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RTCTPowerPolitics10182025BBlock230pm_2025-10-18-14-55-23

I'm John Craven. Welcome back to Connecticut Power and Politics. We are talking to the candidates for mayor of Stratford, Mayor Laura Hoy and Doctor David Chess. Um, let's talk about the police and firefighters. The police and firefighters unions are endorsing new Doctor Chess. This is the first time the police union. endorsed a candidate, I think in 15 years. In their announcement, the police union said under the current administration, our officers have faced consistent mistreatment from town hall. They cite low pay, low morale. The firefighters union cited recent actions by the current administration. That demonstrated a troubling disregard for firefighters injured in the line of duty. So Mayor, I I'll let you address their accusations first. So our public safety team is the best in the state and we're talking about police and fire dispatch EMS. Our contracts by Connecticut law are negotiated and all the uh pay agreements and the benefits, etc. are have been approved by both parties and signed off on. We have current contracts in place. We are negotiating now with the police union, um, so we are not the lowest paid by either department in in the state of Connecticut. David? So the, the, the issue is much more complicated than that, and, and there are always contracts and negotiations and sign-offs. So no matter what you do, that's the fundamental. So, um, I appreciate, uh, Mayor Hoyt's comments, but, but they don't get to the meat of it. The meat of it with the with the firemen is very, very simple. There were two firemen who were injured on the job. Now I'm a physician. I cared for people for many years in addition to building healthcare companies and I couldn't imagine two of my people getting injured on the job and not calling them. We're not reaching out to them for 2 years as as mayor, not reaching out and saying, hey. How are you? Where are you in your therapy? How can we help you? So what would you do differently? So, so first of all, I would, I would definitely, um, be connected with, um, any of our, our injured front line public safety people if they get injured number one, number 2, the disrespect that was shown when they got a an a termination with a pension of 1516, maybe $17,000 a year. After working for 23 or 25 years, was incredibly disrespectful. And that's what really teed this all off. So Laura, I want to get to education funding, but I want to give you about 15 seconds to respond to that. So the circumstances are far more complicated than David would say because he doesn't know because he hasn't done this before. Workers' compensation is is a court process and this is now through the court systems. Our firefighters have been reached out to David. The chief is in constant contact with them. So is our human resource department to ensure that they are getting the care that they need and the treatment they need. But if they can't come back to work, if the physicians, if their physician won't allow them to come back to work, then that's why we have to separate. I do want to move on to education funding because we have limited time, you know, earlier this year we saw parents. Protesting against budget cuts, things like eliminating reading specialists and math coaches are Stratford schools getting enough money from the city? David, I'll let you start and then Mayor, we'll finish up with you. So, so the first of all, when, when you actually look and compare Trumbull, Shelton, Milford, and, and, and Stratford, a, a smaller proportion of dollars. Goes to education in Stratford. However, having said that, I don't think the answer is just money. We have gone through at least 3, maybe 4 superintendents in the last 7-8 years, so there's been tremendous instability in leadership within the department and, and our scores. Stratford Only 25% of its children meet math, um, um, math expectations compared to Trumbull at 75% compared to Milford at 60% and Shelton at 60% we're at 25%, not just for math but for language. That's incredible and we can, we can and have to do better, and I don't believe it's just a matter of money. I think it's a matter of innovation it's a it's a matter of morale. We've got classes now that just don't give homework anymore. We gave up on homework. That's not acceptable. Mayor, let me get you in on this. So we have a new superintendent and we've had 3 superintendents in the last more than 8 years um and the superintendent is working diligently. She's been there for a year and a half. Test scores have improved, you know, we're coming off the after effects of COVID when you are comparing communities. Geographic location is one thing, but the dirgs are the other, which are the economic and the the demographics of people and communities like Stratford. But should the city give the school district more money? We gave the school district what they asked for last year, the year before we gave the school district what the. Finance committee recommended and the board voted on, so yes, everybody wants more money. I want more money, but sometimes you have the balance between what the taxpayers can pay and what the district needs and all the surpluses that we've had year after year after year with the board of Education shows that they have enough money. So it's incredibly disingenuous, so the um. The board Um, proposed a, a number to be, to be paid, but the board was controlled by the Republican Party and pushed, pushed a budget that was truly underrepresenting the needs of our students. But, but again, I don't believe it's just money. I believe that and and Heather and our, our new acting superintendent, I think is terrific. I think she'll do a great job. She just needs the support of um of of leadership um here in Stratford and she has the support. We'll have to leave it there. Mayor Hoy, Dr. Chess, thank you both for coming in. Hopefully voters learned a little bit more today. Thanks again for coming in. Thanks for having us. All right. Coming up, construction begins on a public plaza in downtown Stamford. Will it make the city's notoriously dangerous streets safer?

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RTCTPowerPolitics10182025CBlock230pm_2025-10-18-15-41-30

Welcome back to Power and Politics. Well, you might have noticed traffic backing up even more than usual in downtown Stamford lately. News 12 Connecticut's Greg Thompson tells us about the new project causing all the slowdowns. Yeah, it's tough to miss all this construction going on here. You might remember it used to be a small parking lot that would get turned into some temporary outdoor dining when it got warm out. Well, the city is now going to make that whole set up permanent and it turns out that's not the only thing they have going on here. We've been having this idea bounced around for the last few years now within the city, and there's actually a great opportunity that came across from the state of Connecticut. And once we kind of had that opportunity, we knew we could start kind of piecing everything together. The first piece of that is a permanent 9500 square foot plaza which includes 19 new trees. We're going to have a mix of just general public seating as well as outdoor dining that we can use year round. I think that's. I think it's valuable. The other piece is about safety. According to city data, this intersection has one of the highest rates of pedestrian crashes in all of Stamford. There's a lot of horn honking around here. You got some dude like revving their, you know, they cracked out Honda Civic, you know, with the muffler going and everything going fully down. Which is why the city will be replacing the old traffic signal with a new one and putting in elevated crosswalks that are raised up, sort of like giant speed humps, reducing vehicle speed to reduce inertia in the event of a crash. It's also separating users so we might not have as many car and pedestrian conflicts. While the businesses nearby are open during the construction, they are losing parking spots from it. We are losing lots of business because of this, because our regular customers, they're not coming anymore. They cannot find the parking. The city says the hope is for all the work to be done by May or June in time for peak outdoor dining season. We've been meeting with the businesses and property owners since the beginning of the project. It's really a community-based project. They're excited. They know they're going to get a benefit. We thank them for their patience during construction. I hope after they're done, maybe pick up or not, but 27 years I'm here, never been like this. Now we mentioned the traffic backing up. The city does have some extra police on scene helping out with some of the cars and also people trying to walk in what's really a narrow portion of sidewalk that's left over on the side there until this all gets cleared up. For now though, that's the latest here in downtown Stamford, Greg Thompson, News 12, Connecticut. The constant growing pains in Stanford. That is all of our time. I'm John Craven. Mark Sudall will be back here next week. Thanks for watching and have a great weekend.

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Mayor Laura Hoydick and Dr. David Chess join the show.

Power & Politics: Meet the candidates for Stratford mayor

Mayor Laura Hoydick and Dr. David Chess join the show.

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