Council moves to limit honorary street signs
Proposed guidelines would change design, procedures and fees
BRIDGEPORT — Philanthropist Joseph Kaliko lives about 30 miles southwest in Greenwich, which, given that town’s wealth, might as well be a world away.
Those disparities between Kaliko’s home and Bridgeport lead to a street in the city’s downtown being named in his honor last fall. For several years Kaliko raised money or contributed his own funds to different causes here.
“The needs, with homelessness and addiction, far outweighed anything I experienced down in Greenwich,” Kaliko said in an interview.
So when a Bridgeport City Council member successfully pursued designating a section of John Street as “Joseph J. Kaliko Way” he gratefully accepted, but joked he felt the honor premature.
“I was very humbled,” Kaliko said. “In Greenwich they do that, but you have to die first.”
There are no similar rules governing who can have a street named after them in Bridgeport and how the council should go about reviewing requests. So after six years of on-and-off debate, the council is poised to set some guidelines.
If passed at Monday’s meeting of the legislative body, honorary signs going forward will have to be designed differently than Bridgeport’s standard roadway markers; over 50 percent of neighborhood residents must approve of the installation; and the city will charge a $175 fee to be paid by whoever wants to do so, not necessarily the honoree or their relatives.
“I figured with this process very few people will be doing it,” said Councilman Marcus
Brown, one of the sponsors. “That’s what it is about. We shouldn’t just be doing things willy-nilly. There should be a process.”
Brown co-chairs the council’s ordinance committee which this week voted to forward the honorary sign regulations to the full council for final approval.
“This is a very emotional item,” Councilwoman Michelle Lyons told her colleagues.
The master list of 34 current honorary designations City Hall provided Hearst Connecticut Media was last updated a year ago and includes mostly deceased individuals — historical figures Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Pope John Paul II; celebrated community/faith leaders, activists and municipal employees; and victims of tragedy like a native soldier killed in Iraq in 2004 and a grocer shot in 2015.
“To some it may mean nothing, to others it means a whole lot,” Councilwoman Eneida Martinez, who lobbied to honor Kaliko, told the ordinance committee.
For example, when the city in June 2017 founded Jose A. Salgado Way along Lexington Avenue at Linen Avenue where he and his family ran Sapiao’s Portuguese grocery store, relatives wept during the ceremony. Salgado was fatally shot two years earlier during a robbery at Sapiao’s.
“It helps honor him and his memory. It’s a tribute to all the hard work he put into the community. It gives us a little bit of closure,” son Joe Salgado said at the time. “It’s about everyone who came to the store, the patrons, neighbors who would pop in and talk to him . ... It’s a beautiful thing for the community.”
But some also argue the honorary signs — which are the same shape and color as the city’s official road designations — can cause confusion, especially in cases where more than one person is being celebrated/remembered.
A post along Stratford Avenue is topped with that sign, one for the honorary Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, a sign for the cross street — Bishop Ave. — and a fourth for the honorary Jimmie W. Jones Way.
And Kaliko’s marker on John Street was installed above one for Linda Cervero Way. Cervero, who died in 2017, for years fed the homeless beneath the bridge over John Street.
“We’ve heard it from the fire department, the emergency operations center, the ambulance, it causes, at times, confusion,” Councilwoman Maria Valle told the ordinance committee. “Me, I walked down Stratford Avenue looking for a particular street and could not find it. Why? Because there were three other names.”
Scott Appleby, Bridgeport’s emergency management director, did not return a request for comment.
Some additional sign rules were not included in the pending proposal before the council. Councilwoman Denese TaylorMoye suggested limiting installations to three per year.
Others wanted the draft regulations to specify who pays the $175 fee, or that council members be required to do so.
Brown had initially sought a $350-per-sign charge.
Kaliko was aware of the debate when the council authorized his downtown street name last year.
“I accepted the honor because, when I thought about the amount of work I had done up in Bridgeport, it was really pretty substantial and if people in the city wanted to recognize me for doing that, it was fine with me,” he said. “And if they didn’t, that would have been fine, too . ... I’m grateful people recognized I made a difference in the community. That’s a personal achievement I feel good about.”