Luke Bronin said that if Mayor Pedro Segarra wanted to spend more money on police, he could have spent less on a new minor league baseball stadium.
There have been 18 deaths so far this year in the city of Hartford. There were 19 in all of last year, and how to best keep the city safe is a big priority for Mayor Pedro Segarra.
But one of Segarra's chief political challengers is pointing to the baseball stadium the city is building and says the mayor has his priorities all wrong.
Six candidates gathered at Hartford's North End Senior Center for a debate earlier this week. And the first question got right to the issue in the news: public safety.
Segarra had just left a press conference with the governor announcing more state resources. When it was his turn to speak, he pointed a finger at the state. "This meeting was specifically addressing the issue of getting back resources that the state took away, which is a lot of resources," he said.
But challenger Luke Bronin said the mayor has it all wrong. It's the city, not the state, that has underfunded and understaffed the police department. And, Bronin said, if Segarra wanted to spend more money on police, he could have spent less on a new minor league baseball stadium.
Also, Bronin is calling out what he said is $6 million to relocate roads and utilities to accommodate the stadium -- money he said the city is spending over and above the $60 million cost to build the stadium itself.
"That's an extra $6 million," Bronin said. "So, let's get our priorities straight. If $6 million is the reason our police force is in crisis, then maybe we shouldn't have made the decisions that we've made."
My response: let's get our priorities straight. We can't spend $60 million on a stadium, with $6 million MORE just for utility relocation...
— BroninForMayor (@BroninForMayor) July 20, 2015
Bronin is right that the city is paying money for roadway improvements. But it's old news. The city and the developer said the city always intended to pay for the work separately, and that's backed up by public documents, testimony, and news accounts. Plus, it's not easy to take capital improvement money and turn it into cops on the street.
Still, Bronin's focus on priorities is hitting Segarra in a vulnerable place -- criticizing him for making the city fun for suburbanites as opposed to making it safe for its residents. But Segarra, a Latino mayor whose biggest challenger is a white relative newcomer to the city, pushed back.
"Our challenge is how we, as communities of color, maintain the political power that we have had and that we don't yield it over to suburbanites," Segarra said.
The city's Democrats meet to endorse a candidate on Monday.
