Council Committees Vote Down Proposal on City Naming School Buildings and Oppose Taking Up Self Storage Rules

A proposal by Ald Sharon Beloin-Saavedra (R-1) to give the City Council control over the naming of schools, along with city buildings, was voted down Tuesday evening in the Council Committee on Planning, Zoning and Housing.

In speaking against the proposal, Ald Wilma Barbosa (D-3) asked, about Beloin-Saavedra, “wasn’t her name in the running for the renaming of the Brookside,” school. In September, the Board of Education named the Brookside Extension school after popular former Slade Middle School Principal Geraldine Brown-Springer.

“I find this a little too coincidental,” Barbosa added. “What are her motives?”

Barbosa made an impassioned speech criticizing the 2012 decision by the Board of Education, then led by Beloin-Saavedra, as its President, to end the dual language magnet school program at the DiLoreto School, calling it a, “despicable act”.

The Council Assistant Majority Leader, Ald Iris Sanchez (D-3) agreed with the criticism, saying that her son was harmed by the end of the DiLoreto dual language program. She said he was moved from DiLoreto School to Slade Middle School as a result of the 2012 decision.

The one member of the public who spoke on the proposal, Gayle Connolly, opposed it, saying that the Board of Education has well-ordered rules for the naming of buildings.

Council Majority Leader, Ald John McNamara (D-4) said he opposed the proposal on renaming buildings because it would harm the autonomy of the Board of Education.

All of the Council members present voted to defeat the proposal. But Beloin-Saavedra and other Council Republicans were not present, having walked out of the room after a contentious meeting of a different Council Committee, the Zoning Subcommittee, which met just before the Planning, Zoning and Housing Committee meeting Tuesday.

In the Council Zoning Subcommittee, Republicans had attempted to bring up three tabled items for consideration. But tabled items did not appear to be on the posted agenda of that special meeting, which appears to make the Republicans’ motions illegal. The state Freedom of Information law says that the notice of special meetings of public bodies, including Council committees, “shall specify the time and place of the special meeting and the business to be transacted. No other business shall be considered at such meetings by such public agency.”

One of the items the Republican Council members attempted to bring up for potential approval primarily concerns regulations of self-storage facilities. The administration of Mayor Erin Stewart (R), has proposed the new rules concerning self-storage businesses, against a backdrop of an ongoing dispute between Stewart and former Republican Council member James Sanders, Jr.

Sanders said that the city blocked his plans to utilize his 600 East Street property as an Extraspace Storage facility. The building that has long been used and allowed as a warehouse and a former storage facility for New Britain-based moving companies since the 1950s. He had said his project “would generate an additional $220,000 in tax revenue” and when accompanied by his TOD (Transit Oriented Development) project for housing “could add an additional $250,000 or more” in taxable property.

The two other zoning items the Republicans attempted to bring up for potential approval concern a rezoning along Allen Street and another on short-term rental establishments

The three motions made to remove the three items were defeated on party line votes.