Yesterday, Mayor Mark Boughton started his third term as Danbury's mayor and he outlined his goals for his new term.

When city officials were sworn in Thursday, the standing-room-only crowd heard a couple of specific proposals for 2006 including a bond package for a new police headquarters.

In his third inaugural address as mayor, Mark Boughton also mentioned a zoning proposal to help preserve Deer Hill Avenue.

"We have a responsibility to preserve our neighbors and to manage the city wisely," Boughton said. "We need strong code enforcement, and we need to develop historic zones in the city and to protect our buildings."

[...]

The historic street above Main Street was once home to Danbury's factory owners and other business leaders. It remains a street with some homes valued above $1 million with spacious front lawns.

Boughton said it might be possible to create a historic zone in the area or some type of overlay zone to protect the street.

Boughton also briefly outlined a public safety bond package that would both pay for a new police headquarters and build a fire station at Danbury Municipal Airport.

After his inauguration speech, Boughton said the entire package would be less than $40 million, because that will equal the amount of bonding the city will retire up to the new bonding date. By doing that, the city won't be borrowing more money than it is now carrying.

Boughton said police headquarters is estimated to cost about $33 million. Fire station equipment is estimated at $500,000. The station itself is estimated at roughly $800,000, although that figure could rise over time, and it was included in a previous bond package.

Now I wasn't there so I don't know if anything else was said but with Boughton spending so much time on illegal immigration, you would think he might of talked about it in his speech. Also, the police union contract, the traffic problem, were major issues which dominated the campaign so I'm surprised that those topics were not mentioned (again I wan't there so I'm not sure he didn't talk about these issues; I can only go with I read at this point). I don't really remember much about Deer Hill Avenue dominating the campaign (although it should be preserved and people are working hard to start the developers) and the new police station is nothing new and has been in the works for some time.

Danbury is growing at a very fast rate and I would of like to heard from the mayor how he plans to deal with the increasing population. Traffic is a nightmare, parents complain about the schools (again, ask any parent who has a kid in the middle school and you'll see what I mean), and the police contract problem is on everybody's minds.

Like we stated before, we were at a town hall meeting a few months ago and the issue we described dominated the meeting. We're working on improving the sound quality of the recording and posting it online. We're also going to do another poll and ask you, the reader, what issue should be Mayor Boughton's highest priority.

I was unable to attend the conference on immigration at Western Connecticut State University but Channel 8 reported on the meeting and you can view the video by clicking here.

From WTNH

While there is a lot of talk in Danbury about the problems associated with illegal immigration, there are those who believe it's really not a problem at all.

"That may be one of the reason we are a magnet for national attention these types of population issues exits in border states, Texas, California, as an example. Perhaps because we are a northeastern state that is receives national attention."

Danbury is exploding with immigrants both legal and illegal. Mostly from South America.

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton says there are so many illegal immigrants it's straining city resources including the health care system, schools, and housing. So much so the mayor says "we want to be reimbursed for the cost of housing so many people here who are not legal."

The mayor did not attend Thursday's conference at Western Connecticut State University, but he was very much a subject of discussion. It's the mayor's very public push for relief, says the executive director of the Hispanic Center of Greater Danbury, which is the problem, not the immigrants.

"I use the expression opening a Pandora's Box," says Maria-Cinta Lowe. "He gave a reason for people to complain, spread their opinions, maybe they never said anything before."

If you want a chicken, their are plenty at KFC, you don't need to be raising them in the city!

Ah, we turned a corner on the immigration issue...from volleyball to those damn chickens. The saga continues...

From the Danbury News-Times

Raising chickens is allowed in the city only on parcels of 5 acres or more, and they're not allowed in the downtown area.

So where are the chickens?

Downtown. On small lots.

Well Avenue, where one flock of chickens wanders the street, is a downtown city street near Westville Avenue.

They're coming into Chiarito's Well Avenue yard in the mornings, and napping under shrubs in the neighborhood during the day.

"Every day I go out front, and they're digging up the grass," said Chiarito who, like many of his neighbors, complained to the city about the increasing chicken menace.

"You're asking about the chickens up the street? There's five or six. They're running in the road. They're digging holes in the lawn," said Samantha Dinho of Well Avenue.

The city is getting a call or two a week about people raising chickens in town.

City Health Director Scott Leroy said raising chickens in the city poses health risks. A chicken coop is home to a sizable amount of chicken droppings, and it smells. After a rain storm, contaminated water is likely to drain into streams and rivers.

[...]

Over on Stillman Avenue, Rita Godfrey remembers when she moved in 51 years ago.

"They were raising chickens across the street back then. Nowadays, you can't raise livestock downtown," Godfrey said. "I usually keep an eye out. I haven't heard anything. I haven't seen anything."

At another house on Stillman Avenue, Bunting saw the construction materials for a chicken coop. He recognized chicken wire. He warned the homeowner a coop wouldn't be permitted on Stillman, which is a block away from South Street on Town Hill Avenue in downtown Danbury.

"I sent them a letter after giving them the verbal warning," Bunting said.

The coop was built anyway.

The city issued a cease and desist order Nov. 1 to Betsy Lopez of 18 Stillman Ave. Lopez could not be reached for comment Wednesday but she did try to convince the zoning enforcement officer that she was not in violation. Evidence persuaded him otherwise.

"I went over, and she said it was a dog pen," Bunting said. "I looked at it and I saw chickens. I said, 'Those are chickens.

Okay, as I person who was raised in the South, I can see where city folks can get alittle nervous seeing chickens run around the street (believe me, thank goodness their chickens and NOT roosters!)

I think the city should have no problem hunting the offenders down and getting rid of these chickens. Let's hope this doesn;t get blown out of hand and become yet another immigration problem.

Mayor Boughton claims that illegal immigrants are draining the city resources but have you noticed that he has never shown us the figures to back up these claims. Because of this, I ask just one question: If you don't have the numbers to back up your claims, then how do you really know illegal immigrants are draining the city resources? Till this day Mayor Boughton has failed to give any documentation showing exactly how illegal immigrants are costing the city money.

We attended a town hall meeting at Broadview School a few months ago and asked the Mayor to explain to us which city resources are being drianed by the illegals and by how much. Not only did he fail to produce any data (becasue he had none), he tried use illegals using the services of the Danbury Hospital as an example which immedately was denounced by the audience (there is no connection between the Danbury Hospital the the City of Danbury when it comes to city resouces) and was forced to retract that claim and use other examples such as housing, social services, and overcrowding of schools.

My problem with these assumptions is that we simply have no figure on the impact of illegal immigrants are costing Danbury and becuase Boughton's broad and unsupportive allegations has created an atmosphere where hate-groups like the Concerned Citizens for Immigration Reform (made up of former members of that other hate-group called the Conneecticut Citizens for Immigration Control (CCIC) can thrive thus, Danbury is labeled as an anti-immigration and hate city.

NOW, after almost a year of Boughton claiming that illegals are costing the city money, he is finally trying to figure out how much money the city is actually losing. Is it me or am I the only person who sees this as rather confusing. Here we have a mayor who has been claiming for almost one year that Danbury is losing money because of illegal immigrants only now is he trying to figure out how much money the city is losing (if any).

And how exactly is Boughton going figure out how much illegals are costing this city? Seems like The Danbury News-Times would like to know how is he going to figure this out also...

From the News Times

Mayor Mark Boughton says he is working with municipal leaders in Connecticut, New York and elsewhere to come up with a way to determine how much money illegal immigrants cost towns and cities.

Ultimately, the goal is to present federal lawmakers a laundry list detailing how much illegal immigration costs — a figure that simply isn't known at the moment.

Just how Boughton plans to do this isn't clear.

Boughton has repeatedly said Danbury and other cities affected by illegal immigration should be reimbursed by federal officials because a broken federal immigration policy caused the problem. The mayor said the debate over illegal immigration should move out of the city's neighborhoods.

"The objective is to move immigration reform out of the local arena and down to Washington, D.C., where it should be," Boughton said.

[...]

Danbury has been a focal point for the illegal immigration debate for the better part of a year. During that time, Boughton asked that state troopers be deputized as immigration agents to help deal with the thousands of undocumented residents in the city from Central and South America.

Also, Concerned Citizens for Immigration Reform, an anti-immigration group, held its inaugural meeting in Danbury. The events drove a wedge between longtime residents and immigrant rights groups.

City officials estimate anywhere from 9,000 to 20,000 illegal immigrants are in Danbury. They said the additional people puts pressure on schools, housing and emergency services.

In addition to figuring out how much illegal immigration costs taxpayers, Boughton said it also would attempt to measure immigrants' monetary contributions to communities through things such as monthly rent payments.

"We also want to see what the immigrants put into the system. They put money into the system, so we have to account for that," Boughton said.

Since garnering the city national press attention for his stance on illegal immigration, Boughton said leaders throughout the country have contacted him, saying they have the same issues.

However, Joyce Hamilton Henry, executive director of Democracy Works in Hartford, said Danbury has earned a reputation for being anti-immigrant.

Henry's organization just published a study with The Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., that attempts to measure immigrants' impact on the labor force.

She said the study shows assumptions about the state's immigrant population simply aren't true.

"What I think will be a surprise to readers is to see how many immigrants in our state are naturalized citizens — 50 percent of the immigrant population are naturalized citizens," Henry said. "And 22 percent are in the pipeline to become citizens. We tend to focus on the undocumented population and it casts all immigrants as undocumented terrorists or pariahs."

Joyce Henry makes an excellent point which is simply no one knows for sure how many immigrants are illegal. Danbury has 78,000 people. Are you telling me that there are 10,000 to 20,000 people in this city who are illegal on top of that? Pull out a pen and paper, do a google search for the census data, and add up the numbers yourself. How did they come up with this figure? Doesn't a range of 10,000 seem pretty wide? Does any resident of Danbury honestly believe that there are 20,000 ILLEGAL immigrants in this city? What makes a person illegal? If you're illegal but in the pipeline to become a citizen, are you still considered illegal?

No one wants to say it so I'll just come out and say it. This isn't about illigeal immigrants but immigrants in general. If every immigrant were in Danbury legally, the old-timers would STILL have a problem, they just wouldn't be able use the terminology "illegal immigrants."

They don't want to admit it but you can hear it in their voices everytime they complain. What they talk about usually has nothing to do with illegal immigrants but having to deal with having to deal with immigrants taking over their city.

Listen when they complain that their Deeps Market is gone and replaced by C-Town which caters to the immigrants (they bitch and moan all the way to the Bethel Market). You hear it when they say that they don't go down Main Street because immigrant have taken over ALL the stores (I didn't illegal immigrants could open a store). You hear it when they complain that people at McDonalds and Burger King can't speak English (I wonder if they would of said this about the European immigrants who populated working in hat factories over a century ago...and believe me, not all of them talked good English). All you need to do is tune to In Our Opinion and listen to Lynn Waller and you'l see what I mean as she constantly complains about immigrnats. She can take up the entire show ranting about Deeps Market closing, people not speaking English, her approval of groups like the hate-group Concerned Citizens for Immigration Reform and how she can't stand Main Street.

Waller and people like her just stand the fact thatno matter where they turn, they see something which is immigrant related. These people will never be seen in a Latino resturant, they complain about "those people" ruining their downtown, and they really hate the fact that part of Danbury is called Little Brazil.

These same old-timers would have no problem if those same immigrant stores (which are locally owned) that populate Main Street were taken over by more "friendly" trendy stores and coffee houses which would cater to their needs such as like Starbucks, Borders, Talbots, and the other type of stores which populate areas like Mt. Kisco (which also had an "immigrant" problem some time ago).

In essense, they despise that immigrants have taken over their dear old city that they remember so well (although they forget that Main Street was a ghost town after the North Street shopping plaza and The Danbury Fair Mall was created. It was because of the old-timers abondoning the shops on Main Street that many of the businesses had to close shop). They hide behind the term "illegal" immigration because they can get away with it but it's just a smoke screen as a majority of their complains has to do with immigrant in general. Don't get me wrong, their are serious problem with illegal immigrants (and immigrants in general) which need to be address the most important being the overcrowding of people in apartments (which wouldn't happen if the landlords were responsible and not so damn greedy). The volleyball situation also needs to be worked out as the home games have gotten out of hand but this also can be done without the bombthrowing crowd having a fit.

Mayor Boughton is riding this issue for all the political points he can get and how can you blame him as he is taking on a issue which is very popular with his conservative base. Hell, this could be his ticket to bigger political goals in the future (Nancy Johnson can't be Congresswoman forever and who better to take her spot than a young three time Republican maoyor of a large city in the 5th district). Don't forget, this is the same mayor who originally wanted to build a depot for the day laborers until he got a earful from his political base (who happen to be the old-timers).

This entire issue has put a black eye on this fine city. Danbury CT is now looked at as an anti-immigrant city and it's a shame. Unfortunately, the people who could put a stop to this madness are too lazy to let their voice be heard and are allowing the small precentage of the population to set the agenda for the entire city (look at the the total voter turnout number compared to the total number of registered voters and you'll see what I mean).

From what I've seen and heard, most people could care less about immigrants would rather want the city officials but more energy into other concerns such as what's being done to slow down the pace of development in the city (how many more condos can we build), why aren't there enough schools (talk to a parent who has a kid going to a middle school and you'll see what I mean), what's going on with the police contract and why we're losing so many police officers. And let us not forget, what is being done to deal with the horrific traffic deliema we now face.

As long as the old-timers rank as the highest percentage of people who go to the polls, immigration will continue to be a hot issue and get the most attention and press coverage. We can't wait to see Mayor Boughton's findings when he makes his report public (whenever that will be).

I've placed an interesting poll on the site concerning the recent election.

I've talked to alot of residents who told me that they didn't come out to vote in the last mayoral elections for various reasons and this is reflective when you compare the voter turnout against previous elections (we'll get into this in later posts).

We want to hear from those who didn't vote in the election. Why did you choose to stay home. Are you a Republican who disliked Boughton but couldn't vote for a Democrat? Are you a Democrat who is disappointed with the lack of effective campaigning by the Democratic Committee? Do you think both parties are just bad?

Take a look at the poll and vote. The poll takes multiple answers so have at it!