Jasmine Wright’s Top Five Valley Stories Of 2024

Here are my top five stories from the last year – which was also my first at The Valley Indy.

Before I begin, just a quick note of thanks: The Valley Indy is funded through foundation grants and reader support. It’s been a privilege to hop on board here, and it wouldn’t be possible without that support. In other words: You’re the reason we have jobs. So thank you.

Without further ado, here’s my top picks!

5. Fire At Ansonia Copper & Brass

I was told when I started this job that I’d need a car – fair enough. So I got one. As I was driving home from the dealership, I saw a whole fleet of firetrucks rushing down East Main Street in Ansonia. So I followed.

At 75 Liberty St. – part of the vacant Ansonia Copper & Brass complex – five towns were working together to battle a blaze that roared out of windows and had collapsed a roof. They were able to keep the fire from spreading further, and no injuries were reported.

The fire was investigated as arson. Police said they had found signs of several recent fires in the blighted building, which used to contain a metallurgy lab, while Ansonia Assistant Fire Chief Anthony DeLucia said that it was only ever a matter of time until a fire broke out at the complex. Three teenagers were eventually arrested on suspicion of setting the blaze.

The fire sparked renewed messaging from city officials, who have been working for years toward foreclosing on the neglected property. The arson wouldn’t have happened, they said, if someone – anyone – was doing basic upkeep and keeping trespassers off the property. The city’s goals were realized a few months later, and it now owns all of the former Ansonia Copper & Brass.

Now that the city owns the land, it’s able to begin spending millions of dollars awarded by the state in recent years for demolition and rehabilitation projects. What’s next for the former factories? We’ll be keeping our eyes on it in 2025.

4. Ansonia Budget Process Lacks Transparency

Ansonia doesn’t develop budgets like its neighbors in Seymour and Derby.

In March, we reported that the city had adopted a budget schedule that violates the city charter for the ninth year in a row. After that story, the city formed a ​“charter revision commission” to consider changing the charter rules to match the schedules the city actually follows – but that commission never met.

The public didn’t get a chance to see a proposed Ansonia city budget until April 25, when Mayor David Cassetti presented his proposal to the Board of Aldermen. That was more than a week after Derby had already adopted a final budget, and more than two months after the charter says he should have made a proposal.

City officials say that the later budget process allows them to create more reliable budgets, since state budget numbers can change throughout the spring.

Even then, if you wanted to learn more about the largest item on the proposed budget, you were out of luck. A single line-item titled ​“Board of Education” took up 56 percent of the city’s proposed budget. While other departments had breakdowns – to tell taxpayers how much money was going to salaries, maintenance, and so on – the board of education did not disclose any of that information to the public.

The Valley Indy’s attempts to learn more about the board of education’s budget requests turned up nothing. Alderman Steven Adamowski, a former school superintendent in Hartford and Norwalk, commented on the unusual budget process in May, saying that it was ​“unprecedented” for a board of education – an elected board that decides how to spend taxpayer money – to keep the details of its budget request private.

Board of education officials defended the closed-doors drafting process, saying that it improves efficiency and allows them to work more closely with city finance officials. 

In any case, the board of education did eventually make its budget public – in June, after it had already been passed by the Board of Aldermen.

3. 104th Race Coverage

The Valley Indy was the only publication to cover one of the most fiercely fought House races in Connecticut this year.

Incumbent Democratic state Rep. Kara Rochelle, having won a narrow victory over challenger Josh Shuart in 2022, looked to be the underdog this year against Republican challenger – and current Ansonia Mayor – David Cassetti.

Both candidates had an unbroken string of electoral victories to their name – Rochelle since 2018 as state Rep., and Cassetti since 2013 as Mayor. Both had the same amount of money to campaign with, thanks to a state election grant program. And both candidates had bones to pick with each other.

The race got nasty at times, with both candidates hurling insults at each other. In addition, Democrats alleged that Cassetti had enticed Thomas Egan – a former Democratic mayoral candidate – to run a third-party campaign to siphon votes from Rochelle (a ​“Team Cassetti” member had circulated a petition to get Egan’s name on the ballot, and several members of Cassetti’s family signed that petition).

Drama aside, though – there was a wealth of information available for 104th voters in this race. We asked the candidates where they stood on everything from education, to crime, to electric bills, and published that information throughout the fall (and to those of you that read those stories – THANK YOU!!!).

On Nov. 5, the incumbent underdog ended up gliding smoothly to a fourth term, winning a larger share of the vote than she did two years ago, even as Democrats lost ground in elections nearly everywhere around her. Cassetti conceded the race the same night, even as a few hundred ballots remained to be counted – he acknowledged they weren’t enough to turn the tide.

2. Ansonia Sells Its Sewer System To Aquarion

Ansonia became the second city in Connecticut to privatize its wastewater system on Dec. 3, when it closed a $41 million deal with Aquarion. The first city to privatize its system – New Hartford – sold just last year, meaning that these deals and their impacts are broadly untested waters in Connecticut (pun intended).

Ansonia put its system up for sale in December of last year, citing structural issues with its wastewater plant that would cost millions of dollars to fix. At the time, city officials estimated that any deal would take years to complete. But then the pace picked up.

In February, the Board of Aldermen voted to enter negotiations with Aquarion for the sale. By April, an offer was on the table. The speed of the deal prompted members of the Water Pollution Control Authority board (WPCA) to complain that they were being kept ​“out of the loop” on the public asset they were responsible for.

City officials told residents in April that rates would be kept lower under Aquarion than they would under the city, and held a public hearing at which about two dozen Ansonia residents – including WPCA staff and former elected officials – voiced their opposition to the sale.

The Aldermen voted to authorize the sale in May – over two dissenting votes by Dan King and Chicago Rivers, who both sat on the WPCA board – and the Cassetti administration signed off on the deal in June.

The $41 million from the deal is going to a few different places. Some of the proceeds will fund about $8.8 million in planned capital improvements; some will help fill in a $5 million hole in a former budget; and some will be kept in the city’s rainy day fund.

Under the new ownership, residents can expect a 38 percent rate increase over the next five years. City officials have said they would have had to raise rates higher if they still owned the plant.

1. The August 18 Flood

On Aug. 18, unforecasted floods devastated the Lower Naugatuck Valley, taking the lives of three people and destroying homes and businesses throughout the region. The flood came 69 years – to the day – after the rains that caused the Great Flood of 1955.

For weeks afterward, The Valley Indy was on the ground in Seymour and Oxford, documenting both the scope of the disaster and the region’s efforts to build back stronger than before. Amid the tragedy, there were stories of heroism and humanity, including the rescue of 61 people from Jackson’s Cove, and the rescue of a man from raging river waters on O’Sullivan’s Island in Derby. 

In the heavily damaged Klarides Village Plaza in Seymour, dozens of volunteers came together to clean out debris from devastated storefronts. GoFundMe campaigns appeared to aid those who had lost their homes and livelihood. And many of the businesses that were fortunate enough to remain open went on to donate to rebuilding initiatives, including TEAM, Inc.’s ​“Community Rising” fund, which was established in the days after the floods.

Today, the damage remains. But there are signs of recovery: In Klarides Village, several businesses that were wholly devastated have been able to reopen, including Woodland Wine & Liquor, Seymour Nails & Spa, Bushi Ban, and Cast Iron Chef Pizza & Bar.

As rebuilding efforts continue, public officials will seek to grapple with the question of resilience. Connecticut’s climate has warmed by over two degrees in the last century, and annual precipitation in the Northeast increased by ten percent between 1895 and 2011, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Both of these trends are expected to continue.

Public officials – from Connecticut’s Department of Transportation, to the Governor’s office, to the Department of Economic Community Development – have all stated that future infrastructure must be built to withstand the heavier precipitation we can expect to see in the future.

What, exactly, a more resilient future may look like remains to be seen. One small example, though, can be seen in recently unveiled plans by the Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments (NVCOG) to upgrade culverts and drainage systems that have struggled under the weight of increased rains.

Whatever the future may hold, I’m thinking now of a word that was introduced to us during our annual Great Give livestream in May, by Seymour Foods2Kids founder Shannon Bullard – ​“Valleyness” (the Valley Community Foundation coined this phrase a while back). That neighborliness and basic kindness is what I was lucky enough to get to see and report on in the weeks after the floods, and that’s why our flood coverage is my #1 story of the year.