Work Live Ride

A walking audit of Manchester, CT

Oct 28, 2023

Today I took a ride to Manchester for the “walking audit” for Work, Live, Ride. A policy agenda developed by DesegregateCT, a program funded by The Regional Planning Association. Desegregate CT was founded by Sara Bronin in 2021 in response to George Floyd’s death.

Sara Bronin is the wife of Luke Bronin, the Mayor of Hartford. Sara has written extensively on zoning and is the creator of the National Zoning Atlas and Connecticut’s Zoning Atlas. Sara Bronin served on the Planning and Zoning Commission in Hartford for 7 years before she stepped down in 2020 to focus on statewide zoning with the State of Connecticut’s new MDRA. I covered the creation of the new quasi government partnership on the Sparks Report:

“The Municipal Redevelopment Authority aka MRDA, is a quasi government agency that was dubiously enacted via the State of Connecticut’s biannual budget in 2019. Governor Malloy had been trying to pass legislation to create the MRDA since 2015. Each time it was introduced it was killed. With good reason. In 2017 legislators tried to create the municipal redevelopment agency with the powers to seize private property! In 2019, Lamont snuck the municipal redevelopment agency into in the budget and has been growing its power ever since. To kick start the Municipal Redevelopment Authority, the budget provided a General Fund appropriation of $500 thousand for both the fiscal years of 2020 and 2021. The MRDA was created by the executive branch without a hearing, bypassing the legislative process where the people have a voice. Did you vote for this? Did you know about this?” The Authority

Sara was appointed as Chair of The Historic Preservation Council in 2021 by President Biden.

This is Part 1 of my walk.

Rep. Jason Rojas on “pro homes” and affordable housing aka “fair share”.

Links and References

#DesegregateCT

https://ctexaminer.com/2022/03/20/the-corporate-interests-behind-desegregate-ct/

https://www.aarp.org/livable-communities/housing/info-2022/2022-housing-workshop-day-2-keynote-sara-bronin.html

https://aap.cornell.edu/people/sara-bronin

https://rpa.org/about/financials

https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/rpa-org/pdfs/FY2022-Form-990.pdf

https://www.durst.org

https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/rpa-org/pdfs/2021-AnnualReport_RPA.pdf