{news} Darek Shapiro in Saturday's Advocate

[David Bedell]

Not front page, but still good coverage!

Stamford Advocate, 8/13/05:

Mayoral hopeful shares his vision

By Doug Dalena
Staff Writer

STAMFORD - Darek Shapiro hardly stopped talking for nearly two hours 
Thursday night. Dressed in a gray suit, red tie and wire-rimmed glasses, he 
stood, barely containing his enthusiasm, and delivered his vision of the 
future of Stamford.

The 52-year-old architect and candidate for mayor accepted the Green Party 
nomination for the city's top job from about 25 members of his party 
gathered at Tidbit, the Bank Street bar and restaurant.

Shapiro spent nearly two hours engaged in individual conversations and gave 
an acceptance speech that described specific goals for Stamford.

His goals include:

• a city-run cooperative health-care system based on greatly increased 
preventive care and examinations, which he said would cost residents no more 
than their current medical care, but would reduce costs for medical crises 
caused by lack of early diagnosis;

• legalizing the city's abundance of accessory apartments, also called 
in-law apartments, which Shapiro said would add to the tax rolls, allow 
better safety enforcement and regulation, and alleviate the shortage of 
affordable housing;

• a comprehensive shuttle and jitney system to bring commuters downtown and 
to other business centers to reduce pollution and traffic congestion;

• revamping building and zoning codes, and city incentives for developers, 
to encourage more energy-efficient buildings that produce at least 20 
percent of the energy they use.

"This is not something we should do," he said of his energy-efficiency 
proposal. "We have no choice."

An architect who specializes in energy-efficient homes and small commercial 
buildings, Shapiro founded the 2010 Clean Energy Committee, which lobbied 
the Board of Representatives to pass legislation to purchase 20 percent of 
Stamford's energy from nonpolluting sources by 2010.

Pledging to work with businesses, Shapiro said his job would be convincing 
them "green also means profit."

Mayor Dannel Malloy, a Democrat running for re-election in November, has 
boasted of the clean energy resolution and accepted an environmental award 
on the city's behalf partly because of it.

In his only reference to Malloy during Thursday's nominating meeting, 
Shapiro said the mayor was doing an "OK" job.

"It's not good enough," he said, speaking of problems with health-care 
access, affordable housing, pollution and traffic congestion. "We're not in 
an OK time. We're in a very challenging time."

Calling high taxes a symptom of the city's dependence on a building boom 
that he said would disappear soon, Shapiro said he would work to rebuild 
Stamford's economy and tax base on a foundation of clean energy and 
transportation.

Shapiro did not need the Green Party endorsement; he collected more than the 
182 signatures needed to qualify for the ballot, equal to 1 percent of votes 
cast in the 2003 municipal election.

By endorsing Shapiro, the party has the opportunity to qualify for automatic 
nominating status if he gets more than 1 percent of the vote in November's 
election. That status gets the party's endorsed candidate on the ballot in 
the next election without having to petition as Shapiro did.

"It was a big response," he said of the 220 signatures he collected from 
registered voters whom he approached during the past several weeks, which he 
said helped him understand what residents are concerned about. "It actually 
is an excellent exercise, and an important exercise."

Shapiro said he plans to hear from more voters throughout the campaign 
during public forums which he plans to hold at the Government Center.

The party also endorsed David Bedell for constable, and Trish Haines Dayan, 
a psychotherapist who has lived in the city for more than 30 years, for the 
Board of Education.