President’s Report to the 1000 Friends
of Connecticut Board
September 20, 2006
Changing Public Policy
To Support Smarter Growth
State and Local Policy
Transportation Strategy
The Transportation Strategy Board is conducting
hearings in preparation for its report to the legislature in January. 1000 Friends of
Connecticut turned out advocates to testify at hearings in Norwalk and New Haven.
Heidi Green presented 1000 Friends’ testimony at the Norwich hearing. Key themes of
our testimony were: a need for coordination of land use, economic development and
transportation; increasing land use planning capacity at OPM and at the regional
level; implementation of the 2003 planning strategies; maintaining the focus on
transit, including bus transit.
Heidi continues to work with the CT Association
for Community Transportation; the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities
Transportation Investment Coalition, the Citizens Transportation Lobby, and Keep CT
Moving, to monitor and align transportation efforts with 1000 Friends’ goals.
Jon Orcutt of the Tri-State Transportation
Campaign led a discussion at the 1000 Friends of Connecticut First Annual Meeting on
New Jersey DOT’s land use policies. Tri State, the Business Council of Fairfield
County and the Connecticut Fund for the Environment will advance corridor planning
legislation in the next session. They also favor a Gallis II-type transportation
study.
1000 Friends of Connecticut, the Housing
Development Fund, and the Business Council of Fairfield County met with
representatives of the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston and New York to identify state
priorities and possible roles for the Fed. The principle focus of the meeting was
transit oriented development.
Priority Lands
A group of land preservation advocates including
the Trust for Public Land, the Nature Conservancy, the CT Farmland Trust, the Forest
and Park Association, Audubon, Farm Bureau, League of Conservation Voters, Connecticut
Fund for the Environment, and the CT Trust for Historic Preservation continues to meet
to set goals for priority property conservation in the state. It’s becoming a lively a
coalition. 1000 Friends is consistently working to broaden its agenda to include: 1)
an urban investment program which would fund affordable housing, neighborhood
stabilization, brownfield revitalization and adaptive reuse of historic places in
designated growth areas; and 2) planning requirements that would align municipal
zoning and plans and reinforce planning for growth, conservation and preservation
across town boundaries. The group now includes the thinking, if not the ongoing
presence, of the Housing Development Fund, Connecticut Housing Investment Fund, CT
LISC, CT Chapter of the National Brownfields Alliance, the CT Housing Coalition, and
the Partnership for Strong Communities.
The Partnership for Strong Communities, the CT
Housing Coalition, the Working Lands Alliance, and 1000 Friends met to learn about the
work of Vermont Housing and Conservation Fund and its applicability to Connecticut.
This conversation was rolled into the agenda mentioned above.
The Trust for Public Land is conducting a series
of hearings in MA, VT, NH and CT on preservation priorities for the Connecticut River.
1000 Friends is a co-sponsor of the CT Listen to the River hearings. Heidi will
attend the hearings in Middletown, Essex, Hartford, and Enfield. The first hearing, in
Middletown, was September 16. Thirty people and a Hartford Courant reporter were
present.
Heidi consulted with the League of Conservation
Voters to shape smart growth, planning and municipal finance sections of its
legislative guide.
State/Local Revenue Portfolio Rebalancing
The first draft of the state/local revenue
portfolio rebalancing proposal was presented to the 1000 Friends policy committee in
August. A second draft is in the works. In addition to staffing and supporting our
state/local revenue portfolio rebalancing taskforce, Heidi is monitoring the tax work
of the CJEF, One CT and the COMFORT group.
The tax taskforce tele-conferenced with education
finance consultant Gary Orfield to refine its draft document.
Heidi approached the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston to conduct research on the adverse
housing, economic and land use impacts of Connecticut’s existing state/local tax
system.
Strengthening the Smart Growth Constituency
Communications/Outreach/Partnerships
1000 Friends met with the editorial Board of the
New London Day to share the Leader’s Guide to Growing Connecticut Smart.
The organization was featured on Tom Monahan’s
Sunday morning CT Newsmakers show. Bob Santy was especially articulate and
engaging!
We were interviewed by the Danbury News Times.
The communications committee is diligently
working to put together the smart growth television programs for broadcast this fall.
Thank you, Van Selden!
1000 Friends is assisting the CT Main Street
Center with outreach for its Mixed Used Development workshop September 22 from 8:45 –
1 at the Lyceum, Lawrence Street, Hartford.
1000 Friends has been working on building our
network in a number of other ways as well – we are conducting outreach through the
Listen to the River Hearings, we will be at the Rockfall Foundation’s fall meeting,
the Sierra Club’s conference on sprawl, the Northwest Conservation District’s annual
meeting, and the CT Housing Coalition Conference. Heidi attended C.L.A.M. meetings
along the shoreline and spoke with 120 people at the Sustainable CT Expo.
Approximately 70 people attended our annual
meeting on July 20th which featured Jeffrey Blodgett from the CT Economic
Resource Center, Dianne Kaplan DeVries from Coalition for Justice in Education Funding
and Jon Orcutt from the Tri State Transportation Campaign.
1000 Friends is developing relationships with
staff at DECD and CDA centered on brownfields, transit oriented development, the
state’s comprehensive plan and smart growth. In addition, Heidi met with two board
members of the Homebuilder’s Association to share the Leader’s Guide and
receive both positive and negative feedback.
Web Communications
We had some excitement with the email list over
the Labor Day weekend. Heidi and the Web consultant are working on creating a
worm-proof list and have temporarily pulled back on communications until that is
completely resolved. Jane Latus has volunteered to be our virtual clipping service for
smart growth news emails. Interns are converting our list to partner with Smart Growth
America to use its Convio system.
Survey
Roosevelt Institute (a student-run think tank with
Yale and UCONN Storrs students in Connecticut) students are working on the public
opinion survey project begun by our Yale interns earlier this year. They ran a little
behind on their plan to survey people at concerts on the New Haven Green, at the
transfer station in Mansfield and Bethany or Woodbridge, and at the campground at
Hammonassett State Park over the summer. But they assure us they will have survey
results before November.
Smart Growth Stories
The smart growth stories brochure is at the
printers.
Strengthening Our
Financial Base
We hosted a friend/fundraiser in Fairfield earlier this month. Fifty
people attended Robert Orr’s talk on Smart Growth Opportunities for Connecticut:
Lessons from the Gulf. The event was sponsored and wine was provided by Southport
Green. The following organizations allowed us to send invitations to their mailing
lists: AIA-CT, Fairfielders PLAN, CT Trust for Historic Preservation. Jill Kelly,
Eunice, Shelly, and Ruth Price also helped with outreach. Thank you sincerely to Stu
and Harriet Baldwin, Jill, Jane Talamini, Mike Jehle, Robert and all our volunteers
for making the evening both educational and fun!
A direct mail appeal will be stuffed and sent October 10th
and 11th. To help with the mailing, please contact either Pat or Heidi.
Eunice wrote a letter to a targeted audience in August. Thank you!!
We sent applications to the Greater Bridgeport Foundation, RBS, met
with the New Haven programs person at Casey Family Services, and mailed a letter of
intent to the Middlesex Community Foundation.
An audit of the All Aboard! 2005 financials and a summary of the 2005
1000 Friends financials will be presented at today’s meeting.
For revenue and expenditure details, please see the attached summary.
The Board will retreat on November 10th to drive to
consensus on resource allocation and strengthen its team.
We have three interns for the fall – Carrie Taylor is a UCONN Urban
Semester student, Noah Kazis is a Yale Urban Fellow, and Ian Hopping is at Trinity
College. Welcome, interns!
Respectfully submitted,
Heidi Green, President
September 20, 2006 |
