NEIGHBORHOODS
What’s going on in your part of Stamford
CITYWIDE
The city’s Cashiering and Permitting Department recently announced extended hours for residents to swing by city hall after work to purchase beach stickers and parking permits for the summer.
The department — on the ground floor of city hall — will be open from 8:15 a.m. to 6:45 p.m. Monday to Thursday, through June 28. It will revert to regular hours, 8:15 a.m. to 4:15 p.m., on Fridays and will be closed on weekends.
For more information, visit https://bit.ly/2xIDEgO
DOWNTOWN
Game tables for chess and checkers will pop up on summer Saturdays in Latham Park.
The tables, with rentable game pieces, will be available at 1 p.m. on the following Saturdays: June 23, July 7 and 21, Aug. 4 and Sept. 1.
At the park, there will be 24 movable bistro chairs available to park patrons, donated by Downtown Special Services District.
SPRINGDALE
The Springdale Neighborhood Association will hold a neighborhood walk through history next month.
The walking tour, based on information from the book “Springdale Remembered” by Rosemary H. Burns, will take attendees back in time on June 16. The tour will start at 2 p.m. on the local library porch, 1143 Hope St., according to a news release.
“We will go back in time to when the State Cinema had bowling alleys in the basement, the Twin Rinks were an X-ray tube factory, and a trolley car rolled down Hope Street,” the release said.
CITYWIDE
June is Voter Registration/Voter Turnout Month thanks to a recent proclamation from Mayor David Martin and the efforts of three local grassroots political groups.
The groups, Women on Watch, Stamford League of Women Voters and Indivisible Stamford Plus, are lobbying city residents to get out and vote, citing lackluster registration and turnout numbers in recent elections.
“We are mounting a citywide campaign,” Womenon-Watch member Ann Weiss said during a recent news conference.
“We were dismayed that during the November 2017 mayoral campaign in Stamford, 75 percent of registered voters did not bother to vote. Historically, voter turnout in the United States has been falling — at the national, state and local levels. In the 2016 presidential election, less than 55 percent of registered voters bothered to vote. Voter turnout for primaries is abysmal, and that usually means that candidates of the extreme right and extreme left win,” she added. “(Then) consensus politics becomes almost impossible.”
According to the Connecticut secretary of state, statewide voter turnout numbers beat Stamford’s by some 5 percent that election.
CITYWIDE
Several city beaches and pools will open for weekday swims this month.
Beaches at West Beach, Cummings Beach and Cove Island Park are already open on weekends, but will go to a full-week schedule beginning June 23 through Sept. 3. Lifeguards will be on site daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Quigley will also be open open seven days a week from late June to early September, and has posted the same lifeguard hours.
Public swimming hours at city pools were also recently released. Heroy Pool at Dorothy Heroy Park will be open weekdays from 3 to 6 p.m. and weekends from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Westhill High School’s pool will only be open for for camp or swimming lessons.
DOWNTOWN
The Civility in America lecture series will host Dr. Ben Carson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, at the Ferguson Library on Monday.
The 6 p.m. lecture will “create a discussion on how to bring civility back into all areas of American culture from politics to academia, from the media to the blogosphere, from talk radio to the pulpit,” according to a news release.
The series, the brainchild of Robert L. Dilenschneider, founder and president of The Dilenschneider Group, has brought dozens of luminaries, including U.S. senators, governors and business leaders, to the area since it began in 2011.
Past speakers include Rick Perry, then-governor of Texas, William Bratton, former chief of the Los Angeles Police Department as well as former New York City and Boston police commissioner, and Tom Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
For more information, visit https:/bit.ly/2HhdQYm
WEST SIDE
Due to stormy forecasts, Fairgate Farms canceled Saturday’s Strawberry Festival and rescheduled it for June 9.
The popular festival, which includes face-painting, a kid’s craft table, food samples, corn-hole toss and the new farmers market, will run from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday.