Mayor Moccia Goes to Washington – Demands Earmarks
By Adam Kredo
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 – Norwalk Mayor Richard Moccia and Police Chief Harry Rilling came to Washington on Wednesday to urge the Connecticut delegation to set aside federal money for many city projects.
“Any help, earmarking, we could get would be great,” Moccia said on Wednesday during a meeting with Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s staff. “Norwalk really has been shortchanged.”
An earmark is money designated for a specific project in a specific state or locality.
When asked how he felt about lobbying for earmarks and federal grants in a reform-oriented climate, Moccia said: “It’s a necessity; you have to do it. If you don’t apply, the money’s not gonna fly.”
The mayor also met with Sen. Christopher Dodd’s staff and with Rep. Christopher Shays (R-4 th ).
During the meeting with Lieberman’s staff, Moccia pulled from his bag two thick binders containing grant information and stressed the need for full funding of phase two of the Norwalk Harbor dredging project.
Phase one cost $1.7 million, and phase two will require an estimated $7 million, Moccia said. He said that as part of the second phase contaminants caused by salty oils that drain into the harbor from the I-95 bridge will be cleaned and removed.
Calling it a “catch-22,” Moccia said that, at this point, the Connecticut Department of Transportation has refused to provide filters for the bridge, and this allows contaminants to continually enter the harbor. Without money for phase two, the city will not be able to comply with the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection’s requirements, such as removing 35,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil from the harbor, the mayor said.
“I don’t know where we are” with the dredging project, he said, although both the city and the Lieberman staff agreed that the project, as one of the senator’s aides said, “can’t afford a delay.”
Moccia requested $200,000 to improve what he called an “obsolete” security system at the South Norwalk train station,. The money also would include new traffic lights, bikeways and road improvements
The city is requesting more transportation earmarks then it has in the past, according to Paul M. Pimentel, a Shays aide.
“Brownfields and dredging are very important,” Moccia said, “but in the transportation area, obviously, we need some help.”
The mayor said that even though Norwalk is the state’s sixth-largest city, it continues to get “shortchanged” on federal grants. In particular, the Environmental Protection Agency has denied Norwalk grants several times in the past, Pimentel said.
Addressing environmental brownfield grants for South Norwalk, the mayor expressed concern about the area’s current status.
“We seem to have gone from an industrial state to a service state,” Moccia said, as he explained why Norwalk needs such grants. Brownfield grants would allow the city to identify and, if sucessful, clean up areas of South Norwalk. “It’s very important for us to assess and clean up these sites,” Moccia said.
If grants are obtained, and the clean-up effort succeeds, Moccia said, he will follow through with his plan to rezone some of the older areas that were once inhabited by light industry. According to the mayor, this would pave the way for either affordable housing or new types of light industry. Moccia said his main goal was to “make the area attractive to new people.”
After the meetings, Moccia admitted his inexperience with the lobbying process, calling himself a “novice mayor” and saying: “I’ve only been in office for 10 weeks. I’m still learning a little bit, but I’m trying.”
He also cited the fact that Norwalk lacks a grants coordinator as a reason for his naïveté.
Overall, though, despite his inexperience, the mayor said he was “just having fun.”
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