Letter: Cassetti Administration Shouldn’t Focus Only On Manufacturing

Today, September 6 2019, Eddy’s Bakery announced their closure in Ansonia. This is just one of many businesses that have unfortunately shut their doors in the city, a majority being on Main Street. Despite what the Cassetti administration says and plasters all over social media, Ansonia has a big problem with business retention and it has been steadily getting worse.

One of the many questions I, as well as many other residents have, is why is this happening?

Ansonia is blessed to have an amazing main street. It is majority flat, has a bus station and train station, and has an abundance of established storefronts. However, what Ansonia’s main street is lacking, among other things, is diversity and an administration that is competent enough to invite new businesses in.

Don’t get me wrong – the restaurants located along Main Street are amazing, but as history has shown over the past few years, they are unable to keep their doors open. This is not the fault of the business owners, but instead the fault of an administration that is too focused on the wrong industries.

Since Cassetti took office, he and his administration has been majorly focused on bringing back manufacturing to Ansonia. Not only has manufacturing been fleeing Connecticut at a rapid rate (faster currently than it ever has, historically), for a city like Ansonia it just isn’t feasible anymore. Because of this, many small businesses have been severely neglected, leading to the ghost town that is Ansonia’s Main Street.

Mayor Cassetti and his administration have been severely neglecting what makes Ansonia great, and that is the communal force of a prosperous main street. Restaurants alone are not a lure for people from outside the valley, or Ansonia, to visit our main street. 80% of restaurants fail within their first five years, so it is incredibly foolish and disingenuous to use them as a scale of how “great” our Main Street is doing. In reality, it is failing, and with the closure of Big Y and so many other businesses, the attractiveness of our once amazing Main Street is dwindling at a rapid rate.

Economic development can be touted and boasted about, but the fact of the matter is the results don’t match the hype propagated by Team Cassetti. Ansonia’s economic growth, as measured by S&P Global Ratings, has been poor, stating that they do not believe that the Cassetti administration is “undertaking significant forward-looking financial planning beyond the next budget year.” This is incredibly concerning for a number of reasons, but it shows that, even from the outside, Ansonia and the Cassetti administration are missing a big chunk of the tax base that was once populated by a plethora of Main Street businesses. The result of this poor planning and lack of economic development has been two huge tax increases that the residents of Ansonia now have to brunt, and the Cassetti administration continues to refuse to take responsibility.

The fact of the matter is we need change, and we need an administration that isn’t incredibly out of touch with the current market. One thing we can all agree on though, is despite the bombardment on social media about how great our economy is, our Main Street, and giant tax hikes, tell a much different story.

The writer is from Ansonia now serving in the U.S. military. His opinions are his own.

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