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Letters
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Business New Haven
11/6/1995
By:
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Mayoral Musings
Ft appears that the best way to learn about a city is to run for mayor. It's like going to college again.
I think you shortchanged the study by the Connecticut Policy & Economic Council (CPEC) on outmigration from Connecticut (BNH, October 9).
The real poop is the changes within Connecticut's major cities. Combined with changes in residential property values, crime statistics and tax burdens, we have a very nice, comprehensice picture of the decline of our cities.
For example, in the 1980s, Norwalk had the third-largest outmigration, the largest abosulte dollar property tax increase, the second-highest violent crime rate, and is the only municipality in Fairfield County (save Bridgeport) whose properties have failed to appreciate over the decade.
One final thought: I'm increasingly convinced that the most basic reason for the decline of our cities is the decline in the quality of local journalistic coverage. With a citizenry in the dark, a Gresham's Law takes over politics - and the nasties win out.
- Peter I. Berman
Norwalk
Editor's note: Peter I. Berman is a Republican candidate for mayor of the city of Norwalk.
A Cold Cut
Subway President Fred DeLuca sure comes across as a thoughtful, even benign shepherd in your September 25 cover story. But what your piece did not emphasize was the human cost of his franchise's precipitous, even reckless expansion.
While Subway's growth to 11,000 stores (and counting) is unquestionably a remarkable achievement, it seems plain that management's actions are driven by a single consideration: number of stores. Mom-and-pop franchisees who in some cases have sunk entire nest eggs into a Subway store have (especially in Connecticut, it seems) found that not only have they bought themselves “a low-paying job with long hours,” as the Wall Street Journal put it, but that their biggest competitive threat comes not from other fast-food franchisers, but from Subway itself, which seems hell-bent on opening a store on every corner.
You didn't cite comparable figures for McDonald's, for instance, but it would be interesting to compare franchise failure rates for the two companies. DeLuca would be a different kind of success story if he measured results not in the number of Subway stores, but by how many survived over the long haul
- David Erickson
New Haven
CORRECTION
Call it Murphy's law: In our October 23 edition, a page 10 photograph of Joseph Murphy was inaccurately captioned due to an editing error. Murphy is the New Haven regional president of the Waterbury-based Centerbank. (He was correctly identified in the body of the story.) We apologize for the flub.
Business New Haven welcomes letters to the editor pertaining to subjects covered in these pages. Letters should be 300 words or less and are subject to editing for brevity and clarity. Send letters to Business New Haven, One Church Street, New Haven, CT 06510, or fax to 203-781-3482. Please include a daytime phone number for verification of authorship.
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