Stamford Is 'Crown Jewel' Of CT: Here's Why: Mayor Martin

2019 State of the City Delivered to the Board of Representatives

To The Board of Representatives,

At the beginning of my administration I sought to address Stamford’s unfunded liabilities, improve our City’s infrastructure and ensure our community is a great place to live, work and play. We have made significant progress toward these goals, I am proud to say Stamford is the “Crown Jewel” of the state, and in a better position today than it was in 2013 at the beginning of my administration. With that said, our City continues to face challenges that require diligent focus from our City staff and commitment from our elected officials.

Stamford’s Success

Municipalities across Connecticut, and the country, are challenged to resolve economic issues resulting from underfunded pensions, ever increasing operating costs, and other fiscal issues that depress their economy and impact the quality of life in their communities. Too many cities are facing mounting debt and declining population.

So what is Stamford’s success story? Stamford continues to grow. More people — especially young people — are choosing to plant their roots in our City even though there are many options available in the Fairfield County and the New York City region. It all begins with public safety. We remain the safest City in New England, making us attractive to newcomers from all walks of life. Our schools and students continue to perform well and receive recognition. University of Connecticut’s Stamford campus is experiencing continuous yearly growth in its undergraduate and graduate populations. This consistent flow of new talented young people ensures our City will be home to the workforce of tomorrow. This helps us maintain our standard of living and our economic growth to the benefit of all residents.

The City's administration is committed to exercising sound fiscal management and managing our long-term liabilities. This has enabled us to retain our Triple AAA bond rating and will ensure future generations are not burdened by obligations of the past. However, we cannot afford to ignore the city’s infrastructure. Our roads and other infrastructure projects, including the WPCA, are now receiving long-awaited improvements to better serve our community’s needs.

We have accomplished all of this through diligent and professional management of our City’s assets and resources. It is for this reason Stamford has been called the "Crown Jewel" of Fairfield County by Westfair Magazine. It is why Governor Lamont has called Stamford the "Economic Center of Connecticut."

Here is what we’re doing to keep Stamford moving forward and improving the quality of life for all who live here.

Economy

Stamford’s economy continues to improve. This is partly due to new businesses bringing jobs to the area, but mostly from current businesses making larger investments in Stamford. The World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. (WWE) signed a 16-year lease for the property at 677 Washington Boulevard, previously known as the “UBS Building,” Charter Communications has decided to keep their headquarters in Stamford and will be relocating their offices to 406 Washington Boulevard where they will be expanding their workforce to over 2,000 employees. Indeed announced in December they would be adding 500 more jobs to their Stamford office at 177 Broad Street. Stamford’s economy continues to grow because businesses executives and individuals, as well as our state government, all believe in Stamford’s future and long-term stability.

The expansion of Stamford's business community has kept our unemployment rate low — lower than most other municipalities in Connecticut and below the state average. As of Q1 2019, Stamford’s unemployment rate was 4.0 percent — lower than Hartford (7.3 percent), Waterbury (6.8 percent), Bridgeport (6.6 percent), New Haven (5.0 percent), Norwalk (4.3 percent) and Danbury (4.1 percent). In addition, the median income of Stamford households continues to rise, most recently estimated at $84,893. Our City's real growth in the Grand List continues to grow —this past year increasing by 1.36 percent.

As our economy flourishes, more residents and families are choosing to live in Stamford. Our population is estimated at 129,113, with roughly 1% growth per year since 2011. This is slightly above the country’s average growth of .74% per year, and vastly greater than Connecticut’s stagnating growth of 0.0% per year.

With more people moving to Stamford, the demand for housing has increased and has fueled the market for more apartment buildings. Stamford has responded to this increased housing demand by approving housing developments that provide more supply for the increased demand. There are currently over 5,200 apartment units in development in Stamford. These newer units will provide options for new residents interested in the best housing options available.

As more of these units are built, the supply of affordable units will increase as well due to the city's requirement for developers to make 10 perecnt of all new residential developments "affordable units." Stamford provides more affordable housing units than all the other municipalities in lower Fairfield County combined. And in the last few years, Stamford has provided more new affordable units than all other municipalities in lower Fairfield County, combined. The continued demand for housing stock will contribute to maintaining a lower market rate for housing, while adding more affordable units for lower income residents.

Infrastructure

We continue to focus on overcoming decades of underfunding our infrastructure. The City’s Traffic, Transportation and Parking Department has utilized a broad range of tools and techniques to make Stamford more accessible and safer for all residents. In May, the traffic light resynchronization project continued with traffic light timing on major corridors including Long Ridge Road, High Ridge Road, and West Main Street. The department is in the process of synchronizing all traffic lights in the downtown and anticipates that project will complete by the end of the summer. This project is long overdue. The last time Stamford resynchronized its traffic lights was in 1991. We’ve improved our parking meters to accept all forms of payment: cash, credit cards and mobile app payments. These new meters will also refuse payments if a resident attempts to pay outside of operating hours.

Our Operations Department continues to innovate resulting in more efficient services — including our pothole repair operations, which can continue now that the City has addressed the fracking ordinance that inhibited these operations.

In addition to technological upgrades, our City is pursuing grants from the state and federal government to make necessary improvements to our roads. The Oaklawn Avenue project was completed in June of this year. The project installed sidewalks, repaved, restriped and realigned the road for better traffic flow. All of this was accomplished with 80% funding from the Federal Highway Administration, 10% funding from Connecticut’s Department of Transportation, with the remaining 10% paid for by the City of Stamford. Other projects are ongoing in Stamford, including a renovation of Boxer Square on the West Side, intersection improvements at West Avenue and West Main Street, a roundabout installation at Greenwich and Pulaski, and corridor improvements at Greenwich Avenue.

Stamford continues to pursue coordination with the State of Connecticut for major projects including investments in Stamford’s Transportation Center, a bridge replacement on High Ridge Road and road paving for Route 1, Long Ridge Road and Washington Boulevard. This past year we saw work completed on the Route 1 bridge replacement, Atlantic Street bridge replacement, and we’re making progress on the train station’s parking garage, which should begin to come together in the next two years. My administration remains optimistic about the State administration’s willingness to work with our City to complete the projects our community needs.

Public Safety

Our new Police Headquarters building opened in May and our entire Police Force has transitioned into the new building. This new building will meet the needs of our Police Department for many generations to come, and allow the department to work more effectively. The former headquarters location will become a green space in “strategic reserve” for use in the future.

As we focus on public safety, we find serious crimes continues to decline in Stamford. Our City experienced a 23% reduction in serious crimes from 2017 to 2018. However, there has been an 8% increase in property crime, primarily driven by increased larceny & theft offenses and motor vehicle theft. Our department is aware of these trends and adapting their policing methods to better respond to the incidents that impact residents most frequently. Stamford remains the safest City in New England and has realized a 33% reduction in crime since 2011.

Other developments in Public Safety include the appointment of our new Fire Marshal Walter Seely who was sworn-in to lead the department in December, as well as the appointment of Assistant Fire Marshal Chad Armstrong. Joe Gaudett joined the City earlier this year as Director of 911, and our 911 operators can now receive emergency texts in addition to emergency calls.

Education

Superintendent Dr. Tamu Lucero assumed her role in April and has hit the ground running. Dr. Lucero came to Stamford six years ago with an immense amount of education expertise. She has proven her ability to connect with our community and demonstrated her leadership as an administrator. I am completely confident in Superintendent Lucero’s ability to lead our school district into the future.

We received encouraging data from UConn Stamford showing their undergraduate population continues to rise. In addition to a growing student population and housing capacity, UConn has expanded its academic programs and faculty. By next school year they’ll have added majors in Biology, Communications and Journalism in addition to the continuous strength they’ve seen in their digital media, design, computer science and business majors. UConn also made dorms available to students over the summer for internships in our City. This will allow young professionals to make ties to our business community straight from school and ensure Stamford has a continuous supply of talent.

Stamford’s Challenges

Although Stamford has overcome many negative trends on the state and federal level, there still remain local issues that can negatively affect our community if they are not taken seriously and handled with care.

School Mold

The City continues to develop and address solutions to mold in our schools. Last October the Mold Task Force — a collaboration between the City and the Board of Education — was formed to address the mold issue. After investigating all our buildings, the Task Force concluded it had mold issues affecting many school buildings across the district. The Task Force has since managed remediation efforts, investigated the cause of mold and sought long-term solutions for our school district.

The cost of mold remediation and future prevention is significant. The majority of Stamford’s capital projects budget this year is dedicated to projects to preventing future mold issues in our schools. These projects are long overdue and should have been undertaken in the past, but like many other infrastructure projects, these capital needs were not highlighted and were deferred for the future. However, Stamford’s mold issues are not merely the result of past administrations delaying obligations. Some of these issues are the result of attempting to fulfill short-term promises while ignoring long-term infrastructure needs. We now see this type of governing only burdens future generations with problems. My administration has taken this issue seriously, and we are looking for long-term sustainable answers, not just short-term band aids. We are working collaboratively with the Board of Education to ensure we resolve this problem now and for the future.

Budget

A year ago, our City was already a million dollars behind on its budget and we were still struggling to find additional budget cuts mandated by the Boards. This was before the significant operating expenses for mold remediation in our schools and the Westover School closure were on our financial radar screen. This was a stressful budget situation but we have ended the year very strong with another anticipated surplus.

The City persevered thanks to cost management, structural savings from our focus on sound economic decisions (that are not always easy to forecast in the budget), savings from a lighter year for storms, and strong development activity that provided the increase in revenue required to offset previously unanticipated mold expenses. Reducing the long-term cost for taxpayers while enhancing core services continues to be our goal.

We are continuously making decisions that are designed to improve our economic future. They don’t always align with the budget cycle, and at times are contentious. But I believe we are now starting to see savings as a result of these optimizations. More departments are running more efficiently. We’re able to provide more City services that benefit residents, without significant increases in costs. This approach to City management ensures savings that will continue into the future, rather than recklessly cutting positions that could destabilize our structure and result in higher costs down the road. We have a long way to go, but we are making progress.

These savings in structural management have helped the City, but the greatest assistance in costs has come from development in Stamford. The growth in our Grand List and fees from development projects have made up for many of the unexpected costs facing our City. While this has benefited us for now, there is no guarantee these revenue sources will continue into the future.

As we start this fiscal year, we believe we have adequate resources to meet our budgetary needs. Of course, there are always new challenges and shifting of resources to meet them. And most importantly, we must not fool ourselves into believing our financial situation is permanent. It could change at any moment.

Conclusion

Stamford’s community is the success story of Connecticut because of our diligent commitment to resolving problems now and into the future. This approach is not always easy, but it is working. We are executing the plan to extract ourselves from the burden of our past long-term fiscal obligations. We have improved our infrastructure and services for residents. We’re attracting businesses, residents and the workforce of the future. We continue to be an example for other cities.

I thank you for your cooperation and assistance this past year in keeping Stamford a great place to live, work and play.

David R. Martin