Light looking for a better 2023 in Norwalk

NORWALK — "Needs instead of wants." Thanks to some forward thinking, Norwalk Mayor Dave Light said 2022 was a good year and he is looking forward to a better 2023. "Last year was much better than the year before," Light said. "We are starting to get back to some normalcy in the city. The last couple of months we saw a lot of interest in the community ... people are asking about available land (and are interested in moving their businesses here)." Light said the city ended up much better than expected. He said there are three reasons for that: • "The department heads were very conservative and fiscally responsible with their budgets," he said. "At the beginning of the year we didn't know where we were going to be." • There were lot of employee vacancies. "Every time you have a vacancy you are not paying their salaries and benefits," he said. "Take the base pay and add all of the benefits you are anywhere from $80,000 to $100,000 per employee. It is a nationwide problem trying to retain employees." • "Our businesses turned in more income taxes than what was predicted." "All three of those together ... plus, we have a very conservative budget this year. Our budget talks we said 'no' to a lot of things. Very conservative when we sat around the table and put our budgets together. We asked them for necessities instead of wants. "All of that put together it was a good year overall." Of course, there have been some problems. Just recently with the cold weather, a number of complaints came to city hall from residents of Key Estates on Whittlesey Avenue. It's not the first time Light has received complaints from residents of the mobile home park. "This year we are going to aggressively pursue avenues to clean up the trailer parks," Light said. "Ralph Fegley (former safety service director) got the ball rolling on that. The mobile home state commission was hard to deal with in the past. That commission took a lot of authority away from local communities. When (former governor John) Kasich was governor, he defunded them and took a lot of their teeth away. "(Safety service director) Mike White is going to research that and see what we can do." Light said city administration went to Key Estates and started looking around. About 1/3 of the park is abandoned with old trailers. "We are going to talk to the occupants who are there and get their input on the problems there," he said. One of the problems is there is just one water meter for the entire park, so people don't know what their bills will be month to month. "At 103 Jefferson, there are over 60 mobile homes and one water meter," Light said. "You were paying the same if you lived by yourself as the guy next to you with five people living there. I understand they are working to get one meter for each home." It is the same at 230 Whittlesey Ave., Key Estates, with just one meter. "We had a whole lot of complaints about lines freezing and nobody taking care of the property," Light said about Key Estates over the holiday weekend. "Mike White has been talking to the maintenance personnel and he got cooperation last week with the frozen pipes." Councilman Steve Schumm brought up vacant houses and poor properties and has asked city hall what can be done about them. "In talking to (Norwalk Law Director) Stu O'Hara, it is a long process before you can tear down somebody's house." Light said. "Unless they are behind on their taxes it is hard to force people to do something. We have to look at our ordinances to toughen them up. We don't have residential zoning building codes ... we have some but they need to be much more strict." Light said the city wants to clean things up, starting with the mobile home parks. "We're going to go after them," he said. "For a lot of these people this is the only place they can go. We are going to try to come up with some ordinances to help out." In other city news, Light said Green Circle Growers wants to build two more buildings at its complex on Cline Street housing migrant workers. "They have the plans in already," he said. "The management from Green Circle is coming to council Tuesday. They won't be done until maybe the end of the summer." He also said the buildings owned by Corso's Flower & Garden Center are just about done and almost ready to its workers to move into. It's like a whole new city around that area. "We are going to redo Grand Avenue and give a facelift to the street," Light said. "But not until 2024. We have to wait until we get our 48-inch sewer line that goes from West Washington all the way to the sewer plant. "Green Circle gave us the lease agreement and rights to put our sewer line in. It didn't cost us a dime. We couldn't get it (the agreement) before Green Circle bought that property." The complex has brought a lot of new faces to the north side of town and so far, so good, Light said. "They are working, spending money and working some more," he said. "Their management group and CJ (van Wingerden, Green Circle Growers co-chief executive officer) are very strict on them. Any problems and they will be gone. They are not going to risk that. They are making good money here and they don't want to risk losing their jobs." Light said he is "looking forward to a good year. It will be fun to finish up the multi-use path this year. We got notice we are getting $300,000 for the amphitheater (at Veterans Memorial Lake Park). I think that will be a huge asset to the park. "They are working on the new water and sewer lines (on Milan Avenue) to Lais Road. That will invite changes to (Steve) Lichtcsien's property. That will make it more inviting to businesses. This will open up a lot of possibilities." Sewer lines now only go as far as the Hartland Plaza but will extend out past Norwalk Waste Materials and in front of the old department store at Lais Road, which is now an RV lot.