New London The City Council on Monday approved a $96.29 million budget for fiscal year 2022 that will slightly drop the city’s tax rate for the third year in a row and boost funding for the city’s human services department.
Community members continued an unsuccessful appeal to the council for deep reductions in police department funding and reallocation to areas such as mental health services, recreation and education.
The council’s latest response, however, was not to cut the police budget but rather to move $120,000 into a special account intended to bolster the $627,475 budget for the Human Services Department. The money is taken from recently projected savings in health insurance costs from the police, fire and public works departments. The council shifted $54,000 from the police budget, $39,600 from fire and $26,400 from public works.
I m sorry that it was a zoning dispute, over chickens no less, that led to my introduction to Jane Barton, a distinguished new resident of New London who happens to live in one of my favorite houses in the city.
I say new resident, even though Barton bought the magnificent yellow-clapboard Greek Revival house at Granite and Hempstead streets some two years ago. After all, this is New England, and it takes more than a few years to shake the term newcomer.
Barton, whose intriguing biography includes work as an author and as a director of historic restorations with the U.S. government, consulting with presidents, found her way to New London through her brother, a retired professor who taught most recently at Connecticut College.
Connecticut City Works Toward Offering Free Internet Access
New London, Conn., is working to finalize a project to extend free Internet access to hundreds of households within the city, targeting those who are without the means to afford access on their own. by Greg Smith, The Day / April 14, 2021 Shutterstock/Breitformat
(TNS) The city is working to finalize a project to extend free internet access to hundreds of
New London homes, targeting those without the means to afford access on their own.
Mayor
Susan Bysiewicz
, who visited the city to promote Gov.
Ned Lamont s
House Bill 6442, An Act Concerning Equitable Access to Broadband.
New London The city is working to finalize a project to extend free internet access to hundreds of New London homes, targeting those without the means to afford access on their own.
Mayor Michael Passero outlined those plans during a news conference Tuesday with Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, who visited the city to promote Gov. Ned Lamont’s House Bill 6442, An Act Concerning Equitable Access to Broadband.
New London’s own plan involves a partnership with the Connecticut Education Network to use the schools and city-owned buildings to broadcast Wi-Fi hot spots and reach nearby homes.
Initially, the plan will include installation of transmitters to cover a two- to three-block radius around city schools as well as the densely populated Huntington Tower and Winthrop Square apartment complexes. The first phase may reach a portion of the Mohican Apartments on State Street.