As the newly elected president of Hartford’s City Council, Surgeon was one of many politicians who spoke Wednesday at a press conference at the Parker Memorial Community Center to spread the word about the Hartford Flood Compensation Program that Comptroller Sean Scanlon’s office is overseeing. The program, which the state legislature launched with $5 million, is designed to provide direct flood relief to Hartford’s North End residents. It was a piece of the $170 million project that Gov. Ned Lamont, federal and state officials announced last summer to deal with systemic flooding issues in the city’s North End. Residents started applying for funding from the program as of Sept. 1, after Lamont appointed Gary Rhule to be the administrator of the fund. The Blue Hills Civic Association has spearheaded the effort in the North End to make people aware of the program and help them fill out applications. CEO Victoria Fennell said an outreach team has been going door-to-door throughout the area and has been doing everything from bringing applications to senior centers and churches to door-to-door service to their offices for elderly residents who don’t drive.

$1M distributed through Hartford flood fund; $4M remains

More than a decade before its licenses are set to expire for the two Millstone nuclear stations it owns locally, Dominion Energy has filed a notice with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it intends to seek approval to run the plants for many years to come. In a letter to the NRC dated Dec. 20, Dominion’s vice president of nuclear engineering and fleet support, James E. Holloway, stated that the company, along with partners Green Mountain Power Corp. and Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Co., plans to apply for a license extension of 20 years for both Millstone 2 and Millstone 3. The older Millstone 2 plant’s license currently runs through July 31, 2035, while the newer Millstone 3’s license will not expire until Nov. 25, 2045. The plants currently account for about a third of the town’s tax revenue, or about $36 million a year, according to Dominion calculations. Dominion said in its letter to the NRC that it will inform the agency of any changes in the expected license renewal filing. O’Connor said the public will have multiple opportunities to weigh in on the license renewal.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20240110/dominion-seeks-to-extend-it-licenses-to-operate-millstone-power-plant-until-2055-65/

The U.S. Department of Labor announced Tuesday a final rule revising its interpretation of the Fair Labor Standards Act’s classification provision to determine whether a worker may be considered an independent contractor. The final rule largely tracks the agency’s October 2022 proposed rule. It retains the multifactor, “totality-of-the-circumstances” framework for analyzing independent contractors’ status included in that proposal. The rule will be published in the Federal Register on Wednesday, Jan. 10, and is slated to take effect March 11, officials said. In a press call Monday, Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su said the final rule would ensure a level playing field for workers, particularly vulnerable workers who are misclassified and lose out on minimum wage, overtime pay and other protections under the FLSA. Separately, DOL is rescinding the Trump administration’s 2021 independent contractor final rule, which had been enacted during that administration’s final weeks. The Biden administration attempted to withdraw the rule in May 2021, but a federal court put it back into effect, holding that the act of rescinding the 2021 rule violated the Administrative Procedure Act.

https://www.constructiondive.com/news/dol-independent-contractor-final-rule-march-11/704037/

Meriden Markham Municipal Airport is seeking to build five new aircraft hangars on the Wallingford side of the Meriden-based airport. Wallingford’s Planning and Zoning Commission is scheduled to review the airport’s special permit request Wednesday, pending administrative approval from the Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Commission. The airport, on Evansville Road, covers 109.5 acres of land in Wallingford, according to town records. The hangars will be paid for through a $671,000 Federal Aviation Administration grant and are aimed at meeting pilot demand, Castillo said. The new hangars are part of an airport revitalization effort in recent years that included a $1.4 million grant from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Airport improvement program to repave the southern section of its taxiway. Last fall, eVertiports met with airport and city officials to discuss providing potential charter services using electric, vertical takeoff aircraft. eVertiports hopes to install a compact landing pad that would open the facility up to chartering taxi flights to the surrounding region.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/recordjournal/article/meriden-markham-airport-expands-wallingford-18595627.php

A Connecticut businessman has been awarded a minor league soccer team, which he hopes will compete in a new waterfront stadium in Bridgeport, he announced Tuesday. The man behind the effort, multimillionaire tech entrepreneur André Swanston, says the new team is part of his continued push to bring an MLS and/or National Women’s Soccer League team to Bridgeport. Swanston recently gained approval from Bridgeport’s planning and zoning commission to build a stadium on a parcel of land along the Pequonnock River, currently home to the vacant Shoreline Star Greyhound Park. He says the proposed stadium would initially have between 7,500 and 10,000 seats, with the option of expanding in the future if the city lands an MLS or NWSL team. Swanston said he’d like to complete the stadium in time for the 2025 season, a goal he called “ambitious but possible.”

https://www.ctpost.com/sports/article/ct-bridgeport-mls-nwsl-soccer-stadium-18596281.php?src=rdctppromostrip

Eversource Energy is in advanced talks to unload its share in three offshore wind projects that it planned to build with Orsted A/S, and will take a fourth-quarter charge of as much as $1.6 billion. Eversource owns stakes in two joint ventures with Orsted that are developing the South Fork, Revolution and Sunrise sites east of Long Island, New York. The US firm expects an after-tax impairment charge of $800 million to $900 million on all of them. It will take an additional charge of as much as $700 million for Sunrise after local regulators rejected a request for higher rates for the project. The company reduced the carrying value of the projects after estimated construction costs rose, as did uncertainties tied to the rate request ruling. Orsted slipped as much as 1.9% in Copenhagen Tuesday. Since the Danish company had already marked down the value of these assets on its books last year, it won’t take a significant hit from the move by Eversource, Citigroup Inc. analyst Jenny Ping wrote in a note.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/eversource-moves-sell-wind-assets-002350764.html?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuY3RjYXBpdG9scmVwb3J0LmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJcyRdVGIKTXgSph03B1GCI1zz4moHDkFx5I5CS_hnZKGEYfzY_ERIAtJQoO4bQs8bm9B_V-foVkdLDriGz_CHt9I9d45SwC86HBizFK7JEbIu5Y7Xhzjm5wIncrNqTrZmRKGpieLF4nkXrf0hzLcoQhfWrwlsys2P2Z8g-WJP8p&guccounter=2

CRDA, created a decade ago to help finance housing projects in the downtown area, has been in discussions with family-owned Chase since last fall about the future of the parking lot at 10 Ford St., Freimuth said. Last fall, Chase withdrew the Ford Street parking lot as a potential location for a new federal courthouse. Chase said it was looking at developing “a bigger project on the property” and the courthouse would have eliminated “co-development possibilities.” The first of the new wave apartments around Bushnell Park to come up for lease is likely in the converted former office building at 55 Elm St., most recently the headquarters of the state’s Constitutional officers, including the Attorney General. South Norwalk-based Spinnaker Real Estate Partners expects the first of 160 apartments to be available in late spring in the 4-story annex. The annex was a later addition to the main, 7-story structure rising above Pulaski Circle and the park. How quickly development around Bushnell Park unfolds in the next few years will depend largely on the trajectory of overall downtown apartment leasing. Even with the addition of thousands of new apartments to the downtown since 2013, occupancy in the new projects has remained steady, above 90%. Hartford-based Lexington Partners plans to convert former, outdated office space at 15 Lewis St., which borders Bushnell Park, into apartments in a nearly $27 million project.

Apartment development around CT park set to boom. See the projects, what you might pay to live there

Thirteen percent of Meriden’s housing stock is considered affordable, second only to New Haven in the county. Much of that affordable housing was funded through low-income tax credits and is located downtown. Despite Meriden’s spot along the Hartford Line, business owners have said it’s difficult to find investors to build restaurants and breweries downtown because of the area’s income demographic. “It goes back to housing,” Lamont said. “More housing is needed to accommodate restaurants, and businesses and a developer taking out building permits.” Lamont and others Thursday pointed to Build for Connecticut as a possible solution for financing market-rate housing. The program is administered by the state Department of Housing and the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority. Build for Connecticut is a $800 million bond investment in the creation and preservation of housing covering a wide spectrum of need.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/recordjournal/article/ned-lamont-meriden-train-station-transit-oriented-18590254.php

Out of the nearly 2.8 million cars counted in construction zones in last year’s new speed camera program, nearly 25,000 drivers received written warnings, and more than 700 of them got fined at least $75, according to state data. Officials said the first year’s results is a good sign for the pilot Know the Zone speed safety program, which aimed to get drivers to slow down in work zones. The Department of Transportation, which is already looking to do it again, placed cameras from April through December at three major projects: on the Westport, Norwalk line and East Lyme on Interstate-95 and in Waterbury on Interstate-84. The program came out of state legislation in 2021 and in hopes of getting drivers to slow down and prevent construction site accidents. Anyone going at least 15 miles per hour over the speed limit received a letter in the mail from the state police with a photo of their license plate, warning them about their speed in the construction zone, and that they will receive a fine if they do it again. After the written warning, the second offense was a $75 fine and every one following was $150.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/westport/article/ct-dot-speed-camera-program-work-zones-i95-i84-18589612.php

As the $385 million school construction project gets underway, city officials are considering whether to enter a project labor agreement with local trade unions that would mandate a percentage of Norwich workers be employed on the project. The School Building Committee and the City Council would have to approve the project labor agreement with the Norwich-New London Building Trades Council. School Building Committee Chairman and Democratic Alderman Mark Bettencourt said the committee should be ready to seek construction bids by the end of 2024, so an agreement would need to be approved before then. Joe Toner, executive director of the Connecticut State Building Trades Council, told the School Building Committee that the agreement would set a percentage of project workers who are Norwich residents. An initial proposed agreement would have 25% Norwich residents required, with another 5% from New London County.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20240106/norwich-considers-labor-agreement-for-school-construction-project/