Opinion
By Reginald Johnson
BRIDGEPORT --- The special primary election between incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim and challenger John Gomes will take place this Tuesday, January 23.
The election
is a do-over at the order of the court after a judge found numerous
irregularities relating to absentee ballot usage in connection with the
original primary in September.
Given the
overwhelming Democratic Party enrollment advantage in Bridgeport the winner of
this primary will likely become the mayor for the next four years.
It is the opinion here that John Gomes would be the better person to run the city for the next four years over Joe Ganim.
I can’t say
that I’ve followed every in an out of Bridgeport governmental actions and
budgetary matters in recent years, nor do I know every detail about Gomes vs Ganim
in terms of what they’ve done and what they stand for. But I do know a lot and,
as B.B. King would say, I’ve been around, so I can talk credibly about some broad
themes that I think are important.
First, just in terms of the number of years Ganim has been leading
the city, it's time for a change. Between the years in his first go-round, before his legal problems
landed him in prison, and his last eight years that he’s been serving since his
comeback, Ganim has been mayor for about 20 years. That’s a long time. It
really shouldn’t be that long for anybody. You need a fresh face from time to time with new
ideas and new energies.
New York City
has a two-term limit on how long a mayor can serve and I think that’s a good
idea. Presidents can serve no more than two terms. Elective positions in
government are not supposed to be life-time jobs.
But aside
from that general principle of the need to have turnover after a certain period
of time, there’s other reasons for saying it’s time for a change.
While Ganim can point to some accomplishments in the city, and there have been some that he was responsible for, there’s a lot of areas during his long tenure where his performance has not met the mark. In fact in some respects, the record has been very poor.
First, let’s
talk about something that’s important to a lot of people in a working-class city
like Bridgeport, which is as everyone knows is not a high income town. That's affordable housing.
During the
Ganim years a lot of housing has been torn down, both public housing and
single-family housing, to make way for some hoped-for development or possibly
new housing. Hundreds and hundreds of housing units have been wiped out. Very
little has been built to make up for what has been lost.
Now part of
the problem there, is that vis a vis public housing, the federal government is
not putting much money into public housing and the Bridgeport Housing Authority doesn’t have the resources to build a lot of new
housing. They are building some but it doesn’t make up for what’s been lost.
Now people
may say that the mayor doesn’t have much to do with that, that’s a federal
program. But he can be an advocate for more federal funding and push
for more action by the public authority to do more with the resources
available, and he really hasn’t done that.
In the late
1990’s Ganim, in the interest of building
the baseball stadium (now gone to make way for the ampitheatre) and the arena and a possible hockey rink in the South End,
had the old Marina Apartments worth of 100 units torn down. A short while after
that the Pequonnock Apartments, a state run facility with 250 units, was razed. There was talk
at the time that something would go in at the place of Pequonnock, possibly
new housing or a mixed-use development.
But here it
is 20 years later and there is nothing on the Pequonnock site and nothing on
the Marina site. In fact, the Pequonnock site, which I think is still state
owned is being used as a parking lot for concerts at the ampitheatre. So here
you have publicly-owned land where there was once affordable housing now being
used as a parking lot for a concert venue and a private person is making money
off of this arrangement. That’s an
outrage. Similarly, the Marina site stands empty.
I have not heard
any advocacy by Joe Ganim about building new low-income or affordable housing
at those sites and not much anywhere else to make up for what was lost which is
about 350 units there and hundreds more elsewhere.
Some new
housing is coming into Bridgeport, but it is almost all market rate.
Translation --- it’s not affordable for most people in Bridgeport. New market
rate housing usually means you start at $1900 for a one-bedroom unit and you go
up to $2000, $2100 and often higher. Let’s say you’re a single person and you
want to rent a new $2,000 apartment. Using the old rule of you pay 25% of your monthly
income for housing that means you have to be making $8,000 a month. That means
you have to be earning about $96,000 a year to afford one of those apartments as
a single person.
How many people
in Bridgeport are making $96,000 a year? Not many.
The average
median income for a single person in Bridgeport is about $25,000. That’s far
short of what’s required to pay for a new market rate one-bedroom unit. It’s
also far short of what’s required to pay for even older, cheaper market units
in the city.
Even if you
go by household income, most Bridgeport residents are going to find it very
hard to buy the new market rate housing coming online. The median household
income in Bridgeport is $47,000. With that kind of income you’ll have to pay
50% of your monthly income to buy one of the new units and that’s a
one-bedroom.
So we have a shortage of affordable housing in the
city and the question is what’s being done about it. Not much.
A mayor of this city should be raising hell with
both the state and the federal government to provide the monies needed to put
up this new housing that’s required. Ganim hasn’t done that and I think that
Gomes will make an effort in that direction.
A second point about Ganim’s record. This has to do with the city’s heritage and its history. Over the years from what I’ve seen Ganim has not shown a lot of interest in preserving the city’s heritage. Many historic buildings have been torn down and there’s been little effort to restore remaining historic buildings including some that could be real gems for the city.
For instance, the old Majestic and Poli theaters in downtown have been
sitting there languishing for years, decades really, and there’s been almost no
effort that I can see from the Ganim administration to grab the bull by the
horns and have these buildings restored and turned into something valuable.
Years ago, I was lucky enough to take a tour of the inside of these theatres and
they are really so impressive with gorgeous staircases, chandelier lights etc.
These theatres could be a showcase for Bridgeport in the downtown. But there’s
been very little movement to do anything about them and this is truly a waste.
I’ve been
told that there’s not much state money available to work with but it seems to
me that if the mayor and the state delegation pounded the drums hard enough they
could get some money. I don’t think there’s any been any effort either, to
bring in possible private money to do this work.
Meanwhile,
the city of Waterbury renovated their old theaters, similar to what Bridgeport
has, and they have become a mecca for people coming into that city to see
various forms of entertainment.
Other historical buildings have been needlessly torn
down during the Ganim years. One case that I found particularly irksome and
that shows how bad the planning has been during the Ganim years, was the
decision to allow an auto parts dealer to come in and buy up the old Sanborn
library, a beautiful architectural building in the West End, tear it down and
build an auto parts store.
The zoning commission allowed this and of course
Ganim said nothing about it. It was heartbreaking to see such a lovely building
with beautiful columns in the front and a brick façade just leveled to make way
for an auto parts operation. It was particularly stupid given the fact that
there’s already an auto parts store several blocks down on State Street. The
Sanborn building, with a little creativity and a little drive could’ve been
turned into something useful to house either some small commercial offices or
maybe make space for some nonprofit. A beautiful piece of architecture could
have been saved.
 |
| The city allowed the old Sanborn library to be torn down to make way for a new auto parts store, even though another auto parts store is a few blocks away. (Reginald Johnson photo) |
And what has
happened to the Mary and Eliza Freeman Houses in the South End? These historic
buildings which were part of the early Native American and African-American
community called Little Liberia are on the National Register of Historic Places.
They were supposed to be restored but nothing is happening. The structures sit
there getting more dilapidated by the year.
Again, if
this restoration took place it could be a real draw for tourists coming to the
city and would add to Bridgeport’s attractions. But under the present administration
there doesn’t seem to be much interest in getting this project done.
So the record on preserving Bridgeport’s history by
Mr. Ganim has been very poor.
Onto a third area --- lack of transparency in
government.
As long as I
have known him, Ganim likes to operate in secret and behind closed doors. He
doesn’t seem to like to work collaboratively with people. I could be wrong on
this but I just haven’t seen it. He doesn’t seem to want to get input from the
community on anything. He doesn’t go to community meetings. I was following the
school board for several years up until the Covid crisis hit and I never saw
him attend any of the board sessions. I did see former Mayor Bill Finch
attend at least one.
I did try to
reach the mayor on a few occasions about some fairly serious issues that I was
writing about on my blog and I could never get through.
Ironically
enough, I did get a call from him the other night asking for my vote on
Tuesday. That is the first time that I’ve talked with him in years. I don’t
think he remembered who I was and I think he was just going down a list of
registered Democratic voters and he decided to give my name a call. Not wanting
to get into a long debate with him I told him that I was undecided how I planned
to vote. He said “Oh” and that was the end of the conversation.
I’ve heard
other people complain as well that Ganim does not get out to the public enough.
He doesn’t seem to want to have a spotlight put on what his administration is
doing and that really isn’t good.
Then there’s
the issue of integrity in government and integrity in elections. This has been
a problem with Ganim and his administration even though the mayor has not been
involved in any criminal illegal activity that we know of, as he was back in
the ‘90s. Obviously the prime example of the at least moral corruption of this
administration is the way they have apparently been trying to fix elections
through absentee ballot fraud.
Absentee ballot chicanery has been going on in
Bridgeport for a long time and I believe Ganim and others in the Democratic
Party have used the absentee ballot process improperly to win a number of elections.
Hopefully
the state investigations that are underway now will put an end to these
improprieties. But it certainly would be very helpful if John Gomes was the
mayor because I think a lot of these types of problems would go away. I know
there are critics of Gomes who said that he and his camp have played similar
games but I don’t think that any of that possible misconduct has risen to the
level of what the Ganim people have been doing.
One other
thing and this is a particular beef for me. What is this business of dumping millions
of taxpayer dollars into the amphitheater and then not putting "Bridgeport" on the name of the facility? Our city is investing millions of dollars so that
this new concert site can be successful and yet and still the name of the venue
is called “Hartford Healthcare” amphitheater. Memo to Joe Ganim: we are in
Bridgeport not Hartford!
It is galling
to me that so much public subsidy from the hard-pressed taxpayers of this
city is going into that facility and the city’s name cannot be at the top of
the building. I know the city is making money on these so-called naming rights
but I still find it to be an outrage that the administration and the City Council
allowed the name of Hartford and not Bridgeport to be at the top of this amphitheater.
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So I think
there’s a need for a fresh start in Bridgeport. Gomes is by no means perfect.
Some people have raised legitimate concerns about his record but I think
overall, he is a good candidate. I like what I see on his website with the
various ideas that he’s pushing, including bolstering education funding and
having more transparency in government. I get the feeling as well that he’ll
try to be much more in touch with the community than Ganim has been.
I’m also
impressed by a lot of the people who are working with him and trying to get him
elected because I know they do care about the welfare of the Bridgeport
community. They include people like Maria Pereira, Bob Halstead, Pete Spain and
the group Bridgeport Generation Now. That support group speaks well for Gomes.
So Gomes is my
pick for Tuesday and hopefully Bridgeport can turn the turn the page on the
Ganim years and move forward.
.
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