Mike Nicastro is running for Connecticut's 31st District State Senatorial seat. He is quoted saying that the State of CT has an income problem. He proposes highway tolls that would be paid only by out-of-state travelers to close the budget gap. I was unable to find any examples of where such a thing exists nor can I believe that the State of CT would establish a toll system and not collect monies from it's own residents. Proposals promoting tolls as a way to fund regional transportation projects were introduced at Malloy's Transportation forums in 2014.
Mike gained attention speaking out against the busway in favor of light rail passenger service, declaring it the cheaper alternative by incorrectly equating the costs of the project to that of the Amtrak Downeaster. Officials at URS at the CT Rail Study meeting I attended in 2013 called it the most expensive option. As a preliminary stakeholder of the million dollar plus rail study he advocated for, he must know that passenger rail from Waterbury to Bristol turned out to be the most costly.
The creation of passenger rail service involved an overhaul of 25 miles of the Pan Am line from Berlin to Waterbury including trains and equipment that would serve 800 or less customers at a cost of over $530 million dollars. This equals more than $662,000 per person. That's enough money to buy each of them all a new home near their workplace and more than a dozen electric cars.
Busway service expansion from Bristol to Waterbury would cost a mere $5-$10 million. The Central CT Rail Study report presentation on June 6th, 2016 meeting at the Bristol Public Library (to which the public was largely uninformed of) illustrates that passenger rail service isn't feasible at this time.
Did Mike really care about the cost?
As president of Central CT Chamber of Commerce, Nicastro launched the slogan, "One Region , One Voice". calling Bristol a "hub" of the region and wrote numerous articles citing the importance of public transportation in the future of downtown Bristol. He called for the resignation of the chairwoman of Bristol's Downtown Development Corporation for hesitating from signing on with Renaissance Downtowns plan to add thousands of units of housing near public transportation in downtown Bristol without any concrete financial plan nor concrete experience in 2009 and was quoted in the press stating, “The lack of housing is why we don’t have a vibrant downtown.” in 2011.
Mike gained attention speaking out against the busway in favor of light rail passenger service, declaring it the cheaper alternative by incorrectly equating the costs of the project to that of the Amtrak Downeaster. Officials at URS at the CT Rail Study meeting I attended in 2013 called it the most expensive option. As a preliminary stakeholder of the million dollar plus rail study he advocated for, he must know that passenger rail from Waterbury to Bristol turned out to be the most costly.
The creation of passenger rail service involved an overhaul of 25 miles of the Pan Am line from Berlin to Waterbury including trains and equipment that would serve 800 or less customers at a cost of over $530 million dollars. This equals more than $662,000 per person. That's enough money to buy each of them all a new home near their workplace and more than a dozen electric cars.
Busway service expansion from Bristol to Waterbury would cost a mere $5-$10 million. The Central CT Rail Study report presentation on June 6th, 2016 meeting at the Bristol Public Library (to which the public was largely uninformed of) illustrates that passenger rail service isn't feasible at this time.
Did Mike really care about the cost?
As president of Central CT Chamber of Commerce, Nicastro launched the slogan, "One Region , One Voice". calling Bristol a "hub" of the region and wrote numerous articles citing the importance of public transportation in the future of downtown Bristol. He called for the resignation of the chairwoman of Bristol's Downtown Development Corporation for hesitating from signing on with Renaissance Downtowns plan to add thousands of units of housing near public transportation in downtown Bristol without any concrete financial plan nor concrete experience in 2009 and was quoted in the press stating, “The lack of housing is why we don’t have a vibrant downtown.” in 2011.
I've experienced a few interactions with this man whom has a robust knowledge about the state's goals for regional development projects. Instead of walking away from the discourse with a better understanding of these goals as I had hoped, I found myself a target by more than a few stakeholders of the downtown Bristol Centre Square plan appraised at negative $33 million dollars.
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| Way to derail conversations! |
It appears as though the point of most of the statements addressed to me were to imply that my concerns were based upon a conspiracy theory. Was Mike making an effort to convince others there is nothing to be concerned about?
The risks of new urbanism projects are plenty. Even experts in the industry such as Donald Shoup admit that you can sometimes exasperate the problems that the goals New Urbanism seeks to remedy using such a urban renewal recipe. But instead of allowing the residents of Bristol to have an educated conversation of the risks, trade-offs, and goals of a TOD (Transit-Oriented Development) project as Reconnecting America advises as best practices, this man declared that the downtown project was not about transportation. "Agenda 21 has no place in the conversation about downtown", he wrote. Then this same man brought it up over and over.
Mike continually labeled anyone vocally concerned as anti-downtown development, anti-investment, negative and accused some of them of not offering of other alternatives. Yet in all actuality, of the few people that were vocal about their reservations, none fit the profile he concocted. Some people took to the microphone at public meetings and wrote in to the paper in their own defense but Mike did not stop with the public branding.
Criticism of these policies should elicit a professional explanation of their merits and not false accusations and ad hominem attacks on private citizens if we are to have an open society.Most astounding to me was his assertion that Depot Square "is not about transportation" in spite of dozens of documents and statements proving otherwise. Pointing out the most recent minutes of the Rail Study to validate my claims, Mike simply deflected that the CCRPA was now defunct. The very same minutes were mirrored on the rail study site. I posted them, was blocked from the social network group and the post was deleted. This appears to be how he deals with people whom ask questions.
Mike's name appears on the Central CT CEDS (Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy), which is a long-term economic development plan that regionally addresses demographics, employment, housing and transportation. So I was alarmed to hear him downplay the expanding role of regionalization in the state by identifying it as a cost sharing thing between municipalities at a recent debate. It is remarkable that Mike's has such experience with how state grant monies and land use planning are intricately connected and he has not made mention of it here either.
This is particularly disturbing because Nicastro condemned Senator Martin for not supporting Senate Bill 1, the first bill introduced this year by state democrat party leader Looney, Duff and Fonfara. The part of the bill that is linked to the heart of the Nicastro campaign is the creation of "Innovation Districts" with entrepreneurial start-up assistance. This original legislation was defeated and the subsidiary of the public-private entity Connecticut Innovations called "ImpaCT" never came to be. Nicastro said he testified in favor of the bill and helped work to change the draft of this legislation. Mike's campaign would like you to think that Mike is being independently innovative about job creation. That's quite a play on words.
After the close of the legislative session, the democrat led state legislature drafted the biennium budget bill and stuffed the CTNext "Innovation" program in it. The program is is virtually the same. The bill states,
"In determining whether to approve an application for innovation place designation, the CTNext board shall consider... the commitment to, implement and administer the master plan...whether such plan includes ...sufficient measures to ensure walkability of the geographic areas within the municipality.... adequate and accessible public transportation; and .... affordable housing options..."
Initiatives like these pick the winners and losers at the expense of the middle class. This agenda is the same one you see playing out in Hartford, West Haven, Newington and every town and city in a transit corridor or a future planned transportation corridor. That agenda is about public transportation, affordable housing and reducing carbon emissions from personal automobiles to combat global warming, as much as it is about jobs. One could argue that it is the primary focus but we'll just leave it up to the reader to decide.
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| Official Testimony against SB1 |
