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Almanac
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Business New Haven
4/5/1999
By: BNH
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Home Improvement
New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. has sounded the alarm to city homeowners about unscrupulous home-improvement contractors taking out second mortgages on people's homes without the latter's knowledge or understanding. DeStefano said members of the Livable City Initiative (LCI) “Task Force on Flipping and Speculation” have identified “a pattern of activity that we believe is not to the benefit of homeowners. We want to make sure innocent people don;t become victims of questionable practices.”
Explains LCI Executive Director Henry Fernandez, “If a contractor offers to finance a project, or to get you in touch with a finance company, be sure to have your attorney or some other knowledgeable person review the finance agreement before you sign anything.” DeStefano said the information uncovered by LCI officials has been turned over to law-enforcement agencies, although no arrests have been made to date.
Déjà Vu All Over Again
Steven Levine, M.D., of the Fairfield- and Trumbull-based Ear, Nose, Throat & Facial Plastic Surgery Associates, will be featured this month on the Discovery Channel reincarnation show Past Lives.
Filmed in Levine's Fairfield office and at Bridgeport Hospital, the segment concerns a young boy who believes he was reincarnated. Levine performed a tonsillectomy on the lad, who also had a cyst which was to be surgically removed after he healed from the tonsillectomy. However, within a few of the tonsillectomy, the cyst inexplicably disappeared. Allowing only that the cyst's disappearance was “odd,” Levine said, “I won't speculate why this happened but the boy's family felt very strongly that it was part of his reincarnation.” Many who believe in reincarnation believe that medical ailments resulting from an injury in a past life disappear upon recollection of that earlier life. The Past Lives segment will air April 15 at 5 p.m. at two days later at 9 p.m.
Sanguine About the S&P
You might think Yale's investment gurus would have been beside themselves with glee as the Dow flirted with 10,000 last month. But in fact, only about 20 percent of the university's $6.6 billion is invested in domestic equities, meaning that for every five percent that the U.S. stock market goes up, Yale's equity value rises by only one percent. Yale's heavier reliance on recently troubled international markets, reports the Yale Daily News, has resulted in a slower-than-expected growth rate for the endowment. For the next budget year, for example, Yale will have to deal with a $4 million to $5 million shortfall in projected revenue from the endowment.
Fly in the Ointment
The latest of what seemingly are weekly polls by the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA) shows that business people in the state are quite bullish about growth prospects for their companies: Indeed, nearly 90 percent predicted their workforce levels would rise or at least remain stable over the next 90 days. However, that optimism is tempered by concerns that the legislature might increase health-care benefit costs, and the impact such an increase would have on the overall cost of doing business. Faced with such a possibility, four out of five employers said they would have to pass on costs to employees, reduce or even discontinue health-care coverage, increase prices of goods and services or even reduce employment levels.
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