Hartford Courant

Mayor: Town's Success Threatened

By DANIEL P. JONES

Courant Staff Writer

January 9, 2008

The town is in great shape, one of the few inner-ring suburbs in the state that can call itself a success, the mayor said Tuesday.

But West Hartford's future success is threatened, Mayor Scott Slifka said, by circumstances beyond its control, including what he considers a dysfunctional relationship with state government and the financial assistance it has failed to provide.

That, in essence, was the mayor's assessment in an annual "state-of-the-town" address he gave to West Hartford Chamber of Commerce members during a luncheon meeting at the Chatfield senior living center.

Slifka, who was re-elected to his fourth term on the council in November and is starting his third term as mayor, said the town is entering the post-Blue Back Square era and can put aside the distractions and seemingly endless litigation that delayed the project.

For the next few years, he said, the town must leverage the business interest that Blue Back has drawn to West Hartford to make sure sound development spreads to other parts of town. That's happening already in Elmwood, for example, and a major redevelopment in Bishops Corner could be coming, he said.

A plan to eventually move the Children's Museum from its Trout Brook Drive location to Elmwood, "could be a great catalyst for Elmwood," Slifka said. "Not that it needs it," he said, adding that the neighborhood has boomed recently.

A plan to calm traffic on neighborhood streets and a proposal to make the town more friendly to bicyclists will be among the town's initiatives for 2008, Slifka said. Town Manager James Francis said at Tuesday night's town council meeting that the traffic plan is expected to be completed next week.

The mayor faulted Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell and the Democratic leaders in the state legislature for what he considers their failure to provide leadership on budget and tax issues. The state requires that towns provide all kinds of services, but leaves them with only the property tax to raise the money to pay for them, he said. And he repeated a familiar complaint that the state has not kept its commitment to provide the town its share of education money — about $50 million over a decade.

He said he expects another tough budget season this spring. "What will eat up time and cause the most angst for people in the community is the budget process," Slifka said.

Despite the difficulties, West Hartford is an inner-ring success story, he said.

"The state of the town is strong, and it's getting stronger," Slifka said in his luncheon speech.

"We excel at the things that are under our control," he said, summing up his speech. "The biggest threats to the town's future success," he said, "are those variables that are beyond our control, in particular our dysfunctional relationship with the state government."