Connect with us

Connecticut

Three Kings Day Party Brings Families With DCF Cases Together

Published

on

Three Kings Day Party Brings Families With DCF Cases Together


Three Kings Day is Friday and for a lot of households throughout Connecticut, particularly in Latino households, it’s a day of presents, custom and celebration.

The vacation commemorates the day that the Maji introduced presents to child Jesus.

The festivities received underway early in Glastonbury, the place the Division of Kids and Households (DCF) held a celebration Thursday evening at their pop-up Olive Department Toy Store.

With crowns, crafts, snacks and presents, the Three Kings Day celebration had children dancing and taking part in.

Advertisement

“Now we have this chance to have this house to supply free toys and presents to kids who’ve an open DCF case to households,“ DCF’s Jacqueline Ford mentioned.

All of the toys on the store have been donated in order that households working with DCF had the prospect to take house presents at no cost throughout a Christmas celebration final month.

“We had so many toys and presents leftover that we thought it would be a fantastic alternative to ask households again in,” Ford mentioned.

Two-year-old Elias made essentially the most of Three Kings Day.

“He simply is operating round like a maniac,” his mother Lori Catubig, of Glastonbury, mentioned.

Advertisement

Elias spent many of the evening with a buddy and a toy truck, together with giving his mother large kisses.

“His character is absolutely large. He’s simply the proper addition to our household,” Lori mentioned.

Lori and her husband Jay formally made Elias a part of the household on Nationwide Adoption Day in November.

“The feelings have been operating excessive,” she mentioned.

It got here after Lori went by way of a number of failed rounds of IVF. Then, the couple discovered precisely what they have been on the lookout for within the little boy.

Advertisement

“Met him and simply fell in love immediately,” she mentioned.

Elias was born with a medical complication that leaves him unable to make use of one arm, however Lori welcomed the prospect to make use of her expertise as an occupational therapist to provide him all of the specialised care he wants.

“Now we all know why we could not have conceived our personal – as a result of he was meant to be ours. That is really what we consider,” Lori mentioned.

The vacation gathering additionally means lots to mother Ashley Might-Williams and her 4 children.

“After they discovered that they received to design their very own little crowns and stuff, they have been simply all on board with it,” Might-Williams mentioned.

Advertisement

When the only mother beforehand had struggles with ingesting, she received related with DCF to undergo an in depth house rehab program.

“My children received to see the work that I did,” Might-Williams mentioned. “They belief me as a result of I’ve confirmed that, , I’ve put within the work.”

Now the household is celebrating collectively, having fun with new toys and an opportunity to play.

“This vacation season has shaped such lovely connections,” Ford mentioned.

The Three Kings Day celebration, additionally allowed these households to share within the vacation spirit.

Advertisement

“I would not be right here if it weren’t for folks giving again, and serving to out, and lending a hand,” Might-Williams mentioned.

Ford says DCF has been overwhelmed with toy donations from the neighborhood, which allowed them to host the Three Kings Day celebration. They hope to get extra all year long in order that they will proceed to open up the Olive Department Toy Store for various occasions.



Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Connecticut

Pedestrian struck on I-95 in Milford has serious injuries

Published

on

Pedestrian struck on I-95 in Milford has serious injuries


A pedestrian has serious injuries after being struck while on Interstate 95 in Milford over the weekend.

Dispatchers received a call about a pedestrian hit on I-95 South around 6:30 p.m. Sunday.

Fire officials said a car sideswiped the pedestrian’s car while he was attempting to put fuel in it.

The pedestrian suffered serious leg injuries in the collision and he was transported to Bridgeport Hospital for treatment.

Advertisement

The collision is under investigation. Anyone with information or anyone who may have witnessed the collision is asked to call State Police at (203) 696-2500.



Source link

Continue Reading

Connecticut

Connecticut’s time for energy investment is now – if state leaders get on board

Published

on

Connecticut’s time for energy investment is now – if state leaders get on board


As a 15-year veteran of the utility industry, I can tell you with certainty there’s nowhere like Connecticut. In other states, when utility companies receive downgrades in their credit rating, regulators and consumer advocates haul them into hearings, demanding to know their plans to rectify them.

Not so in Connecticut, where regulators themselves are named as the reason for the downgrades, and policymakers like the Office of Consumer Counsel and the Chairs of the legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee work overtime to provide political cover.

Meanwhile, the scope of these downgrades – from S&P and Moody’s, two of the most respected financial institutions in the world – extend statewide, from two Avangrid companies, Eversource and all its subsidiaries, to even a small water company.

Whatever the political rhetoric, the impacts are serious and the damage long-term. Building a grid for Connecticut’s future will require billions in new investment over the decades to come, and with the downgrades warning investors to be increasingly skeptical of Connecticut utilities, every single dollar just got more expensive.

Advertisement

The state has a long list of goals for its economy and clear objectives for its utilities: build a modern, sustainable, reliable, resilient, renewable, innovative electric grid capable of supporting massive capacity increases from electrification and data centers. Alienating the investment community does nothing to further those goals; it only makes them less attainable.

But until PURA and state policymakers abandon their anti-utility bias, they will continue to miss today’s golden opportunity to build the energy system of tomorrow –- an opportunity other states are rigorously pursuing. Instead, the excellent reliability that customers rely on, built through a long legacy of investment, will be whittled away even as costs continue to rise.

This, to a question that Sen. Norm Needleman and Rep. Jonathan Steinberg raise in their editorial, is why companies like ours “care” if our credit rating is downgraded. We are not so short-sighted as to shrug off the consequences of higher costs for our customers.

But even more significant are the consequences to long-term energy investment in Connecticut. Utilities are some of the most capital-intensive businesses in the country. We rely on selling bonds to finance safe, reliable, high-quality service through investments like new substations, battery storage, flood walls, microgrids and more.

Downgrades signal to investors they should pull their loans, leaving us with insufficient capital to advance these innovations. Instead, utilities are forced to put what limited capital we can raise (through higher premiums on our bonds) into the most basic, fundamental projects, like storm restoration efforts or pole replacements after traffic accidents.

Advertisement

Accepting – and even incentivizing – PURA to enable meager investments to support only the most basic service puts Connecticut out of step with our neighbors, as other northeastern states are doing the hard work of system planning for the future. It’s no coincidence that Eversource is putting forward 30-year investment plans in Massachusetts while pulling $500 million in investments from Connecticut. Nor should it be surprising that Avangrid company New York State Electric & Gas (NYSEG) is building two 1-megawatt battery energy storage systems that tap directly into New York substations, a major resiliency investment, while nothing of the sort is happening in Connecticut.

Regulators in Massachusetts and New York are far from easy or passive. They have high standards that utilities must work hard to meet, and they do not get everything they ask for, as Needleman and Steinberg baselessly claim is our demand.

What Massachusetts and New York do is set the rules of the road for utility companies. They set clear standards of performance they expect from utility companies – in everything from the level of detail in rate cases to their forward-looking investment plans – and they hold them accountable.

That is not the case in Connecticut. Legislators can obfuscate, downplay, or even offer fictitious conspiracy theories -– most incredibly, that we would pay credit rating agencies, which are independent referees under federal law, to downgrade our credit ratings when downgrades are good for no one.

But none of these political games change the fact that energy companies cannot invest in a state in which PURA puts politically expedient rate cuts over its stated objectives. Nor will they alleviate the underinvestment these policymakers are apparently willing to accept in favor of the fabrication that PURA is “simply holding utilities accountable.”

Advertisement

I fear Connecticut’s energy infrastructure, and the economy it’s built on, will be left behind as other states move forward with a clear vision. The golden opportunity for investment in the energy future is now, and we are at serious risk of missing it as our regulators and policymakers prioritize waging political war on the state’s utilities. The longer they dally, the more likely it is that PURA’s actions and inaction will leave us in the dark.

 Charlotte Ancel is the Vice President of Investor Relations at Avangrid, the parent company of United Illuminating, Connecticut Natural Gas, and Southern Connecticut Gas.



Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Connecticut

Library in South Windsor wraps up 14th annual Gingerbread House Festival

Published

on

Library in South Windsor wraps up 14th annual Gingerbread House Festival


Some people found a sweet escape from Sunday’s frigid winter temperatures. A chance to step outside the cold and into a different snowy environment.

It just made it feel like Christmas,” said Michael Mizla, of Manchester.

“We try to do this every year,” said Susan, Mizla’s wife.

Sunday was the last day to check out a festive, holiday tradition at the Wood Memorial Library and Museum in South Windsor – The 14th Annual Gingerbread House Festival, which organizers say is one of the largest gingerbread house festivals in New England.

Advertisement

“People have made this their tradition,” said the library’s executive director Carolyn Venne. “We see the same large Vermont family every year the day after Thanksgiving on opening day. So, as people come in to see family locally, this becomes part of their tradition, and that makes it all meaningful for us.”

These gingerbread houses are on display in multiple rooms and floors throughout the library for weeks, from late November to just before Christmas.

“We probably range from about 75 to 150, and I think one year we topped out around 200,” said Venne.

Venne says behind these intricate candy creations are bakers, students, and community members.

At the end of the day, the gingerbread houses went to some lucky raffle winners or were donated to a nursing home in the area.

Advertisement

Those who needed to do some last-minute holiday shopping, were covered – just like the icing on these graham cracker homes – as people could visit the library’s ‘Ye Old Gingerbread Shoppe’ and take some of the magic home with them.

“The holidays are full of things you remember as a kid, so it just feels like the kind of tradition you will remember as you grow up.”

While Sunday was the last day to immerse yourself in these festive, edible villages, there are more holiday traditions coming up at the library, including a Christmas concert next Saturday at 1:30 p.m.



Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Trending