Reps rated on ‘safe streets’ votes
Advocacy group for transit-oriented development grades city lawmakers
“People Friendly Stamford hopes this scorecard will help inform Stamford residents and hold our elected officials accountable.”
STAMFORD — Ahead of November’s municipal election season, the city’s most prominent advocates for transit-oriented development have turned the spotlight to the Board of Representatives’ current term.
People Friendly Stamford, an advocacy group dedicated to reducing car dependency, recently released a scorecard that ranks city legislators on how their votes stack up against the group’s vision for a more walkable and bikable community.
“People Friendly Stamford hopes this scorecard will help inform Stamford residents and hold our elected officials accountable,” the group wrote upon the scorecard’s release. “Remember, your representatives represent YOU regardless of your political party, whether you rent or own your home, or whether you have lived in Stamford for two weeks or twenty years.”
Over the last year, People Friendly Stamford has grown its profile in the local political scene. Some members have become fixtures of public hearings before the zoning board or Board of Representatives. On top of that, the group has statewide efforts
— People Friendly Stamford
for zoning reform — namely the Senate bill put forth by Desegregate CT — and has thrown its support behind building more affordable housing in Stamford.
At the outset, three representatives have emerged from completely unscathed by People Friendly Stamford’s assessment. Reps. Matt Quinones, D-16, Benjamin Lee, D-15, and Gloria DePina, D-5, received perfect scores based on the 11 votes used on the scorecard.
Lee, who joined the Board after a November 2017 election, called transportation infrastructure a “necessary” engine for economic development in the city. According to him, getting cars off the street would help ease Stamford’s infamous traffic problem, making it more appealing for new residents and creating a robust tax base to improve local amenities.
“We have to solve the traffic problem to get the reasonable amount of growth that is necessary to unlock the money that’s necessary and put it into the schools,” he said. “As a simple matter of public policy, we should want to do it anyways. And as an existential matter, we have to do it for the city in order to secure the next 20 to 30 years of Stamford’s history.”
Quinones, who heads the Board of Representatives, pointed out that transportation is one of the issues he hears about most from his constituents, either directly or indirectly. But he refused to take full credit for the transit-oriented development in Stamford. Instead, he deferred to former Transportation Bureau Chief Jim Travers, who left the Government Center in February to lead Norwalk’s transportation department.
“I think the option to support these initiatives was brought about, in many cases, by his contributions and his leadership,” Quinones said. In the final two years of his tenure, Travers completed more than 40 traffic developments for the city.
In stark comparison, Reps. Nina Sherwood, D-8, John Zelinsky, D-11, and Alice Liebson, D-21, ranked lowest in the group’s assessment. Sherwood and Zelinsky both contested the group’s methodology. Liebson did not respond to a request for comment.
“Their analysis is based on whether people are voting for things that make pedestrian/biker life easier around the city accessible, but none of the issues that they described are purely pedestrian issues,” Sherwood said. She cited the widening of Washington Boulevard as an example. Though the city included a bike lane in the proposal, the representative argued that, at its heart, the vote was on eminent domain.
Similarly, Sherwood contended that vying for budget cuts is about saving taxpayers money, not about striking against infrastructure.
“The operating budget literally contains everything in the city,” she added. “To say that I decided to cut the budget because I’m anti-pedestrian is just fundamentally dishonest.”
Zelinsky defended his record in a similar vein.
“This small group attempting to impose their will and thinking on all the residents of Stanford is inappropriate, misguided. I understand their objective is less reliance on all cars in Stamford street design and is to reduce car dependency, (but) how many people attend their meetings?” he said.
One of the group’s leaders, Will Wright, acknowledged that some of the votes touch issues aside from transit-oriented development by the very nature of municipal government but stood fast behind the methodology.
“We don’t think that that’s the way to govern, and we think that that has a pretty clear and direct line, so you know hurting the things that we think are important and should be getting funded,” he said.
People Friendly Stamford divided the 11 votes in question into three distinct categories: policy, infrastructure, and funding. On the policy front, they highlighted the Board of Representatives’ support for “shared mobility principles” like ride-share services and a resolution passed by the board to oppose tolls in Connecticut. The four infrastructure-related votes touched on everything from widening Washington Boulevard to authorizing a design for the often-debated Merritt Parkway Trail (ultimately, the board vetoed the decision).
The majority of scorecard items, 6 of 11, focused on funding issues. People Friendly Stamford homed in on proposed cuts to Stamford’s operating budgets and specific projects or departments, like the Mill River Park Collaborative or the city Transportation, Traffic, and Parking Department.
Stamford representatives largely voted in line with People Friendly Stamford’s pedestrian-friendly priorities. The organization’s opinion aligned with the Board of Representatives’ action on 8 of 11 votes, earning the city 72 percent overall. By that same metric, the group would characterize Stamford as a “Safe Streets Supporter” — one of the two designations used to shout out high-performers on the board.
Wright also pointed out that good performance transcended partisan lines. Democrats make up most of the Board of Representatives, but Reps. David Watkins and Barry Michelson, two Republicans from the first municipal district, were both among the higher scorers on the list.
“We think that shows there is broad support for our mission,” he concluded. “You can also see that a majority of the board — 22 members of the 40 — voted with us at least 50 percent of the time . ... These are generally popular things that we’re trying to do.”
The entire People Friendly Stamford 2021 Safe Streets Scorecard is posted on the group’s website.