With its low self-esteem and high urban blight, Hartford is the ultimate underdog city. Sad City Hartford documents the joys, sorrows and eccentricities of New England's Rising Star.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Support The Sad City Ordinance

Sad City Hartford brought you the story of a local Sunoco station profiting off the drug trade this summer. We then followed up with more gas stations selling products used for narcotic trafficking. From these stories Councilman Luis Cotto is now trying to amend an existing ordinance to ban gas stations from selling these products.

Show your support for this amendment and that you won't stand for this type behavior in our community by signing our petition here

If citizens want to get further involved, there will be an opportunity for public comment on the amendment at the City Council Meeting to be held Monday, January 10 at 6PM. The meeting will be held in the Council Chambers at 550 Main Street. Here is a great chance to get involved and do something that we all can agree is positive for the community.

2 comments:

  1. FYI, Helen Ubinas wrote about this on October 11, 2009:

    http://www.hartfordinfo.org/issues/documents/neighborhoods/htfd_courant_101109.asp

    I do genuinely appreciate you calling attention to this matter, but it's a tad disingenuous to act as if you broke this story when the Courant and the well-read Councilman Cotto had a line on it 10 months before you did.

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  2. From the Sad City interview with Councilman Cotto a few weeks back:

    4) Do you think it will be possible to create a law that cracks down on the sale of products like lactose powder and other drug manufacturing products? If so when do you plan to introduce such a bill? Will you credit Sad City in the record?


    Back Story: We recently had Councilmen Boucher and Torres sponsor an ordinance calling for a ban on lighters that appeal to kids. I was floored because I was under the impression that we couldn't, at a municipal level, tell anyone what they can or can not sell. Turns out I was wrong and at that time I had my aide-de-camp, Brendan Mahoney, work on putting together something that will prevent stores from selling drug paraphernalia products. My own experience are gas stations that sell bongs, pipes, etc... with the obvious rolling papers and the all too common blunt (Cherry flavored?! Really?!) Brendan made me aware of your post on Sad City which spoke to an even more disturbing product with the lactose powder. We have submitted language into Corporation Counsel and hope to get a draft from them to propose for January. We commonly refer to the ordinance as the Sad City Ordinance, but that's as far as I think it'll go for any "on the record" credit :-)

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