New parking card to be launched in March: The Municipal Parking Office will launch the Parcxmart Card™ in March 2009, a universal card program that is designed to make parking, shopping and eating convenient and easy. The Parcxmart Card has a secure chip that allows for on-street parking, debits at local merchant businesses and a rewards calculator that can carry up to ten separate merchant rewards’ programs per card. Additionally, merchants participating in the network earn commissions when they sell or reload value onto the cards. These cards can be reloaded with cash, debit, or credit up to $500 in value.

First winter storm requires many town services: Snow Storm Austin dropped 8-14 inches of snow from Dec. 19 to Dec. 21. A parking ban was in effect for Friday and Sunday. The Police Department responded to 39 motor vehicle accidents (typically, 15 accidents occur on average), 40 stuck vehicles (up from 20), and 50 complaints of cars parked in violation of the parking ban (up from 8 on average).

The cost for snowplowing services on Friday and into Saturday was $21,767 for 10 contractors for 11.5 hours of plowing. On Sunday the cost for 10 contractors for 8.5 hours of service was $14,678.

Single Stream Recycling fully implemented: The Connecticut Resource Recovery Authority has successfully converted to single-stream recycling. CRRA used West Hartford as a test site to work out it processing bugs before going region-wide with this service. Residents no longer have to separate paper items (cardboard, boxboard, junk mail, newspapers) from plastics (#1 and #2), glass, and metal. Residents must continue to use the town-issued blue recycling bins or a similar type of plastic container for their recyclables. Barrels are unacceptable.

Public Works saw a drop in trash tonnage for November (1739 tons, down from 2027 in October and 2102 in September). The Town collected 438 tons of recyclables for November, representing an all time high of 30% recyclables-to-trash ratio.

Two projects submitted for federal Economic Stimulus grant: The Engineering Office submitted two projects to the Capitol Region Council of Governments for funding of two $500,000 projects. The first is a pedestrian enhancement project on South Quaker Lane, from Flatbush Avenue to Park Road, that would create handicap ramps at 18 locations, repair sidewalks and improve bus shelters. The other project would lengthen the left turn lane on Mountain Road at Albany Avenue and create a new right turn lane in an effort to reduce accidents. West Hartford is one of 27 towns competing for a limited pool of money.

Click It or Ticket generates 290 citations: The West Hartford Police Department participated in this state-wide enforcement program that ran from November 17th to November 30th.  Officers issued 109 citations to operators for failure to wear seatbelts as required by law and three citations that were issued for the child restraint violations. Officers also issued 178 citations for other motor vehicle violations including 86 tickets for use of hand-held cell phones while driving and 41 illegally tinted windows. The pre-survey showed an 83% compliance rate of seat belted operators and the post-survey showed a compliance rate increase of 88% of the operators. The department will be reimbursed $7400 for overtime costs associated with the Click It or Ticket program.

Ronald F. Van Winkle
Interim Town Manager

Click here to view back issues of Council Briefs, Select the year: 2009 or 2008 or 2007.

<back to What's New