The official swearing in of the Common Council is on Tuesday but Doug Hempstead is out of the gates early with a priority list for members to focus on.
From the Hour:
The Republican representative of District D said he supports an improved demolition delay ordinance, finishing the master plan and also a stronger focus on infrastructure issues.
“We have some serious unfinished business and hard economic decisions which we should immediately take up,” Hempstead said. “I am asking all members of the new Common Council to pull together and address the unfinished business of the past council. We need to work together and establish and act on our priorities in the first 120 days of this term.”
Hempstead believes “the most important issue facing Norwalk involves infrastructure repair, upgrades and maintenance.”
“We need to establish early the priorities of our infrastructure improvements, which includes paving additional roads, drainage and flooding issues,” he said. “It is important that we establish early what needs can be responsibly addressed in this budget cycle, and the costs associated with them, prior to establishing a budget cap.”
Hempstead said the council should also “finish its changes and comments on the Master Plan and return it to the Planning Commission for further action.”
The Master Plan of Conservation and Development is the source of guidelines used by other departments and agencies with the city to make policy and regulatory decisions as it affects land use.
Hempstead said he and Democratic Councilman William Krummel, District E, had already started presenting a list of recommendations to the planning committee for review.
These recommendations include that the council should make the necessary revisions to the proposed 180 demolition delay ordinance and include the recommendations put forth by Mayor Richard A. Moccia and also include a funding source and guidelines for establishing a registry of historical properties that should be the only properties subjected to this ordinance.
“There are existing ambiguities about the process of identifying properties and there is no mechanism to incentivize property owners to preserve historical properties,” Hempstead said. “This is a good debate and discussion to have. The Council needs to provide the funding for an updated historical building inventory, while also providing incentives for property owners to preserve and improve buildings.”
Hempstead also believes the next two years will be extremely challenging from a budget perspective.
“The Council should hit the ground full speed in addressing the budget,” he said. “Our citizens are reeling from huge increases in fuel and food and mortgage costs. The citizenry and the city are facing the same challenges in rising costs, this means the city has to be very prudent with its spending. We must choose wisely, and separate the “have to-s” from “the want to-s.”
A focus in infrastructure and how we can pay for it is the biggest issue facing the council this year. The budget season has started within the departments, and committees will have to work quickly to get a handle on what was spent, what worked and what didn’t work from the previous year.
The Republicans have only 2 new council members to bring up to speed, although both have served on the council previously, so its more of an issue focus. The Democrats have 4 new council members to bring up to speed, none having previous council experience.
The planning committee likely has the most outstanding big issues to deal with. The master plan should be a priority.
It will be interesting to see how the Demo Delay Ordinance gets tweaked. There’s a misconception by many that a 50 year benchmark would cause every building to be subjected to a delay. That’s not the case. If Hempstead is promoting the idea that the city should maintain a list of historic properties that would be the properties that would trigger a delay ordinance, that is a very good thing. There were many silly arguments made by the Republicans when they voted against the ordinance. With the election past everyone, now is indeed the time for smart arguments and discussion. Let’s hope that this council can start off working together.
source: The Hour, Hempstead calls for council to focus on Norwalk issues, by James Walker, November 18, 2007
