Whole Foods Market® Celebrates Grand Re-Opening in Westport, CT
Celebration Includes 5% Day for Connecticut Food Bank Open to All Area Residents Offering an Early Taste of Thanksgiving
(Westport, CT – November 3, 2010) – Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ: WFMI), the world’s leading natural and organic foods supermarket and America’s first national certified organic grocer, will be hosting a grand re-opening celebration on Wednesday, November 10th from 4:00pm-8:00pm at the newly renovated store located at 399 Post Road West in Westport. To celebrate, Whole Foods Market will offer a storewide holiday tastings, turkey carving demonstrations, door prizes, and live music from local singer/songwriter Bern McWain. 5% of the total sales for the day will be donated to The Connecticut Food Bank, a local nonprofit organization that works with corporations, community organizations and individuals to solicit, transport, warehouse and distribute donated food to those in need throughout the area.
Governor Rell: $7 Million Stimulus Boost for State Child Care Providers
Economic stimulus checks totaling $7 million are headed to thousands of Connecticut child care providers as part of an initiative to help low-income families stay in the workforce, Governor M. Jodi Rell announced today.
“This was a common sense decision,” Governor Rell said. “This program helps keep parents working.”
The one-time payments will help the nearly 5,500 providers in Connecticut’s ‘Care4Kids’ program, which offers subsidized child care to eligible families.
“These special payments will enable our child care providers to strengthen their services to children and families across the state,” Governor Rell said. “This is especially important for families struggling to make ends meet. Access to high-quality, affordable child care services can mean the difference between going to work and unemployment.”
Payments ranging from $300 to $49,000, depending on size of child care facility, number of Care4Kids clients and national accreditation status, were mailed out Friday, May 28, by the Department of Social Services to licensed group and family care homes, child care centers, school-based providers and summer camps.
The payments are a combination of federal child care stimulus funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and state-appropriated dollars in the Care4Kids program. Providers are urged to use the money to further reduce family fees, increase staff compensation, make utility or energy-saving upgrades, improve play areas, and purchase supplies and equipment.
Altogether, Connecticut is receiving $13.7 million federal child care stimulus funding. These dollars have helped meet deficits in the Care4Kids program during the state’s fiscal crisis.
The program is currently open to eligible low-income families. Consumer information for constituents is available at www.ctcare4kids.com or 1-888-214-KIDS.
see attached list of recipients and local info below:
Back in 2004, the first Green Drinks held in Connecticut happened at Papaya Thai’s tiki bar in South Norwalk. Green Drinks have since spread all over the state to include many other cities and towns.
But not since Fairfield County Green Drinks has there been a big Green Drinks, so it’s time to invite all the Green Drinks organizers to celebrate together again.
Fairfield, Norwalk, Stamford, Bridgeport, Ridgefield and Westchester Green Drinks have joined forces inviting all Green Drinks fans to attend Super Green Drinks on June 2nd at Fat Cat Pie and Fat Cat Joe.
Author Stefanie Iris Weiss will sign copies of her new book Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable (Ten Speed Press/Crown Publishing).
Fat Cat Joe will provide an alcohol-free environment for young people and those who choose an alcohol-free life style. It’s a coffee shop. Fat Cat Pie next door will serve drinks as always.
On this occasion we are joined by the Try Norwalk Naturally green business association, which will set up displays and booths.
For more information please contact us. http://www.greendrinks.org
Click USA, then click Connecticut, then Norwalk.
The fourth annual Democratic pizza and politics event hosted by Ted Hoffstatter, Martha Aasen and members of various DTCs from Westport, Weston, Wilton, Greenwich, and Fairfield. Despite the room being packed with a few hundred people it was still difficult to not run into someone running for governor, or had run for governor or would like to one day grow up and be governor.
As usual the Norwalk Democratic party provided the usual ample fodder for me write stories for the entire month of February. But what happens at Fat Cat stays in Fat Cat, so we’ll just have to wait how things all shake out. But in the interim, because I know you were all hoping for all those tantalizing morsels of Norwalk DTC drama, let’s just say that the likelihood of someone challenging the Democratic party rules again, as in this will be the third time in 4 years, is pretty high. Not because of any one egregious action, but three separate events are rallying cries for change. My response; just fix the rules and stop with this nonsense.
The battle for who will be the next chair of the Norwalk Dems is shaping up to be delightful. Of course that’s what precipitating all the drama between people who won’t let go, and people who want to be part of a real Democratic party. There’s a healthy amount of jockeying between the people who are rallying around the campaigns of the gubernatorial candidates, which as represented last night are Dan Malloy, Ned Lamont, Rudy Marconi and Mary Glassman. The prize, as it is in all these primaries, is who gets to pick the delegates that go to the state conventions and otherwise enjoy the potential of administration jobs in Hartford. A word of advice, an old bear is not nimble and rather clumsy in its movements, but an old bear lies in wait in the bushes and can ambush the more nimble with a swipe of its paw. Just saying.
Meanwhile, the under representation by the “official” Norwalk Democratic party in their home turf, was noticeable.
Dick Blumenthal, as Senate candidate got the most attention. Jim Himes spoke passionately about getting things done in Washington. Nancy Wyman, Denise Nappier and Susan Bysiewicz spoke as well as Ned Lamont, Dan Malloy, Rudi Marconi, Denise Merril, Andy Garfunkel, Gerry Garcia, Mary Glassman and not in that order at all and I think I missed a few people.
Duffy, the little white dog, was rescued by his owner, for those of you who were concerned after the brief announcement made by Tony Ancona at the outset of the speaking program.
It has been an interesting day. When the brightest person I know says that Norwalk is just not worth the effort to change, and the most passionate change agent in town suddenly says that Norwalk is just to hard to make positive changes in I begin to wonder if it truly is an impossible task to make Norwalk better. Then I run into various people who think that X, Y and Z are responsible for the well being of the world etc. it’s enough to make the new decade as daunting as the last. And to top it all off, I read through the letters column in today’s Hour about how puppy mills are cruel to dogs.
Puh-leze. First off, I think animals have a lot more potential than most humans that scrape their knuckles on plant earth. Yet, they are animals, Just as plants are plants. And humans, whether you like it personally or not, sit atop the Darwinian food chain as species prima uno.
You know what, if Congress had pitched health care reform as protecting pets, we wouldn’t have this huge debate about the cost, about the reform, well, about anything. Your family FiFi would engender emotions more powerful than a speeding bullet, a tall building and a runway train. We’d pass any law, no matter the cost about a poodle, but when it comes to humans, well that’s another matter entirely.
FiFi deserves an upbringing better than a pen dedicated towarads livestock. But so does your fellow human being. And for wahtever reason, we are content to site by while families bankrupt themselves over health care costs, while Inusrance companie send tehir “C” level staff into the multi-multi million dollar salary range. Meanwhile our state legislators, who barely eek out 25-something thousand a year punt and defer real hard political decisions because it’s just not politically expedient to cut union jobs when there’s a puppy that might have been raised in a pen.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. This is after all the nation that catapulted the “pet rock” as a cultural phenom. Today we have robotic hamsters. Will we ever learn?
Would it be so hard to hold the doomsayers accountable for the apocalypse they promise? Would it be so hard to treat fellow mankind as one wishes to be treated? I guess so. Let’s picket a pet store in Westport when Westport as a town contribute less than 2% affordable housing to the region. Priorities people, priorities.
According to a report in The Hour, Westport officials took the 21st century plunge and brought in some tech software to handle on-line police complaints. The idea, to get people to report the non emergency stuff online. Finally, a spark of using technology to provide better services in Fairfield County.
Coplogic also produces other products that seem interesting. How about Overtime Management System (OTMS?
According to the coplogic website, Westport will be the first Connecticut police department to get the system installed.
The incident reporting system also mentioned in the Hour for Collierville TN, looks interesting. Under their web site, a link to the Mayor’s Action Center leads you to the outsourced web system that helpfully organizes the types of questions/complaints that someone could have. Litter on sidewalks, animal noise, public park grass mowing matters, malfunctioning streetlights, and the list goes on.
The irony of course being the latest DPW budget requests submitted to the Common Counci’s public works committee. Somehow we are supposed to accept a no increase DPW budget because that’s what the finance department wanted. This would be the same finance department that thinks the City’s IT department actually performs to a level that provides services to the City departments.
Let’s focus on customer service complaints. It’s the finance department’s view that all city service departments refer questions and complaints to the city customer service center. By phone. Or in person. How very 19th century.
Then the complaint or question is virtually in a black hole. Except for maybe DPW Director Alvord, no one knows, especially the complainant, what the resolution of the report is. Which means that no one, especially the public works committee of the Common Council knows what the number if incidents of city service issues are out there, what has been resolved, and more importantly the public doesn’t know.
Fortunately, the Norwalk Parking Authority has moved to the 21st century. On their web site, they offer a survey and online form for questions and an online survey about their service performance. For full disclosure, yeah I had something to do about that.
The Norwalk Planning Commission has been shepherding IT infrastructure projects for the past year or so. To date, the IT department is still “in process” for developing a new web site for the City of Norwalk. If it moves any slower the Internet may in fact be obsolete by the time the City of Norwalk gets webified. Of course the key problem with the process here is that the upgrade of the City’s web site is not really an IT project, it’s a marketing project. Then again the City of Norwalk has been operating with a zero dollar marketing budget for many years. I kid you not. You see back in the 1800s, the City charter didn’t cover “marketing” or technology or think of things like customer services. Okay, I jest a bit there.
There’s an unhealthy expectation that budgets can be cut just because finance says so. The thing is, without data, no one knows really what level of services Norwalk residents are really getting because all that is reported is what’s been done, not in context of what the demand is. That context is critical to any management decision about staffing, service hours, and performance levels. Yet those questions don’t often get asked as part of the political process.
Things can and do change, but from first hand experience, it’s a long hard slog to effect change in how business is done in government versus how business is done in the real world. In the real world, when you want to improve service and reduce labor costs you just do it. In the government world you face opposition by the watchdogs of union labor who can’t seem to figure out that making each worker more performance productive saves and can actually create jobs instead of just measuring hours worked.
State Senator Bob Duff is encouraging people to help out the local food bank. He forwarded this message:
Please join me in helping The Food Bank of Lower Fairfield County, Inc. There is so much need this year and I know that none of you want to see a family go without this Thanksgiving. After speaking with the executive director, I asked her to send me an email, which is below.
Thank you,
Bob
From: Kate Lombardo [mailto:klombardo@sbcglobal.net]
Sent: Wed 11/18/2009 11:40 AM
To: Sen. Duff, Bob
Subject: Your community needs your help…please
The Food Bank of Lower Fairfield County, Inc.
461 Glenbrook Road
Stamford, CT 06906
Ph (203) 358-8898
Fax (203) 358-8306
www.foodbanklfc.org
Serving the towns of Darien, Greenwich, New Canaan,
Norwalk, Stamford, and Wilton
November 16, 2009
Dear Neighbor,
Every now and again there comes a time when we must reach out and help our neighbor. The severe economic crisis has brought us to one of those times.
The Food Bank of Lower Fairfield County, Inc. is trying to feed 15,000 families this Thanksgiving. So many families are treading water just trying to keep pace with paying their bills and feeding their children. Fairfield County is home to many individuals who have been laid off. Therefore they are seeking help from their community, some for the very first time in their lives.
Our proud senior citizens are being forced to choose between taking their medication and eating. These individuals worked hard to build, protect and nurture our nation. They did this so that they and future generations could live the “American Dream”. That dream does not include hunger.
The Food Bank serves the towns of Greenwich, Stamford, New Canaan, Darien, Norwalk and Wilton. Last year, The Food Bank distributed 1.2 million pounds of food to non-profit agencies such as food pantries, homeless shelters, and soup kitchens.
Please make a donation and help us provide those in need with a wonderful Thanksgiving Day meal and respite from the harsh conditions of hunger and poverty.
WILTON — An eight-person coalition of opponents to constructing a new Route 7 expressway from Norwalk to Danbury spoke in Wilton Tuesday morning about why this “dead road,” as one described it, should never be built.
Led by state Sen. Toni Boucher, R-26th Dist., each took a turn in Wilton Town Hall presenting reasons why they thought the state should not go forward with its construction, which ranged from damaging wetlands and increasing air pollution to awaiting the results of widening the existing Route 7 and exploiting opportunities to increase service on the Danbury branch of the Metro-North Railroad.
Identifying it as a “dead road,” Boucher said that after a 50-year discussion, every proposal for the expressway has been scrapped after encountering “oftentimes bitter opposition.” And besides repeated rejection by residents in the towns through which it would run, Boucher said current environmental regulations and road design requirements would prohibit its construction along its proposed path.
“The difficult and dangerous topography of the area and new federal guidelines for highway grades have rendered any proposal for a superhighway in this location so costly as to render it untenable,” Boucher said.
Portions of the southern end of the project were completed in Norwalk between 1969 and 1992, resulting in 3.9 miles of four-land highway connecting Interstate-95 to the Merritt Parkway and continuing to Grist Mill Rd. On the northern end, 9.9 miles of multi-lane highway were constructed from Danbury to Brookfield between 1961 and 1992.
The proposed extension of the Route 7 expressway, alsoknown as “Super 7,”would run for about 15.5 miles through Wilton, Weston, Ridgefield and Redding. Of those four towns, only Weston’s First Selectman Woody Bliss has supported building the road.
The opponents at Tuesday’s presentation expressed exasperation that despite numerous town meetings, state studies and a decades-long court fight, efforts to build the road have arisen again.
Currently, the road’s leading proponent has been state Sen. Bob Duff, D-25th Dist., who earlier this month released the results of a survey conducted by the University of Connecticut — Stamford Campus that indicated a majority of support for the proposedexpressway by residentsof the towns through which it would traverse, as well as surrounding municipalities.
But Gail Lavielle, commissioner of the Connecticut Public Transportation Commission and, according to Boucher, an authority in polling methodology, described the survey touted by Duff as being inadequate to its purpose and, “far more disturbing, misleading to the public and worried and frightened people who had been reassured that the threat of having their lives disrupted by an expressway had disappeared.”
Gail Lavielle, Commissioner of the Connecticut Public Transportation Commission
After pointing to weaknesses she saw in the survey’s sampling methodology, Lavielle said, “claiming that a survey like this shows overwhelming support for Super 7 is not only misleading, it’s just wrong.”
Identifying an impediment to building the Route 7 expressway that has not drawn much attention before, John Chew, executive director of the Brookfield-based Housatonic Valley Council of Elected Officials, said the current widening of existing Route 7 in Danbury is using the right-of-way for the proposed expressway.
John Chew, Executive Director of the Housatonic Valley Council of Elected Officials
With the current project costing $80 million, Chew said no government agency would agree to rip up Route 7 in Danbury after it’s been widened, so, “You can’t reach Danbury with Super 7 because where you’re getting into Danbury is taken. It’s a valley; there’s no place else to go.”
Robert Nerney, Wilton’s director of planning and land use management, said that, if constructed, the Route 7 expressway “would have an enormous adverse impact on not only Wilton, but I think fair to say, on lower Fairfield County in general.”
Nerney said the ecological impact arising from a project of its magnitude would “significantly compromise” the waterside aquifers and air quality along the Norwalk River.
Robert Nerney, Wilton's Director of Planning and Land Use
Patricia Sesto, Wilton’s director of environmental affairs, said the proposed Route 7 expressway’s right-of-way is largely placed within the Norwalk River valley, which is already “consumed” by the railroad’s Danbury Branch and existing Route 7. The Super 7 expressway, she said, would have little choice but to traverse the outlying hillside of the river valley, which is characterized, in part, by very steep slopes.
Sesto presented a list of hazards to the Norwalk River she saw occurring if the expressway were constructed, and said that in the era when the road was originally proposed, “our knowledge regarding wetlands, habitat and river protection was far narrower than it is today.”
“Given these environmental considerations,” Sesto said, “it is unclear if the highway is still worth the environmental price, or if the path that was proposed four decades ago is even still the best path.”
Arguing that both the federal government and Connecticut are deeply in debt, the first selectman of Wilton, William F. Brennan, said any available funds should be used to improve Interstate-95, “the most overloaded interstate road in Connecticut.” Brennan said the Route 7 expressway would worsen conditions on I-95 by feeding thousands of additional cars onto it.
“For almost40 years (the Route 7 expressway) has been discussed, but never constructed,” said Brennan, “(because) the people most impacted have strongly opposed it, they do not want it, and any efforts to resuscitate interest have been repeatedly defeated.”
At the conclusion of Tuesday’s presentations, Boucher handed out a notice requesting residents and elected officials speak against the expressway at the next meeting of the Municipal Planning Organization of the South Western Regional Planning Agency.
During its September meeting, the MPO reiterated its request that the state conduct a study of possible uses for the right-of-way of the proposed Route 7 expressway. The MPO next meets on Thursday, Oct. 22, at 8 a.m. in the Norwalk Transit District’s headquarters at 275 Wilton Ave. in Norwalk.
A transportation policy and planning groupof leaders from eightsouthwestern Connecticut municipalities reaffirmed on Thursday its recommendation the state conduct a study of uses for the right-of-way for the uncompleted portionof the Route 7 expressway.
After a discussion that resulted in a change in wording from “Support for the Route 7 Expressway” to “Support for the Route 7 Corridor,” the group unanimously approved a resolution calling for a “comprehensive, multi-modal investment study” of the proposed path for the expressway, which extends from Interstate-95 in Norwalk to Interstate-84 in Danbury.
The group requestedthe samestudybe conducted in 2007.
Under consideration since the 1960s, portions of the Route 7 expressway were completed in Norwalk and Danbury, leaving a gap of more than 15 miles that would run through Wilton, Weston, Ridgefield and Redding. Fierce opposition by residents in those towns has stymied efforts by the state to complete the project.
In the interim, the state has been widening the existing Route 7 in Wilton. At the same time, the General Assembly passed legislation in 2008 allowing the state to sell properties acquired for the expressway to raise revenue.
Thesensitiveness of the issue wasdisplayed in the debate duringThursday’s meeting of the South Western Region Metropolitan Planning Organization (SWRMPO), which consists of the chief executives of Darien, Greenwich, New Canaan, Norwalk, Stamford, Weston, Westport and Wilton. The meeting was held in the Norwalk Transit District’s headquarters on Wilson Avenue in Norwalk.
“Why are we wasting our time on this extremely costly and unaffordable proposal?,” asked William F. Brennan, first selectman of Wilton, who noted the state’s Department of Transportation does not include the Route 7 expressway in its long-range plans projected out to 2025.
Brennan said he met with senior officials of the Department of Transportation on Wednesday, and they told him they have no interest in the project and that it would cost millions of dollars to acquire the remaining land necessary for it. He said better use of the state’s transportation funds would be made by fixing Interstate-95, “the most overloaded interstate road in Connecticut.”
In reply to Brennan’s remarks, Woody Bliss, first selectman of Weston and chairman of SWRMPO, said the function of the group was to look toward the future of the infrastructure network of transportation in the region. Bliss said the organization voted unanimously in 2007 for the state to conduct a study of the Route 7 corridor, which could result in deciding to continue widening existing Route 7, building the “Super 7″ expressway, or constructing a light rail line.
The first selectman of Westport, Gordon F. Joseloff, said he had no problem with SWRMPO repeatedly reviewing plans for the Route 7 corridor because, “there’s a large turnover among our residents and the needs change, and unless we are willing to at least listen and sample we’re not doing our jobs.”
Norwalk’s Mayor Richard A. Moccia said no city has been more affected by the Route 7 expressway than Norwalk.
Between 1969 and 1992, the southern portion of the expressway was constructed in Norwalk between I-95 and Grist Mill Road. Known as the Route 7 connector, it currently unloads traffic at its northern terminus onto the existing Route 7 a short distance from the Wilton town line.
Moccia said Norwalk was “split in half” by the expressway, which “really set back our economic growth as far as logistically moving around the city and creating another barrier between neighborhoods.”
“Hopefully we can reach a reasonable course,” said Moccia. “Let’s look at this, let’s not dispose of the land yet, until we have a better idea” of what’s needed from the study.
The southbound lanes of Interstate 95 between exits 24 and 17 (Fairfield to Westport) are being milled andresurfaced overnight until Thursday, Oct. 22. Work is occuring Monday through Thursday from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
