certain animals. But when it’s combined with “Artificial” it brings to mind Robby the Robot in the 1956 sci-fi flick Forbidden Planet, HAL, the talking computer of 2001: A Space Odyssey from 1968, and with robots R2 D2 and C-3PO from 1977’s Star Wars. All of those movies from three decades were blockbusters in their day, all of them entertaining amusing, and at times—pretty scary. That was Hollywood stuff that had no actual relation to real life, where the creators of and performers in these films did all the thinking.

So how has burgeoning AI affected our everyday lives already? Should we be happy about-self-driving cars (I shudder at the thought)? As a recent article in the Hartford Courant by development reporter Ken Gosselin noted, some AI is already in wide use, listing Siri and Alexa to answer questions and play music; chatbots; and virtual customer service. Even the self-service checkout lanes in the grocery stores that have eliminated many good-paying union jobs put their 2 cents in, unbidden. Like at Stop & Shop when I scan an item, and a regal voice calls out so all nearby can hear “Place your Star-Kist tuna in the bagging area.” This is why I don’t buy personal care items there. I mean really, “Place your Summer’s Eve do**he spray in the bagging area.”?

But enough with the cheap comedy No, this AI is serious business, especially when it comes to becoming a course in high school or college. That’s the last thing we need, particularly in Hartford where public high school students are often barely scratching by to reach grade level in reading and writing. In fact, some of those schools are awarding diplomas to those who haven’t earned enough credits to graduate. HPS is considering adding AI to the curriculum—it may already be in place. Say a student has to write a report or an essay. They put some key words and a couple of phrases into AI and the computer spits out the finished product. What are they learning? What skills are they gaining that will serve them in the future? AI creates lazy brains. Take the college application essays, My older son was writing his pre-AI back in 1991. I did not get involved, but when he’d written his he showed it to me. The first two sentences: “My mother screamed. Then she screamed again.” Now that’s an attention-grabber. Yes, he wrote about my labor when giving birth to his baby brother. He went on to write about how that experience had affected him and somehow led to writing more about his philosophies on life and what the future will hold when he reaches his education goals. After I read it, all I could say was that I had moaned several times but never screamed. He went on to receive his degree in Biology but never applied for it as a career. He’s now the father of two teenagers, a college freshman and a high school junior—two of my grandchildren. I called them and interviewed them seeking their thoughts about AI. Neither of their schools offered courses in it, and both of them were totally against it and wanted nothing to do with it. They both had straight A’s in the first semester and the college granddaughter made the Dean’s List.

As far as using AI in health care, I would be wary of any medical reports on my test results as to their accuracy if AI is used to create them. And insurance companies? Does AI get to be part of the decision-making as to whether my claim will be approved or denied?

They say “The mind is a terrible thing to waste”. Artificial Intelligence might prove to have some useful applications, but it should only be used sparingly and not as a substitute for true learning. Our first choice, young and old, should always be to put our human brains in gear and take it from there.

01/16/2025

|Welcome Home!
After more than 5 months overshadowed by the threat of homelessness, the intrepid displaced tenants of Hartford’s Concord Hills apartments are now safe and secure again.
BY ANNE GOSHDIGIAN
It all began on August 10th, 2024, when a fire—the third in less than 2 months—caused the immediate evacuation of 50 households and 100 people from their Sherbrooke Avenue apartment building. Allowed no time to take any of their possessions with them, outside it was a chaotic scene. The Red Cross showed up with water and some snacks, but later the “Angel of Edgewood”, Jendayi Scott-Miller, took over by providing meals and other necessities for them. By State statute, those displaced by a fire or other catastrophe must be housed temporarily until they can return to their homes. Unfortunately, the city placed them in low-end hotels/motels in Hartford and East Hartford where conditions were undesirable including mold on the walls, vermin, excessive noise and fighting from some unsavory characters living or hanging out there, and no cooking facilities This was especially difficult for those with children (including a newborn), the elderly, the disabled, and those with medical issues. To add to that, on August 29th tenants were allowed 15 minutes to return to their apartments to see what they could salvage, only were stunned to find that the property management had given master keys to men they’d hired to assess the damages but had instead robbed and vandalized the vacated apartments of tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of belongings.
In October, the city administration was forced to take action after a public outcry regarding the dreadful temporary housing had brought bad publicity to the city, and the most vulnerable tenants were then moved to better hotels/motels. By that time, the Concord Hills tenants had already created their own union, and supported by the CT Tenants Union had started a campaign in September to get back into their apartments that the Concord Hills owner—The GreyHill group out of New York—had not even begun to make repairs. So they made signs, showed up to speak at City Council, held rallies, protests, and press conferences in front of City Hall more than a dozen times in all. They had meetings with the mayor that went nowhere. They were stonewalled and dismissed, yet they persevered and did so with dignity. The mayor declared that the temporary housing would be cut off on December 10th, but again after more pushback from the residents and the public, it was extended to January 10th, 2025. After reneging on his promise to have the city go in to do the repair work, the mayor then enacted a lawsuit against GreyHill.
But something happened about 3 weeks ago that changed the course of the tenants’ shaky situation. GreyHill got busy with the repairs (perhaps because of the pending litigation). As of today, the ransacked and vandalized apartments, now fully repaired, have brought several of the tenants back home to Sherbrooke Avenue. Others have found alternate housing, and no one is homeless. The Hartford News interviewed some of them to express their feelings about their ordeal and also the happy outcome.
Mayra Melendez: |A black cloud illuminated us under a fire on August 10, 2024. Since then, 100 tenants were evacuated and relocated to various motels that were in unfit conditions for re-housing. The struggle was against the system, as the mayor, in his statement, claimed to be unaware of the magnitude of the fire 20 days later. The city of Hartford, the mayor, and all departments were, and still are, unprepared to handle cases that require importance and urgent solutions. Emergency aid stood with us, the marginalized tenants. The priority is to make a difference, and we tenants demonstrated that through our daily fight. A good vision is to support those affected, including babies, children, people with disabilities, pregnant mothers, individuals with medical conditions, etc. Over these five months, I have learned that no matter your status, you must make your voice heard and not feel intimidated by those who claim to be superior. The fight ends with your head held high, with dignity and respect. On January 10th, 2025, we were evicted from temporary housing by the mayor. GreyHill stepped in, directly contacting each tenant, and relocating us to proper apartments. GreyHill took responsibility, something the mayor never cared to do. The negotiations were made by us, the tenants. Today, we can say thank you—it was worth the fight. GreyHill has lifted the black cloud, and now we can turn on the light in our homes.
Marisol Navarro: Well, finally, most of us are in permanent housing. Most of us have our apartments. Thank God and to the GreyHill management, that in the last few weeks worked so hard with us finding us places to live whether it was their own buildings or other properties that they reached out to. As we all know, the mayor did not want to do an extension for those families. We're happy--at least I am happy-- to be back at Sherbrooke, which is what I wanted from the beginning But it doesn't stop here. Are we gonna continue to work and help other people, other families that go through the same thing we went through and are not aware of their rights? It's been a rough ride, but we're getting there.
Dave Richardson, Vice President of the Concord Hills tenant Union: GreyHill did more in less than a month than the city did in 5 months. The tenant union rescued us from becoming homeless. The mayor’s office was not coordinating with other relevant city departments such as Health and Human Services even though they met with them on a weekly basis. We had a tenant meeting with the mayor every 2 weeks. It all lasted so long. Secrecy is not a good thing.
Esther Fesale: An activist and advocate aligned with the CT Tenant Union who got involved because it is a “just cause”, feels Grey Hill was finally willing to help because it will “look good in court”. Right now she is working with the one Concord Hills displaced family that has not yet been re-housed. Their situation is dire as the mother is disabled and wheelchair-bound with a 3-month-old baby. They are not settled yet and are still temporarily housed by the city in a hotel but will be evicted by Friday January 17th and may become homeless. They apparently did not understand the time frame for relocating and Esther along with Sarah from the CT Tenant Union will be sitting down with them this week and try to help them find a place. When the mayor was asked to give them a little more time to cover the cost of a few more days in the hotel, he replied “Get it from GreyHill”.
I want to thank the large number of people from Hartford and several surrounding towns who followed the Hartford News coverage of this story since the beginning. They showed compassion and support for the situation these tenants were in, and I relayed it to the tenants who were grateful to know that so many cared about them. Also, big thanks go to Steve Goode from the CT Insider for also staying on top of this story in that publication.

01/16/2025

Most joined Facebook to communicate with our friends and families. It morphed into an advertising, marketing platform. Many companies use it to promote their products and organizations have relied on it to share community information in a cost-effective way . Facebook is no longer meet-ing my needs. I rarely see my friends and family members posts. I have family that live all over the country and have family in Italy. It has been a real help for staying in touch with each other’s lives. Sharing posts for the Hartford News, View from the Parks and the C**t Park Friends and Foundation, now takes many more steps, For the past 8 years, bots have been highly disruptive. Bots began posting on an individual’s groups and pages. Many believed them to be real people making upsetting, crude, and vulgar posts. Their purpose was to spread misinformation, artificially inflating follower counts, spam comments, or engaging in other malicious activities, often with the goal of influencing public opinion or disrupting a platform’s functionality. They also created accounts to per-form these tasks which the real person’s involvement was difficult to ascertain. But I am not saying that there weren’t plenty of posts made by angry, confused, frustrat-ed people acting out. Since the November election, Facebook announced that its trust and safety and content moderation teams will be relocated from California to Texas. It has dramat-ically changed its policies. Facebook is replacing fact-check-ers with a “community notes” sys-tem similar to X .They are remov-ing restrictions on topics like immigration and gender. Enforcement of community stan-dards will be focused on using automated filters on illegal and high-severity violations, and requiring user reports for lower-severity violations. Those auto-mated filters are problematic. Who knows what they will do?Civic and political content will be covered under a “recommenda-tions” analytic. I do not trust them based upon my experiences. The user will be required to constantly t a il o r t h ei r c ontent profiles to remove unwanted content, effec-tively pushing out the posts con-necting me to what I do want to see, family and friends posts. They are working on reduced false pos-itives, which frankly looks to be incredibly convoluted. Last week one of Hartford’s Facebook neighborhood groups had a post by its admin question-ing how their community felt about social media. They commented that implosion of the use of AI, the bots issue, and little to no fact checking made Facebook useless. So, what do you do? Try another social media platform. I am hearing mixed reviews about BlueSky. I never plan to use social media for news. I am trying to use fact-based news outlets, Reuters and the Guardian for national and international updates, and a local news source, the Hartford News. Frankly, I feel that I was led astray by the New York Times and the Washington Post. Streaming news outlets are useless, except for local news. Garbage in, garbage out. PBS is a bit more balanced, but I will admit, I believe it to be lean-ing heavily to the left. And I mean left, not politically, but more open views to positive change, but that does skew the way the information is delivered. I plan to use private groups to keep in touch with family as many such ones already exist and won’t be impacted by these changes. But my profile’s ‘home’ view is a disaster. I don’t want to spend every day removing 1/3 of the posts I have no interest in. I realize that I am going to lose touch with many. So, I am hoping others will try BlueSky ee if it is a better alternative.What about using Facebook for advertising or marketing of com-munity issues and events? I don’t have a solution. I have used it to share community events and news for almost 20 years. My pages have over 2000 followers, and I share to 9 groups. But does anyone see it? Facebook at times has suppressed osts. And I only know because of a steep drop in viewers for posts. This happens around elections, and my posts rarely have anything to do with national elections. They also impose additional background information during these times, and I have complied every time, but the suppression continued. I feel like it’s a mess, and it’s only going to get worse. If you have any ideas or recommendations, please share them.

01/10/2025

Is Hartford Truly a “College Town”?
A push by the city to convert a downtown building to UConn student housing might have a hidden agenda that would benefit a notorious developer.
COMMENTARY BY ANNE GOSHDIGIAN
Back in September 2024, the mayor was quoted in a Hartford Courant article. “Our message to college students: this is your college town,” Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said, at an announcement on downtown Hartford’s Pratt Street. “Don’t go to New Haven. Don’t go into West Hartford. Don’t go to Middletown. Hartford’s got it, and this is the place to be.” Those are some bold words. Was he telling us that Ivy League Yale, Southern Connecticut State University, and Albertus Magnus College are inferior schools in the state’s most vibrant city? How about Middletown, home to Wesleyan University and its nationally revered film school? A city that also boasts a booming downtown.
And then there’s Hartford, who’s once amazing downtown has continued to become more of a wasteland, save for a string of niche businesses on Pratt Street. The city’s gung-ho approach to the “college town” initiative does not mention this. The University of Hartford is in West Hartford, and so is the main campus of the University of St. Joseph. Trinity College is in the Behind the Rocks area. Trinity students and staff tend to be a self-sustained community. UConn's Downtown Branch is mostly a majority of freshmen and sophomores under age 21. Some are part-time students who either did not get into the UConn Storrs campus or could not afford the tuition and fees. Some will transfer to Storrs or another school after 2 years at the branch. Many live at home with their families in the suburbs and commute to the branch, and might also work part-time. Capital Community College on Main Street is an all-commuter school with the same issues as the branch such as tuition costs, attending part time while working, and possibly also living in the suburbs with family. The UConn School of Social Work downtown is where many are working toward a Masters in Social Work (MSW) Some of these students are older, and may be married with a family and live in the suburbs.

Yet in view of this, a plan is in place with the blessing of the University of Connecticut and a $5000,000 injection of funds from Travelers to turn a downtown multi-story building at Pratt and Trumbull Streets into dormitory-style student housing with a 2026 opening date. Their expectation is that students—many of them part-time-- will flock to that housing and then eat, drink, and be merry at downtown establishments thus invigorating the Hartford scene and propping up businesses that are wavering.

In my view, Hartford is not a "college town". I think this whole brouhaha about how these commuter students will want to live on Pratt & Trumbull in student housing is bull. It's more about LAZ/Shelbourne & company benefiting. As you should all be aware, that developer has a very poor record of being in arrears on loans of other city buildings it owns, and a history of not paying city property taxes. .When the UConn branch opened here 8 years ago, a lot of development popped up in the Front Street area, like the lofts for rent, the restaurants there, the movie theater (now closed—the “entertainment district. Guess what? It's been a giant bust. Nothing is going on down there. But for Shelbourne, the student housing will become a bonanza, as the $500,000 will be used by the developer to renovate the building in their usual way—using other people’s money—and possibly getting a cut of the housing rent. And if the project is another bust and a large number of students choose not to live there, then Shelbourne has a shiny new renovated building that it can easily convert to upscale apartments at high rents. I feel strongly that this entire initiative’s agenda is all about catering developers and businesses. It's more like a Chamber of Commerce thing and really has little to do with higher education.

Below is a list of the largest college towns/cities in the United States and their number of students, and the city’s exaggeration of its “college town” potential is way overblown.

New York, 1,057;28Los Angeles, 974,013; Chicago, 502,189; Boston, 346,157; Philadelphia, 342,994; Miami, 308,348; Dallas, 302,572; Washington, D.C., 293,391; San Francisco, 279,887; Houston, 270,350.

01/08/2025

12/19/2024

When Weak Was Stronger Than Strong
A look back at some late 20th-century Hartford mayors

COMMENTARY BY ANNE GOSHDIGIAN

Those who are new to the history of Hartford’s mayors may not be aware that throughout nearly the entire 20th century, they served for a term of 2 years, not 4. The election process was very different than the current “strong mayor” system of city government that began in January 2004. Before that time, candidates ran for City Council, and the one who received the most votes became the mayor, and the candidate who received the second-highest number earned the title of “Deputy Mayor”—the equivalent of what is now called “Council President”. Often referred to as the era of the “weak mayor” system, the mayor was, in fact, a figurehead—the public face of city leadership—but behind the scenes there was also a “City Manager”. That was the administration official who was knowledgeable and experienced in several areas of city government who contributed heavily to setting city policy, freeing up the mayor to be out among the people and accessible to them, to listen to them and have open dialogues with residents. It was, in effect, a ceremonial position. From 1967-2003, there were 5 “weak” mayors who were all re-elected to multiple 2-year terms, and were—in fact—not weak in their governance. They were:

*Antonia P. Uc***lo, Republican, 12/5/1967 - 4/12/1971, the first woman mayor in Connecticut and Hartford’s last Republican mayor.

*George A. Athanson, Democrat, 4/12/1971 - 12/1/1981

*Thirman L. Milner, Democrat, 12/1/1981 - 12/1/1987, the first elected Black mayor in New England.

*Carrie Saxon Perry, Democrat, 12/1/1987 - 12/7/1993, the first Black woman to be elected mayor of a major New England city.

*Michael P. Peters, Democrat, 12/7/1993 - 12/4/2001.

All of the above were popular with the majority of Hartford voters. In the 1993 election, Peters, a Hartford firefighter, lost the Democratic primary to Perry who was running for a 4th term, but won the general election that November—the last time that happened in Hartford. Uc***lo was in power during the 1968 riots in Hartford after the assassination of Martin Luther King, and handled the crisis well, working with the Black community to bring positive change and healing. Milner was a city icon who was supported by civil rights activists both locally and nationally, and his terms in office had the focus of bringing to light and working to end racism in Hartford.

I remember Athanson, who served 5 terms as mayor, as a colorful character. George was a highly-educated and wise individual, very outspoken, and some would say a bit rough around the edges. But he spent much of his time in office trying to bring the city together, racially and ethnically into a true “One Hartford”. I may be one of the few Hartfordites who remembers his week-long festival from 1972. George Athanson came up with idea of celebrating the city's beautiful diversity and created the “All-Americans” festival. More than 30 ethnic groups/nationalities participated. and thousands of people attended--some came multiple times during that October week. It was a beautiful and memorable event, filled with the foods, music, dance, costumes, and the arts and crafts of the many cultures dwelling in the capital city.. I wish this could happen again: One event that brings the entire city together, and that I'm sure would draw visitors from all over Connecticut. No divisiveness, but instead an opportunity to enjoy and appreciate our own heritage and that of others. As George said, we are all Americans, no matter from where our families originated.

The bottom line here is that the strong mayor system has brought about the election of 4 Hartford mayors in the past 19 years, and in this woman’s opinion, it’s been a bust all around. Where is the positive change in our city over those years? Why are the citizens still not being heard? The endemic issues facing the city have not been alleviated, and the numbers of voters going to the polls are the lowest they’ve ever been in the 21st century. Here’s hoping that come November2027, the people will have a wake-up call and get out the increased vote that Hartford needs and deserves.