The city is in “good, but not great shape,” Mayor James Della Volpe told a crowd of 60 business people during a Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce breakfast Tuesday morning.
A stable bond rating, a 35 percent reduction in the crime rate in the past 10 years and efforts to revitalize the community are among the bright spots in the city’s outlook, the six-term mayor said.
“My office will do anything we can to keep you here in Ansonia, because I believe in this city and I’m sure you believe in this city,” Della Volpe told the business leaders, who included property developers and retail center managers.
The breakfast was the first of a series the chamber is conducting throughout the Valley on the status of the cities and towns here.
The location for the event, the recently-opened Lanza’s restaurant on East Main Street, was chosen because it symbolizes the hope for a revitalized downtown, said Bill Purcell, president of the chamber.
Downtown revitalization is high on the city’s radar for the next few years.
Lanza’s is in the former Snooker’s bar building. It is one of three new restaurants in the downtown area, which is anchored by large retailers including Big Y, Target, Bob’s and Marshall’s.
“It is symbolic of a city that is coming back strongly,” Purcell said.
Mayors do not typically give state of the city addresses in this context, but Purcell said the chamber decided the time was right to try the format with a new year on the horizon.
Sessions will be conducted over the next several months in other cities and towns of the Valley, including Derby, Oxford, Seymour and Shelton.
“It’s an opportunity for Mayor Della Volpe to outline his vision for the new year,” Purcell said.
Della Volpe was sworn in on Dec. 1 to his sixth, two-year term. Completing the term will make him the city’s longest-running mayor in the history of this once-strong manufacturing city, where some of the products that rolled off local assembly floors in the past included the first American bicycles, in the 1800s.
One of the challenges is that the economy and tax revenue from the state — from which the city derives aid income — do not look very bright, said Della Volpe, who is on a state panel trying to figure out ways to fund municipalities.
He will fight any attempt to cut funding to the city.
“I don’t think it’s fair to cut any aid to the city. It’s too extreme in this budget,” said the mayor, who said he was successful in winning concessions for various city departments to save the city about $350,000, to help make ends meet in the battered economy.
“We’ll stress to the governor’s staff we can’t afford any cuts to municipal aid in our budget year,” he said.
It has been a difficult time for the people of the city, who at one point during the height of the recession were losing homes to foreclosure at a rate of five per week, which Della Volpe said is very high for a small city.
Still, the tax collection rate has been 98.2 percent, which he said is good despite the tough economy.
His administration has worked to improve the quality of life by upgrading fields, and upgrading the riverwalk which winds through Valley cities and towns along the Naugatuck River, providing a green space for walking and biking.
“The plans are in, we just need the state to approve them.Hopefully it happens in the spring and we’ll have the riverwalk done,” he said.
There has been work at the wastewater treatment facility, and there will be an upgrade to the transfer station, where fire hit a shredder in the last year.
“We have the money to tear it down, and we will have a new transfer station,” he said.
Other improvements to the quality of life include reducing the density of the Riverside Apartments public housing complex, from 169 units to 120. The complex has been the site of a series of violent confrontations since June.
“Over the next few years we’ll reduce it even more. Everybody is being relocated, nobody is being put out. We’re being very careful about how we handle this,” the mayor said.
The city government itself is also improving, becoming greener, with an energy efficiency audit happening.
“We’ll apply for grants to make this happen,” he said.
Following the mayor’s speech, the business leaders heard a preliminary report on the downtown district’s strong points for renewal and participated in a panel discussion on works in progress.
