Today, Hartford smells like disarray.
Remember how in 2011, Mayor Segarra — which much fanfare, as was his style — created the Livable Sustainable Neighborhoods Initiative (LSNI), and then how that quickly disintegrated? Half the team was gone within months. . . a year? There’s been this blight program, that blight program. Every time, more promises.
There was a fairly useful Hartford 311 system when Mayor Perez implemented it, but over the years it seems that those working within the call center have had evolving ideas of how the service should function. It had been a place to bring any and all of your problems, and some nice people would help direct the complaint to the right department– because why is it the resident’s job to have memorized exactly who is in charge of what? We all have busy lives.
Then, there were staff who basically responded by telling constituents that unless the call was a very specific type of problem — potholes and illegal dumping — that the person needed to make the call themselves. Like if you noticed that a car was stripped and abandoned on your street, they would hand you the police number instead of sending the message along. There are residents who want to try to fix things, and on our end we can report it to those who can legally do something about it. When we’re told some version of “that’s not my job,” we wonder what we pay such high property taxes for, knowing we also can’t take it to City Council for assistance because even when things are their job, they don’t believe so.
This building’s appearance is just one of the many visual indicators that Hartford’s government could be managing itself better, but won’t.
