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I on the other hand would not sell my home as it still would be on LI Sound. I'm sticking with winter as the reason to sell and leave.
Those concoctions the Quiet guy came up with are pretty brazen to say the least, I mean my God. Combining already large and congested cities goes far beyond the scope. I would think so. I know many here say they wouldn't put it past CT Dems but I would.
My properties are investments so I don't have the same emotional attachment as you would. Agreed on the concoctions being brazen.
That is a myth. Most of America's "cities" are nothing but big, sprawling suburbs with downtown skyscrapers. Those aren't real cities. New York, Philadelphia, Chicago -- these are cities that built upward and didn't feel the need to gobble up huge swaths of land, and chose instead to make wise use of the land they had. Hartford needs to do the same, instead of turning every open space into a parking lot or garage, or worse yet, a nonprofit or storefront church. The city already has enough of these, they need to now focus on brining in tax revenue and creating jobs for the people who live there. They have had ample opportunity to do this, but they haven't. The prevailing mentality of that city is, the government is there to solve every problem, and as New York City learned in the '70s, that doesn't work. More land does not solve the problem. Look at LA and Detroit: their geographically large land masses haven't been the tide that has lifted all boats. On the contrary, they're sinking.
I can sort of agree with you but it depends. City and town are the way how places are incorporated. You can have a city in a place like Texas with just 300 people. Sometimes you have to be a city because open town government is much harder to make if there isn't as many people and if the land is much larger. Outside of new england counties still exist. Look at Elko county. It has maybe 3 people per square mile. It's literally as big as CT and Mass combined with less than 60K people. You cannot expect people to attend a local or county meeting with that kind of space.
Detroit has changed significantly (especially the downtown). Just mention Dan Gilbert.
Sometimes land does help if there isn't enough of a tax base. Hartford has issues like rural places too with a lack of PILOTS. New Haven just made a deal with Yale which is huge but if others don't step up it can be hard to do things.
Here's a few basic things and unfortuately some lines of thought
1) Services are easier to provide with larger numbers of people. It doesn't matter if it is the public or private sector it's just the way it is. More people means more money and it justifies things. I went to high school at a regional district and we had French, Spanish and Latin. Meanwhile 25 minutes down the street a larger district had Chinese, Russian, Italian and German in addition to what we had. Why? More students
2) We can make an argument that many government services are largely targeted to those without access in the private sector (i.e. poorer)
3) Seeing #1 and #2 some act as if you have to segregate poorer people off to urban areas in order to make things work. Just because it is easier for the government offices does not mean it is a better end result for stakeholders. In other words concentrating poverty doesn't solve anything. Many governmental systems assume they won't get off them as there's poverty traps. You make more they cut a benefit and now you have to work for what you had for free. At the same point you can't be on social systems for life.
Nationwide we've had a near 0% population growth since 2008, we've had hardly any immigration in the past four years (negative 4 million immigrants), we have baby boomers retiring. We might have to eventually accept that we could see smaller increases. 2020 was the second smallest gain on record for the census. In the past we did have places that spun off many. So yes I could see Hartford reincorporating other areas just as with Springfield maybe even Providence. Heck in NYC Brooklyn wasn't always part of NYC. In Boston they annexed quite a bit until Brookline said no https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston...debate_of_1873
Take a look at the Indianapolis model for consolidation and make a decision based upon that. Unigov I believe it was called and happened around 1970 if I recall. Marion County absorbed virtually all of the suburbs and now the city of Indianapolis covers something like 700 square miles encompassing all land areas minus a couple of suburbs like Speedway, Beech Grove and I believe Lawrence. Having talked to a few people about this when I lived there they had mixed views of the results. I suspect the schools suffered and probably many other services also which is usually what happens when cities annex suburbs around them.
I can sort of agree with you but it depends. City and town are the way how places are incorporated. You can have a city in a place like Texas with just 300 people. Sometimes you have to be a city because open town government is much harder to make if there isn't as many people and if the land is much larger. Outside of new england counties still exist. Look at Elko county. It has maybe 3 people per square mile. It's literally as big as CT and Mass combined with less than 60K people. You cannot expect people to attend a local or county meeting with that kind of space.
Detroit has changed significantly (especially the downtown). Just mention Dan Gilbert.
Sometimes land does help if there isn't enough of a tax base. Hartford has issues like rural places too with a lack of PILOTS. New Haven just made a deal with Yale which is huge but if others don't step up it can be hard to do things.
Here's a few basic things and unfortuately some lines of thought
1) Services are easier to provide with larger numbers of people. It doesn't matter if it is the public or private sector it's just the way it is. More people means more money and it justifies things. I went to high school at a regional district and we had French, Spanish and Latin. Meanwhile 25 minutes down the street a larger district had Chinese, Russian, Italian and German in addition to what we had. Why? More students
2) We can make an argument that many government services are largely targeted to those without access in the private sector (i.e. poorer)
3) Seeing #1 and #2 some act as if you have to segregate poorer people off to urban areas in order to make things work. Just because it is easier for the government offices does not mean it is a better end result for stakeholders. In other words concentrating poverty doesn't solve anything. Many governmental systems assume they won't get off them as there's poverty traps. You make more they cut a benefit and now you have to work for what you had for free. At the same point you can't be on social systems for life.
Nationwide we've had a near 0% population growth since 2008, we've had hardly any immigration in the past four years (negative 4 million immigrants), we have baby boomers retiring. We might have to eventually accept that we could see smaller increases. 2020 was the second smallest gain on record for the census. In the past we did have places that spun off many. So yes I could see Hartford reincorporating other areas just as with Springfield maybe even Providence. Heck in NYC Brooklyn wasn't always part of NYC. In Boston they annexed quite a bit until Brookline said no https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston...debate_of_1873
Never going to happen. If it were to happen, I’ll be selling my Fairfield properties and brace for a hit on Greenwich properties despite Stamford being a great city.
CT, being sandwiched between NYC and Boston is largely a suburban state. Cities like Stamford, Danbury and parts of New Haven are great while Hartford and Bridgeport are not. CT cities are cannot compete with Tier one cities of the region, therefore your premise of combining metro areas to get to a population accumulation and geographic expansion of these ‘new’ agglomerations are inherently unworkable.
Is this another Boston is better and "King of New England" astro-turfing. This has nothing to do with regionalism in CT. The rest of the country could care less about "Tier 1" New England cities and it's a bit off topic.
Back to the topic - the poster was referring to amalgamating the directly adjacent suburbs not Metro areas. As someone who grew up in a consolidated city-county (Nashville), it has mixed results because the core areas (Let's say the old City of New Haven if New Haven was enlarged) would still pay higher taxes. Nashville has both an urban services (old city boundaries pre consolidation) and general services property tax rates. A big positive though is that it has helped out a bit with integration in the city (much less segregated than Atlanta, Memphis, and even Charlotte). One big downside is the city can barely fund sidewalks, which thank goodness have good coverage in New Haven. Plus, I would not want New Haven to be saddled with Hamden's debt or East Haven's parochial politics or West Haven's governance issues. We already have enough to sort out as is.
Another example: including Etobicoke and Scarborough for Toronto hasn't really added much value to the city from a governance perspective. There's lots of friction between the "city" and "suburbs" even though on paper it's one Toronto.
I can sort of agree with you but it depends. City and town are the way how places are incorporated. You can have a city in a place like Texas with just 300 people. Sometimes you have to be a city because open town government is much harder to make if there isn't as many people and if the land is much larger. Outside of new england counties still exist. Look at Elko county. It has maybe 3 people per square mile. It's literally as big as CT and Mass combined with less than 60K people. You cannot expect people to attend a local or county meeting with that kind of space.
Detroit has changed significantly (especially the downtown). Just mention Dan Gilbert.
Sometimes land does help if there isn't enough of a tax base. Hartford has issues like rural places too with a lack of PILOTS. New Haven just made a deal with Yale which is huge but if others don't step up it can be hard to do things.
Here's a few basic things and unfortuately some lines of thought
1) Services are easier to provide with larger numbers of people. It doesn't matter if it is the public or private sector it's just the way it is. More people means more money and it justifies things. I went to high school at a regional district and we had French, Spanish and Latin. Meanwhile 25 minutes down the street a larger district had Chinese, Russian, Italian and German in addition to what we had. Why? More students
2) We can make an argument that many government services are largely targeted to those without access in the private sector (i.e. poorer)
3) Seeing #1 and #2 some act as if you have to segregate poorer people off to urban areas in order to make things work. Just because it is easier for the government offices does not mean it is a better end result for stakeholders. In other words concentrating poverty doesn't solve anything. Many governmental systems assume they won't get off them as there's poverty traps. You make more they cut a benefit and now you have to work for what you had for free. At the same point you can't be on social systems for life.
Nationwide we've had a near 0% population growth since 2008, we've had hardly any immigration in the past four years (negative 4 million immigrants), we have baby boomers retiring. We might have to eventually accept that we could see smaller increases. 2020 was the second smallest gain on record for the census. In the past we did have places that spun off many. So yes I could see Hartford reincorporating other areas just as with Springfield maybe even Providence. Heck in NYC Brooklyn wasn't always part of NYC. In Boston they annexed quite a bit until Brookline said no https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston...debate_of_1873
This is true - one of the downsides of the tighter town boundaries is the segregation by income and race. I think a solution for this, and it's already in play for CT, is to reform PILOT and create an investment fund for our cities to pro-actively invest given that they take on the share of non-profits and our fellow working class residents.
Is this another Boston is better and "King of New England" astro-turfing. This has nothing to do with regionalism in CT. The rest of the country could care less about "Tier 1" New England cities and it's a bit off topic.
The comment was not about Boston being better, but rather CT is sandwiched between Boston and New York City -- both cities have a greater gravitas/influence over CT. NJ has a similar situation being located between New York and Philadephia. Therefore any attempts to expand Hartford, New Haven, etc. will have no major effect other than increasing the population while degrading services, some property values.
Clearly, your reading comprehension skills are lacking. Try re-reading the message again before commenting.
We'll probably have to merge towns. Let's be honest here there isn't always a reason for smaller towns to really exist in new england at this point.CT has what 190 local governments, mass has 351. As I've mentioned before the berkshires is something that CT shouldn't exactly try to be. Forget about low growth it's been in the negative since the 1970s. Well they first tried regional school districts but from what I've been told from high up is there is a long term plan to just regionalize the whole school district.
Why?
Because the state is tired. When small towns need assistance in things ok fine but when it isn't really improving, when local leadership is iffy at best when people don't show up, businesses continue to close etc. Different communities have different needs. For example drunk driving might not be an issue in an urban area where there's uburs everywhere and public transit. In a rural area without public lights and hasn't been repaved in 20 years that might be a bigger reason.
Generally half of a local towns budget is for schools. School districts are where a ton of activity comes into play with buildings, health, transit you name it. I would argue superintendents in larger cities do as much if not more than mayors. But if you don't have students then what. States in the northeast generally give educational aid because it makes sense. But then it gets harder to measure. Road assistance might be harder to get if you can drive around a town or go online. Elderly services might be found somewhere else and don't even get me started on recreation. I know rec departments that will take maybe five years to do what the private sector can do in two.
Sometimes there are very specific jobs that have to be done otherwise there can be major problems. Small communities can't always have the budget for them. For example animal inspection if a animal has rabies. I've seen evidence of bobcats in eastern CT. Some even say a mountain lion but I doubt that. Evasive species is another. Worcester lost a ton of trees due to the asian longhorn beetle 20 years ago. If your place tries to stay rural to preserve plants and animals and there's no real way of doing it then it's a joke. You don't get an "out" for development. If you don't have public water and sewer you still need septic tank and well inspection. I'd bet there's a fair amount of people that moved to rural areas due to covid that have no clue what a perc test is.
To note the UK is a unitary state. Local control is iffy at best.
Just a quick note here and then back to the topic, yes the UK is a unitary state. In this context, the central government in London rarely interferes with trash collection or IT systems in Kensington & Chelsea or Hackney for example. Now - they do interfere on some of the bigger items for better or worse like fire, police, and transit given London's prominence in the UK. There are local authorities in London looking to consolidate some services. How do I know this? I lived, studied, and worked in London "specialising" in British politics. On CD, I don't really opine on stuff I don't know about.
Back on topic - Yes the state is tired and you're seeing the Lamont administration starting to hold localities to account.
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