On a bitterly cold morning last month I decided to take the bus (two buses, actually) instead of walking to work, and the whole time I wondered why I was bothering since it did not reduce my commute time and I still had a lot of time outdoors, waiting for the connecting bus and then having to walk the last five minutes because of poor bus service in one section of Hartford. It was in a downtown bus shelter, waiting with others freezing their asses off, that I recalled something: a few years ago there were supposed to be heated bus shelters.

Later, indoors and after my brain thawed, I went looking online to see if my memory was lying to me. It wasn’t. In April 2017, there were 17 projects submitted by Hartford residents to the participatory budgeting program, Hartford Decides. The top four vote recipients — the winners — were new laptops at three of the library branches, 100 new trash cans, trees at five schools, and . . . heated bus shelters. The amount granted for the bus shelters was $100,000.

That information was all in a Hartford Courant article written by one of the paper’s more credible reporters. But, if you go to the Hartford Decides website, it’s as if this did not happen. For that project year, three of those four projects are named, and bus shelters is quite obviously missing. It was not “to be continued” into the following year or any time since, and, the program is currently still active.

One of the Hartford Decides winning projects in 2021 was repairs to the sidewalk on Asylum Avenue  Park River bridge. I cross this bridge several times a week and can say with confidence that not only have no repairs happened, but the bridge has gotten significantly worse. Because DPW doesn’t necessarily work smart at times, the sidewalk on the south side has gotten completely mashed up by snow clearing machinery. A shovel would have been more sensible to use given the width and known sidewalk conditions. Most of the pavement has been unintentionally removed. This bridge is used by people trying to access a school, museum, law school, seminary, and by people who are just out for a walk. It is not accessible to those who need a level surface, such as those using mobility devices. It’s shockingly bad, and one has to ask: where did that $20,000 go?

The Park River bridge project only just went out to bid on January 31, 2024.

According to Hartford Decides, there is a process more complicated that Hartford resident pitches project, people vote, winning projects get implemented. Their website shows:

If ideas are vetted by the City of Hartford before voting happens, why are there projects that have vanished entirely or stalled out?

Hartford Decides is not the only “community” program that’s not coming up all roses. Recently, we’re seeing an issue with Love Your Block, a mini-grant program in which residents submit grants for projects, and then those approved are carried out by residents. For instance, someone might pitch an idea for small gardens at churches in one neighborhood, it’s vetted by the City, and then if approved, that someone in partnership with churches and others would do the labor of installing the gardens. This is a bit more on the project proposer to implement, but that’s known from the start and is suitable for many types of projects.

Aside from the open voting, the process is very similar to that of what Hartford Decides uses, and because I thought my brain was lying to me again, I looked it up and saw that both on the Love Your Block website and in their slideshow presentation, they mention that the City does vetting of projects:

and

Here’s where things are glitching. Last year, one of the approved projects was benches in Frog Hollow and Behind the Rocks. This is a project that I assisted with. We did all the required things: meet with NRZ, get input from folks in the neighborhood, and stick to the guidelines. We had to get approval of bench locations before installation, and that is what we did. We were surprised by how quickly we got the green light on this, but if the City said it was good, then it was good. Right?!

The grant reward was announced in May 2023. Bench builds and installations began in June. We took photos documenting the builds and each bench being placed. We even used the hashtags on social media. We played by the rules. Everything was going along fine until late August. This is when a bench on Washington Street near the Park Street intersection was removed by The Department of Public Works.

Connecticut Urbanists marks their benches with logo and a QR tag so that if there is an issue — someone notices damage or wants it moved — the group can be contacted. The DPW did not reach out before taking the bench and destroying it. This was a bench funded through the Love Your Block grant.

The City of Hartford claimed the seating in a public plaza was in “disarray.” From this photo taken before the bench removal, the most obvious disarray is actually the damaged sidewalk and tree pit that the DPW has failed to repair.

Now, there are questions coming out of the new administration over liability blah blah blah and the public ROW.

This is a conversation that should have happened before the grant was approved, not after all the benches were installed.

This is also, no apologies, straight up bullshit.

If we want to talk about hazards in the ROW, the City of Hartford might start at any of these spots:

1. The Park River bridge on Asylum Avenue. There’s your challenge. Walk the south side without tripping. You can’t walk in the road — you’ll get run over by a commuter who’s playing on their phone or tweezing their eyebrows while driving.

2. Remove all those metal pieces sticking out of the sidewalks where street signs used to be. These are constant tripping hazards, probably full of tetanus, and serve no function. Don’t see them? Put on shorts and sandals and suddenly you will.

3. The uneven sidewalk on Park Terrace along Pope Park, between Russ Street and Park Street.

4. The broken sidewalk and tree pit on Washington Street

5. The numerous properties that still have not removed snow/ice from their sidewalks in over a week, including the State of Connecticut on Capitol Avenue by the train bridge.

I’m sure readers have many suggestions from their corners of the city. Feel free to give your own hazard list with locations in the comments.

Both of these programs — Love Your Block and Hartford Decides — are interesting concepts, but faith in them is weakened when it appears that the City involvement only shows up after the fact rather than in the planning process. It makes us ask why we should vote if winning projects don’t happen, and why should we take our time and energy to not just pitch projects but implement them if then on a whim the City is going to move in the direction of undoing our work?

More than losing faith in government, though, is how all of these things undo freedom of movement and encourage isolation. The bench and other seating removed on Washington Street impacts the mostly elderly men who would use this as their mini-park, not to mention anyone waiting for the bus or just walking by and needing to sit for a few minutes. The vague threat of removing the remainder of the benches, which the City of Hartford had said they’d previously approved, would more widespread impact people with disabilities and the elderly who want to move around independently but aren’t marathon runners. Sidewalks that have been unintentionally depaved and are uneven muddy surfaces discourage people from walking in their own neighborhood when they can’t risk a fall. Our answer cannot be to stuff everyone in cars and take them to the mall or the park for fitness, or to a senior center for social contact. Too often, decisions are made by those trying to appease business interests and/or people upset by the concept of gathering in public places rather than in private living rooms; they’re made by folks who are able-bodied and don’t think at all about how seating is connected to freedom. And we have decision makers who are selectively concerned with liability while unable to acknowledge the many ways their own department has created liability issues. We have to do better than this.