Hartford, surrounding towns should merge to form one city
It’s time for Greater Hartford to admit that our municipal governance structure causes and maintains racial segregation. We should be ashamed. Separate is not equal.
Kiley Gosselin and Kevin Taylor are, of course, correct when they say that governmental policy intentionally caused segregation [Aug. 22, Page A7, “Suburban strategy’ caused segregation: it’s time to fix it”]. What they didn’t address is that our town boundaries maintain that segregation.
Racism is a caste system, and caste systems operate by keeping groups separate. Great Hartford maintains its caste system by having separate towns. To end segregation, the town boundaries must come down.
Hartford and its surrounding towns should merge to form one city.
Demographically, Greater Hartford is not unlike many other U.S. metropolitan areas. We’re about 60% white, 20% Black, 17% Hispanic or Latino and 3% Asian and other. However, unlike other American cities, we maintain separate governments for our racial castes: Hartford for Blacks and Hispanics, Bloomfield for Blacks, and West Hartford, Newington, Wethersfield, Avon, Farmington, Glastonbury and South Windsor for whites. (Only Windsor and East Hartford are reasonably integrated, statistically.)
The Hartford metropolitan area, including suburbs, is similar in population
(about 1.2 million) to cities like Richmond, Raleigh, Buffalo and Memphis, according to U.S. Census Bureau Metropolitan Statistical Area data. However, the core cities of those metropolitan areas are remarkably different from Hartford: The city of Hartford has a about 125,000 people squeezed into 18 square miles, while the core cities of the 20 similarly-sized metropolitan areas average about 425,000 people in over 250 square miles.
Why are the core cities so large in other areas? Because in virtually every other similarly-sized metropolitan area, the core city includes within the city limits residential communities that we in Connecticut govern separately. That is, in other American cities, residential communities
like West Hartford and Wethersfield and Windsor are part of the city, not separate municipalities. If Hartford merged with the seven contiguous towns, it would have 370,000 people in 166 square miles, much more like the average of similar metropolitan areas.
We shouldn’t merge Hartford and the towns just to be like other cities, although the data raise the question, “If our system is so desirable, why haven’t other cities followed our lead?”
We should do it because merging Hartford and the surrounding towns would bring us all together, Black and white, rich and poor, under one government, so that together we can address segregation, poverty, education, opportunity and economic growth in our community.
We’re often too polite to say it, but our current regional governance structure pits “us” against “them” on virtually every issue. “Us” needs to be [i]all[/i] of us; there should be no “them.”
Merging Hartford and eight or 10 surrounding towns would attack segregation directly. A merged Hartford would eliminate the town boundaries we use to maintain our impoverished neighborhoods. It would eliminate the serious economic discrimination imposed by our property taxes and insurance rates. A merged Greater Hartford could adopt rational, region-wide zoning regulations and a comprehensive affordable housing policy. A merged Greater Hartford would share tax revenue on a region-wide basis. A merged Greater Hartford would have a powerful, unified delegation in the General Assembly that speaks for all of us.
Merging Hartford and the surrounding towns also could save as much as $100 million annually through consolidated services and elimination of duplicative administrative positions. We have eight police departments, eight fire departments, eight parks and recreation departments, eight of everything — other American cities have only one of each; $100 million a year can solve a lot of problems.
Until we come together under one government, racial segregation will continue in Greater Hartford.