After eight years of leading the city of Hartford, Mayor Luke Bronin announced a few months ago that he would not be seeking re-election.
During his tenure in the city, they nearly had to file for bankruptcy. There were multiple lawsuits surrounding Dunkin' Park, and ongoing violence in the city had to be addressed as well.
It has not been an easy job, not to mention navigating the pandemic during that time.
Is he leaving the city in better condition than he found it? NBC Connecticut's Mike Hydeck spoke with Mayor Bronin about his time leading Hartford.
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Mike Hydeck: First up, you got a lot accomplished in the last eight years. Why are you leaving? You got a bigger office in mind?
Luke Bronin: You know, I love this job, and I will miss it. But these eight years feel like 20. It's time to pass the baton. You know, there's not been a boring day in them. And I'd loved it.
Mike Hydeck: So you're gonna run for senator? Are you gonna run for governor? We're gonna see you again?
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Luke Bronin: First of all, I got about 42 days left. And I've got a lot of stuff I'm trying to get done between now and then. You know, I really do love this work. So if there are opportunities to serve down the road, obviously, I'll be thinking about it. But right now I'm focused on finishing this up and then catching my breath a little bit.
Mike Hydeck: So years ago, Hartford came this close to having to file for bankruptcy. Things changed. Is the city on better financial footing now moving forward?
Luke Bronin: We're in a whole different place. I mean, as you know, when I came in, the very first thing that I did was get under the hood of the city's finances. And it was ugly, and I tried to shine a big bright light on it, because I think one of the problems was that in the past, the city had just tried to get from year to year and try to sort of piece it together and piece another budget together. And I didn't think that was a way to build a foundation for the future. So we tackled it in a serious way. And that meant making some really deep, deep and difficult cuts, it meant asking our unions to be a part of the solution in a big way. It meant asking our corporations to contribute financially, which they did. And of course, it meant doing a deal and building a new partnership with the state of Connecticut, which was critical, all of those things together.
Mike Hydeck: Payment in lieu of taxes, changing like that?
Luke Bronin: We continue to work for that, you know, work on that in the years ahead, but all of those things together, have put the city on a vastly different footing. That doesn't mean there aren't still challenges. You've got a city that has a large commercial tax base. And of course, COVID has wreaked havoc on commercial tax bases all across the country. But what we can do now that the city hadn't done really for decades was to be able to look out not just a year ahead and say how do we make it work and buy ourselves a little time or kick the can. But we laid a foundation, we built a long-term plan. And we've managed to that plan and year after year after year, we've generated surpluses that we've reinvested into the community, into capital infrastructure. We have not borrowed a single dollar since 2016. We've been disciplined, we've been careful. And one of the things that I'm most proud of is being able to turn over a city that is far healthier from a financial standpoint than the one that my team and I inherited.
Mike Hydeck: One of the biggest challenges moving forward for the mayor-elect is going to be trying to take care of affordable housing. There are some affordable housing projects in Hartford, but with a mill rate super high, because you have so much state property in there that you don't get taxes on, how can that continue to be tackled moving forward?
Luke Bronin: We've been more aggressive and more effective at building housing than almost any other community out there. You know, 40% of the city's residential property is affordable, which is vastly higher than any other community in the state. There's really, you know, the second highest is not anywhere close. We've focused on building housing at every level of the income spectrum. Connecticut's got a housing crisis. The whole state of Connecticut. We need more housing opportunity at every level, the income spectrum. That means, you know, we've replaced hundreds of dilapidated units, we've built hundreds and hundreds of new affordable units. We've also built hundreds and hundreds of market rate units in and around the downtown and in the neighborhoods. And one of my deep convictions is that the best and healthiest way to do that is not to put all of your affordable housing in one place and all your market rate housing in one place, but to build mixed income communities. And that's a mission that we've taken really seriously.
Mike Hydeck: So mixed income. Let's talk about Dunkin' Park. Alright, so you have those beautiful condominiums right across the street, some of those are going $2,000 to $3,000. I don't know how much affordable housing is there, then we're gonna build more in the general neighborhood of the north end. Is there going to be affordable housing, woven into that?
Luke Bronin: So if you look at the developments that have been done in around the downtown, many of those developments are 80%-20%, meaning 80% market, 20%, affordable or 90/10. But most of them have some amount of affordable housing set aside. It's also true though the rents of those apartments are rents that in many communities in Connecticut would actually fit the definition of affordable. And although they are high, they are market, they're not income-restricted, also vastly lower than a place like Boston or New York. And we need to be able to meet again, that full range of the income spectrum. One of the things I have a strong belief about is, we need to make sure that if you grow up in Hartford and you do well and you end up working at one of our hospitals or working for the state or for an insurance company, that you can live in your community, there's actually places where you can live and you don't feel like you gotta go outside of Hartford to get that quality housing that you want. We also want to make sure that we've got quality affordable housing and again, that means taking care of the stock that's there, repairing it, fixing it. It means investing in new construction, and it means doubling down on market rate. The other thing about that market rate, because I want to focus on this because this is important, when we got so many people who are working from home rather than coming down to that, that office every day, right, getting to critical density of residential units in and around the downtown is absolutely critical to the future of the City of Hartford.
Mike Hydeck: So let's talk about one of the things that is component of trying to address crime, which the city has had for decades, an issue that's always been trying to be tackled. Affordable housing is part of that. The other thing was you did help to get a law passed regarding repeat, violent offenders. Do you believe it's gonna make an impact? Where is that as far as where the rubber meets the road now that part of it's been passed?
Luke Bronin: I do think it'll make a difference. But let me just step back first and say, I don't think the city has ever done more to try to tackle gun violence and violent crime. And that means, number one, focusing on law enforcement, and our police officers are taking more illegal guns off the street than ever before. They're solving non-fatal shootings and fatal shootings at a rate that's high above many, many peer cities. We've invested in technology to help them do that job even better. But you know, we've invested a lot in community partnerships to focus on prevention, because that's critical. But one of the things that we saw was that again and again, we had people who were repeatedly involved in inflicting violence on our community that were out on pretrial release, or probation or parole, and continue to be involved in violence and not being held when arrested. And so I pulled together a coalition of mayors along with a broader coalition of police chiefs, prosecutors, community advocates, and we pushed for what really is the most significant set of reforms focused on this issue of accountability for repeat, serious violent offenders that we've seen in many, many years.
Mike Hydeck: So what does that accountability mean? Are they gonna be held longer than they were before? What actually happens?
Luke Bronin: It means a number of things. If you meet the criteria of a repeat, serious firearm offender, it means that when you are arrested, you've got to post bail, instead of posting a couple percent of that bail and getting back out, you've got to post a higher percentage of that bail directly with the court. It increases the consequences.
Mike Hydeck: It used to be 10%. What is it now?
Luke Bronin: Well, in practice, it actually sometimes was two or three percent. It's now 30% for those serious firearm offenders. If you are out on pretrial release, or probation or parole, prosecutors have greater tools to hold you accountable if you continue to commit acts of violence. And we've already seen that this law, even though it only went into effect on October 1 of this year, we've seen multiple instances where people who've been repeatedly involved in violence in our community, have been arrested for new acts of violence and are being held because of this law.
