2016-10-24 09:10:40
Changing tack on municipal tax?
PINCHED CITIES TRY TO RELIEVE THE PRESSURE; ONE PROPOSED FIX COULD RIPPLE OUT ACROSS THE STATE
BY MICHAEL LEE-MURPHY
What is the relationship of Connecticut’s cities with the rest of the state? How important is their financial health to the rest of the state? Do suburban communities have a responsibility to the cities at the center of our regions?
These are the questions that are, yet again, coming to the forefront of the Connecticut political landscape. This year, however, politicians and community leaders are bringing a renewed urgency to the issue, and new hopes that the next year might finally bring some changes to decades-old issues. Municipal funding, the property tax and local revenue generation are likely to dominate the state legislature’s agenda as the session gets underway in January. Throughout the fall, mayors, representatives and advocacy groups have been crafting a strategy to break the political gridlock. Solutions run the gamut, from the politically possible to pie in the sky. Even the “R” word — the governance strategy that dare not speak its name in New England, regionalism — is being bandied about as an answer.
Nowhere is the discussion as urgent as in the city of Hartford. While it may be home to our State Capitol and much of the state’s economy, the city’s financial struggles are compounding. This year Hartford has a budget deficit of $22.6 million, expected to balloon to as much as $50 million if concessions from the city’s unions are not forthcoming. Much of the reporting on Hartford’s finances has centered on the difficulties around the publically financed baseball stadium, and the ever-growing costs associated with it.
There is a growing chorus, however, that argues Hartford’s financial difficulties are structural in nature, not attributable simply to bad governance or mismanagement. Advocates say the solutions to these problems would benefit communities far beyond Hartford city limits. Because of the structure of Connecticut state government, municipalities must use revenue from property taxes to fund the majority of their operations. Thus, cities and towns sink or swim based on property.
Hartford is sinking. According to city officials, Hartford cannot raise any more revenue than it already does under the current system. Hartford taxes what little property it is allowed to tax at a rate that exceeds every other town or city in the state. City officials say the rate cannot go higher. Mayor Luke Bronin, who did not respond to multiple interview requests, has repeatedly pointed out that the city has less taxable property than West Hartford, despite having twice the population. More than half of Hartford’s property — be it hospitals, educational institutions or state government buildings — is tax-exempt. The trick then, for those who want to solve Hartford’s problems, is to craft a solution that makes sense for those outside the city, as well.
“Everyone is focused on Hartford. I think that’s the wrong approach,” says Rep. Matt Ritter, D-Hartford. “It’s all Connecticut municipalities — particularly the urban municipalities — that are struggling with an over-reliance on property tax; less and less taxable revenue.” For Ritter, this means finding common ground.
According to both Ritter and Rep. Edwin Vargas, D-Hartford, the recent ruling by Judge Thomas Moukawsher in CCJEF v. Rell — in which the judge eviscerated the “irrational” system of funding in the state’s education system — will open up opportunities for legislators from the state’s cities. “From the point of view of the urban legislators like myself, [property tax] has always been an issue,” says Vargas. “I do think that the judge’s ruling gives us leverage in dealing with our suburban and rural colleagues.” Moukawsher’s ruling gives the state 180 days to fix the education-funding regime. While Attorney General George Jepsen is appealing the ruling, the case has injected new life into a debate about how money is distributed in the state.
Ritter offers the example of special education funding. Hartford spends roughly $30 million of its operating budget on educating special needs children, part of a funding system that can negatively impact small towns, as well. “If a small, rural community has a special ed child or two that costs half a million to educate, then that could break that town’s budget,” he says. Ritter hopes this situation will create a political agreement between the state’s cities and smaller towns.
The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, the lobby organization made up of mayors and first selectmen from around the state, formed a committee to put together a package of legislation for the 2017 Connecticut General Assembly session. While the committee is hesitant to detail specific legislation, Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, president of the committee, says new ideas need to be brought to the state legislature. “We need to put together a program and a package of ideas that will look at tax policy, will look at the programs that we want to offer in Connecticut. Who offers them, and how do we pay for them, and who pays for them?”
Like Ritter and Vargas, Boughton is also concerned with crafting a message and legislative package that will have some appeal beyond the borders of Connecticut cities. “Hartford’s problems today are going to be your problems in about seven or eight years,” he says, directing a message toward those resistant to any notion of regionalism. One such strategy, hinted at by both Boughton and Bronin in recent weeks, is the institution of a regional sales tax. According to Boughton, this would both provide revenue for cities like his and Bronin’s, and also prevent what Boughton calls the “arms race” of municipalities competing against one another for new big box stores and their attendant tax revenue.
As part of a broad front of lobbying efforts, the CCM also released a report in October detailing precisely how the state’s cities are overburdened, not only with the poorest and most vulnerable of the state’s residents, but also with supporting significant parts of the local economy. According to the report, more than 7,600 people commute into Hartford from West Hartford every day, with another 5,100 from East Hartford, and more than 5,000 from Manchester. New Haven has similar numbers of commuters. The argument for a robust regionalism holds that, if suburban residents are using the city for employment — with all the attendant services like police, fire and infrastructure upkeep — then they should bear some of the costs, too.
West Hartford Mayor Shari Cantor says she is open to ideas about regionalism, but is hesitant to endorse any particular strategy or change in the law. “I have heard that nothing’s off the table, but I also haven’t heard anything that’s really truly on the table,” she says. Cantor’s job, she says, is to balance the needs of the regional economy and the responsibility to the city at the center of the region with the needs and desires of those who live in West Hartford. “Obviously our taxpayers have high expectations. West Hartford runs a very tight ship. Our residents expect good service, so those are things that I really have to be careful about,” she says.
Ritter is skeptical about the amount of local control that surrounding towns will be willing to cede, citing that old New England sense of political autonomy, especially when it comes to finance. But in certain spending areas, less local control would be helpful, he says. He would like to see the state pick up the tab for special education statewide, which would free up a massive amount of budget space in Hartford, and elsewhere. According to data from the state Department of Education, towns in Connecticut spend between 11 percent and 30 percent of their yearly school budgets on special education — with some of that money coming from the state, and some coming from local property taxes. According to Ritter, if the state picked up the entire cost of special education, that would save Hartford about $30 million in its municipal budget. This would help smaller rural towns as well, Ritter explains, because even the special education costs of educating a few more children than anticipated would place added pressure on a small town’s budget.
He also points to the cost-sharing potential of purchasing agreements — which can range from goods such as salt for the roads to contracts such as garbage or tax collection — with surrounding towns as a relatively attainable goal.
Vargas’ ideas are a little more ambitious. He would like to see marijuana legalized and taxed, as well as new revenues from tolls on the state’s interstate highways. In his mind, much of the problem stems from poverty. Tax revenues are too low because wages are too low, he says. A 2013 report from the New England Public Policy Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston points to the potential savings in regionalizing a slew of non-education services, like 911 call centers, public health and pension administration. Without these fixes, the report suggests, existing problems will only deepen and compound: “Assigning local governments the responsibility for providing services to their populations tends to exacerbate inequality if people self-select into jurisdictions based on their ability to pay for services.” In other words, rich towns stay rich and poor towns stay poor.
In the Land of Steady Habits, the reliance on property tax for local funding is one of the steadiest. Few political issues generate so much debate with so little movement. In 2017, however, things may come to a head, and advocates for reform are hoping for just that.
history
Can State’s Oldest Castle Be Saved?
DANBURY’S HEARTHSTONE CASTLE MAY NOT BE DESTINED FOR A FAIRY-TALE ENDING
BY ERIK OFGANG
On Nov. 8, Danbury voters will be asked to approve $10 million in infrastructure improvement projects for the city, including about $1.6 million to convert the long-abandoned castle in Tarrywile Park into a walled garden.
Proponents of the plan for the castle, including several city officials and local preservationists, say the proposal is a noble effort to save what remains of the decaying but striking structure that is on the National Register of Historic Places. Critics fear the plan amounts to a taxpayer-funded demolition.
Predating the more famous Gillette Castle in East Haddam by 20 years, Hearthstone Castle was built between 1896 and 1899 by E. Starr Sanford, a successful New York portrait photographer and camera inventor. In 1918, Charles Darling Parks purchased the castle and gave it its current name.
Members of the Parks family lived in the structure until 1985, when the city of Danbury acquired the castle, the nearby Tarrywile Mansion and hundreds of acres of surrounding land. At the time, the city focused its resources on maintaining the park, and the mansion and the castle was left to deteriorate. Today the castle is in a state of dramatic disrepair. The roof and its three floors have collapsed entirely. Only the castle’s walls — including several curving turrets — and the stone-arched portecochère entranceway are still standing.
Located in a relatively remote section of Tarrywile Park, the castle is fenced off but is regularly frequented by trespassers and has became a public nuisance, according to city officials.
“Unless I park a cop out there 24/7, the kids like to break into it and climb in there,” Mayor Mark Boughton says. “We’ve had people get stuck in there; last year we had a fire there.”
The city’s plan is to clear the interior of the castle of the three-stories worth of plumbing and other household appliances and items that have collapsed into what was the basement. After the site is cleared, the city will commission a feasibility study to examine the integrity of the castle’s remaining structures. The hope is to convert the site into an open-air, walled garden that city officials believe will be an attraction and can serve as a gathering spot for concerts and cocktail hours at weddings. But just how much of the castle’s structure will remain unchanged is uncertain, and that’s where the plan has drawn criticism.
Sharon Calitro, director of Danbury’s Planning and Zoning Department, says the walls of the castle, currently three stories high, will probably be lowered regardless of their condition. “We’ll preserve what we can, but we have to balance what we leave up there. To leave a 10-or 15-foot wall that some people might want to climb is creating an attractive nuisance.” She adds, “Whether it’s 10 feet left, five feet left, three feet left [we don’t know]. We don’t want to create a rock-climbing wall; that wouldn’t be the right thing to do.”
Potentially reducing the height of the walls doesn’t sit well with Dawn Eriquez, a Danbury resident who grew up near the castle. “I don’t understand why the walls have to come down,” she says. She adds she likes the idea of an open-air attraction, but doesn’t believe a site that preserves merely the footprint of the castle will be much of a draw. “I don’t know if people are going to come to see a three-foot wall, but they’re definitely going to come to stand inside what is a 119-year-old castle. People could stand inside and look up and they’d still be amazed at the beauty and the structure.”
Judy Durkin, whose grandmother lived in the castle, agrees. She says if the walls are dramatically reduced, “I would be extremely disappointed. Not only is it a family homestead with a lot of memories, but I feel that for the city of Danbury it could be something usable.”
Because the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it is unlikely the walls would be brought down unless they require significant funding to stabilize. Todd Levine, a historian with the State Historic Preservation Office, which oversees National Register properties in Connecticut, met with Boughton and Calitro in late September to discuss plans for the site. He says the three of them were on the same page about efforts to preserve the castle in as much of its current state as possible. “It’s a handsome-looking ruin and I think there is a couple of phases that have to be gone through to determine if it can be saved as is,” he says. “The preference would be to retain the outer walls.”
In 2014, the city received a grant from the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation to study potential plans for the castle’s future. At that time it was estimated that a complete renovation of the castle would cost about $12 million. The estimate didn’t include supplying the castle with sewer and water, which Boughton says would bring a full renovation up to around $15 million or $16 million. This amount is unrealistic for the city to spend, says Boughton. “I don’t know how I tell somebody, ‘I can’t pave your road this year because we’re rebuilding a castle.’ People don’t want to hear that.”
Boughton says creating an open-air walled garden is the most cost-effective option, and is a common practice with abandoned castles in Europe.
Levine says that once the debris is cleared and the castle’s walls are studied, there are grants the city can apply for to offset costs of stabilizing the structure. However, he says there would not be enough funding for a complete restoration. Spending more than $12 million to get the building up to code is “not something the municipality or the state is interested in doing,” he says.
Mark Nolan, the treasurer of Friends of Tarrywile Park, a nonprofit that supports Tarrywile Park, has long championed efforts to preserve the castle and supports the city’s vision for the site. “The goal is to get it to be in a respectable condition that will be able to be enjoyed by all in a manageable fashion that’s both economically viable today and sustainable in the future,” he says. He adds plans are underway to join Hearthstone by trail with other nearby Danbury attractions such as the Charles Ives House and the Marian Anderson Studio, forming a walkable trio of attractions that Nolan believes can draw visitors to the city.
Geoff Herald, president of the board of trustees of the Danbury Museum and Historical Society, says “anything that is of historical nature I prefer to preserve. We want to preserve our history and use it for illustration to show future generations what life was like.” However, he says there are fiscal realities that have to be considered and that “converting it to public gardens is the right thing to do.”
Boughton says he understands people’s frustration with the state of the castle, and that the time to fix it was in 1985 when the city acquired it. “Now it’s gotten so bad that it’s not repairable. Government should have protected that building.”
Even so, the mayor remains optimistic there might be some bright days in the castle’s future. “This use will surprise people in terms of its utility,” he says.
Levine, from the state, shares that optimism. “When you go there and you see it, you can imagine what it was like 100 years ago. This was a very special place and I think it has the potential to be special again, but it hinges really on the results of this feasibility report.”
person
The Two Careers of Jerry Adler
BY FRANK RIZZO
It’s been several weeks since Jerry Adler tripped and fractured his leg while filming his final scene in the CBS series The Good Wife. Adler, 87, played Howard Lyman, a randy, politically incorrect attorney.
But now, confined to his Roxbury home — just down the road from series law partner Christine Baranski — he was getting antsy and welcomed a journalist eager to hear about his two careers.
Two?
For the past 25 years Adler has become a late-in-life actor, with continuing roles in The Sopranos (as Tony Soprano’s Jewish mob mentor, Hesh), Northern Exposure (as Joel’s rabbi), Rescue Me (as Chief Sidney Feinberg) and Mad About You (building super Mr. Wicker). He’s also acted in films and on stage, most recently on Broadway in Larry David’s Fish in the Dark and in Connecticut Rep’s The Sunshine Boys and It’s Connecticut.
But the first 65 years were no chopped liver either, working as stage manager, producer or director on some of the greatest shows (including the world premiere of My Fair Lady at New Haven’s Shubert Theatre) and with some of the leading figures of the Golden Age of the American theater.
“There are very few of us left from that era, kiddo,” says the Brooklyn-born Adler.
Theater was the family business. His great uncle was Jacob Adler of the Yiddish Theatre; his father was Philip Adler, the general manager of the legendary ’30s Group Theatre; and his cousins included actor Luther Adler and famed acting teacher Stella Adler.
“I thought I was too goofy-looking to be an actor,” he says, so Adler set his sights on off-stage roles, starting in 1950 as assistant stage manager for the musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes starring Carol Channing.
His next backstage job was with the revival of Of Thee I Sing, directed by George S. Kaufman, who was also a playwright of classic comedies, known for his quick, acerbic wit.
Adler was with him at lunch one day at New York’s Algonquin Hotel, where Kaufman was a regular with other literary notables at the famed “Round Table.” “As we were leaving, the elevator opens up and there is a famous woman with whom George had had an affair. But this time she’s with this new guy who was dressed all in white. She introduces him to George, ending with ‘and he’s in cotton.’ And George quips back, ‘And dems that plants, dem are soon forgotten.’ I’ll never forget it, to be that quick with a line. Brilliant man, but very sad fellow. Funny, you know, to everyone but himself.”
Adler remembers helping sneak a disguised Zero Mostel (known for the films A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and The Producers) out of the theater to keep him away from being served a subpoena to testify for the House Un-American Activities Committee. “One night he was a woman. Another night, an usher. His favorite was pretending to be a janitor. It was a riot.”
And then there was the time Adler traveled to Zagreb, Croatia, to convince Orson Welles to star in Welles’ Moby Dick adaptation on Broadway. Adler got the rights to the play — but not to Welles. “He said he wouldn’t perform on the stage in New York again as long as Howard Taubman, who he called ‘that prick from the Times,’ was still there.”
Memorable flops? Oh, listen to Adler tell about the time when Milos Forman directed his first U.S. play, which was so bad that when it was trying out in Philadelphia, no one from the audience returned after intermission and the actors finished the second act to an empty house.
“Sometimes it dawns on you during rehearsals if you’re in a flop. That’s when we pass around a note that reads, ‘LFOW.’ That means ‘Look for other work.’”
Sometimes the shows were hits, but it was still a bumpy ride.
Adler had to bring down the curtain on a very drunk Richard Burton in Camelot. And another time for an emotionally fragile Barbara Harris in The Apple Tree, who was devastated from an affair she was having with Warren Beatty. “I had to pull the curtain on a lot of people,” he says.
He remembers Marlene Dietrich, arriving at the theater “looking like she was 190 years old. And then she pulled all that skin back and make a knot and get it taut and she comes out on stage looking amazing.” He said she was a hausfrau at heart, “and she would wash the floor of her dressing room herself. But she was actually very sweet.”
He remembers going to the old haunts of Brooklyn with Arthur Miller. When a school chum recognized the playwright, he came out of his shop in his bloodied butcher’s apron saying, “Hey, Artie! Long time! Whatcha been doing?”
Adler continues: “Miller says, ‘I’m a playwright and I just did Death of a Salesman on Broadway.’ The guy says, ‘Holy mackerel, did you make a lot of money?’ And Miller says ‘Well, if you have a hit show you can make a great deal.’ And the butcher says, ‘That’s fabulous, Artie. You know, I shoulda done that.’”
One of his most dramatic stories was of the Shubert premiere of My Fair Lady. The show opened in the middle of a blizzard with terrified star Rex Harrison in his dressing room refusing to go on.
When the Shubert manager threatened to tell the audience the truth (not to mention threats of lawsuits) Harrison finally relented and the show went triumphantly — stopping the show and stunning the actors when the audience refused to stop applauding after “The Rain in Spain.”
But that story is just one of dozens about such luminaries as Noel Coward, Katharine Hepburn, Hal Holbrook, Jerry Lewis, Angela Lansbury, Harold Pinter, Liv Ullman, Jack Benny, Richard Rodgers, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Joan Rivers, Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Laurette Taylor — the list goes on and on. Spending an afternoon with Adler is like witnessing theater history from the wings.
books
Joy Unleashed
CONNECTICUT AUTHOR’S BOOK EXAMINES ‘MAGIC’ OF THERAPY DOGS
BY ERIK OFGANG
When a dog — especially a therapy dog — walks into a room, everyone’s mood is immediately lift ed, says Jean Baur.
“It’s hard really to explain the kind of magic that these dogs create,” says Baur, a Stonington author. “I call them ambassadors of exuberance. They come into a room and the room lights up.”
Working with her therapy dog Bella — a lab, terrier, whippet and possibly Mexican hairless mix — Baur has witnessed this magic over and over again in cancer hospital wards and colleges, in nursing homes and elementary schools, from the young and from the old. Baur has been consistently amazed by “the deeply intuitive way that dogs seem to know what each person needs.”
This ability to lift people’s spirits inspired Baur to write Joy Unleashed: The Story of Bella, The Unlikely Therapy Dog, which was published in August by Skyhorse Publishing. Baur will sign copies of the book at the Groton Public Library’s annual Authors’ Festival on Nov. 5 from noon to 3 p.m., and at Guilford Free Library on Nov. 9 at 7 p.m.
The book centers around Bella — a rescue dog with a harrowing history — and her sometimes rocky road to becoming a therapy dog, while at the same time examining the impact these four-legged creatures have on their two-legged friends.
“It takes the reader into the everyday miracles that happen when dogs go into a hospital, nursing home, school or cancer center,” explains Baur. “And it’s also my story — how Bella helped me aft er I lost my job at age 65.”
Baur had worked as a career counselor and had written the books The Essential Job Interview Handbook and Eliminated! Now What?: Finding Your Way from Job-Loss Crisis to Career Resilience. She is also a member of the National Speakers Association, and her new book has many elements of an effective speech — it is direct, informative and easy to connect with.
Bella’s story began on Puerto Rico’s “dead dog beach,” a notorious stretch of sand and jungle where local people leave unwanted dogs. Bella was rescued from the beach and ultimately ended up in a shelter in New Jersey not far from where Baur and her husband Bob were living at the time.
The couple’s previous dog, Angus, had died about a year earlier. “We had seen a puppy online, so we drove over there,” Baur says.
However, when they met the puppy they’d seen online, it wasn’t exactly a match made in heaven. “The puppy took one look at us and took off, so the woman that worked there said, ‘I don’t think this is the dog for you.’”
On that same trip they were introduced to another puppy. “She came and just sat on my husband’s foot,” Baur recalls. They learned about this puppy’s troubled history and how she had been rescued from Puerto Rico. They debated about whether or not to take her. Ultimately, Baur says “cuteness won out and we took her home.”
They named her Bella.
She was always sweet and playful, but hadn’t shed her troubled early years entirely and had some behavioral issues. “She was an absolutely crazy puppy,” Baur says. She told her vet that Bella was wild and full of energy, “He said, ‘Well, this is a dog that needs a job,’ and suggested agility training.”
Baur and Bella competed in agility events with their various jumps and tunnels for two years, but Baur says, “It just wasn’t the right fit for either of us.”
When a friend began looking into having her dog certified as a therapy dog, Baur decided that she and Bella would tag along to classes. Therapy dog certification is a rigorous process: among other things, dogs must be calm around other dogs, allow strangers to touch them, not jump on people when interacting and be able to walk on a leash without pulling. Dogs also have to obey basic commands such as sitting and staying both from its owner and other handlers.
Some who knew both Baur and Bella didn’t think the rescue dog from Puerto Rico would be up to the task. “There were a number of people who said to me along the way, ‘Bella will never become a therapy dog.’ That’s all somebody has to say to me to make me want to do it,” Baur says.
Bella, who is 9 years old, has been a therapy dog for five years and still works regularly. Baur would encourage other owners of friendly dogs to have theirs trained and certified as therapy dogs despite what naysayers may say. She also remains in awe of the way the dogs are capable of brightening people’s moods.
“Some of it’s almost surreal. I’m oft en with another handler and her dog, and if you walk down the hospital corridor with two dogs, it’s really powerful; people just stop. Whether it’s doctors, nurses, aides, janitors, families, there’s just this immediate, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s a dog here.’”
Joy Unleashed is available at several Connecticut bookstores, as well as online. For more information and to learn about Baur’s upcoming author talks, go to joyunleashed.org.
stepping out
More than 1,400 guests gathered at the Connecticut Convention Center for this year’s Miracles XXVI gala, presented by the Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center Foundation to benefit cancer-care programs at the hospital. The black-tie event, the largest of its kind in Connecticut, raised more than $1.1 million for cancer initiatives. Back row, from left: Stanley Black & Decker CEO and Chairman John Lundgren and Tamara Lundgren of Farmington, Clifton Davis, Hal Smullen, Mary Smullen, Marytherese Rodis and John F. Rodis, M.D., BA, president Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center. Front row: Christopher and Heidi Cutter, Heidi Grise of West Hartford, Joann Jolly and P. Anthony Giorgio, Ph.D., of Avon.
More than 275 people enjoyed an old-fashioned barbecue at the Owenego Inn Beach & Tennis Club in Branford at New Reach Summer on the Sound, benefiting New Reach’s Life Haven Shelter in New Haven. Clockwise from lower left: board member Barbara Nelson, honored for her longtime commitment to women and children; Kara Capone, New Reach chief operating officer; U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal; and Kellyann Day, New Reach chief executive officer.
Pratt & Whitney’s United Technologies Coalition for Veterans (UTC-4-Vets) recently hosted its first golf tournament fundraiser to benefit Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the physical and emotional rehabilitation of disabled active military service personnel and disabled veterans through fly fishing and associated activities. From left: Jim Iannone, PHWFF district lead, Newington; Keith Tanner, outreach chairman, UTC-4-Vets; retired Captain Ed Nicholson, founder and president, PHWFF; Kimberley Hagerty, treasurer, UTC-4-Vets; Dave Emmerling, Pratt & Whitney vice president, strategy and business development; and Dan Ward, president, UTC-4-Vets.
Soprano Nadia Aguilar Regalado of Torre.n, Mexico, and Hartford, was chosen as the American Opera Idol 2016 by Opera Connecticut. The live competition for opera singers between the ages of 14 and 54 took place on July 14 before a sold-out audience at The Pond House Café in West Hartford’s Elizabeth Park. From left: Doris Lang Kosloff, Opera Connecticut’s artistic director; finalists Johnathan Riesen of Detroit, Marcelle McGuirk of Philadelphia, Stephanie Sanchez of Houston, Nadia Aguilar Regalado, and Nicole Levesque of College Park, Maryland; and John D. Wadhams, Opera Connecticut president.
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