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Municipal Excellence Awards
Wait Until 8th - Stonington
General Entry Award: Category 1 (Population 20,000 and under)
In 2024, no one will argue that smartphones in classrooms are becoming an issue. At best, the phones are a minor distraction thanks to social media, messages, and games, and at worst, they can be a brick wall between the student and the teacher. Many towns and cities are reacting by banning the phones in the classroom, or even going the extra step to have students lock them up. For our Category 1 Municipal Excellence Award, we awarded the Town of Stonington for bringing something more to the table.
It begins in 2023 with a comprehensive program, created in partnership with the town and Stonington Public Schools to address the negative impacts of smart phones. They read The Anxious Generation: How the Rewiring of Childhood is Causing a Mental Health Epidemic as a community. They partnered with the University of Connecticut on a research study looking at the connection between increasing mental health needs in adolescence and the use of social media. They invited staff from the schools, Human Services, the Police Department, the First Selectman, as well as local business owners and parents to begin creating educational and outreach activities and opportunities for youth engagement.
And most importantly, they began getting parents of younger students on board with the Wait Until 8th Pledge, which asks parents to not get children a smartphone until the end of 8th grade. According to the national website for the pledge, the average age of children getting their first smartphone is now just 10 years old, an age when children should be spending more time just being children. The pledge in a town becomes active when the first 10 parents sign up, and in Stonington, there are 600 parents and counting.
And importantly, they’re not just removing the smartphones, but adding programs like pottery, 3d printing, sports, cooking, career path conversations and more so young people aren’t left with a blank space that social media can fill.
Including First Selectman Danielle Chesebrough’s work on the 119K Commission, it’s clear that Stonington has the innovative ideas to make youth mental health a priority. It’s about getting back to basics, looking into the issue, and offering young people an alternative to the social media rabbit hole. Towns and cities are up against billion-dollar corporations when it comes to combatting smartphone use, but towns and cities have something that corporations can never have: community. That’s what municipal excellence is all about.
Repair Café - Guilford
General Entry Award: Category 2 (Population 20,001 to 40,000)
Most cafés sell drinks. Imagine a café where you didn’t go to buy a cup of coffee, but brought your coffee machine to get fixed. The idea sounds a little wacky, but that’s exactly the idea behind the Guilford Repair Café at the Nathanael B. Greene Community Center
This innovative idea was brought to the town from the Sustainable Guilford Task Force, the town’s division of Sustainable CT, to tackle the problem of waste. From the submission, the town states that “the first thing many people think of when a household item breaks — buy a new one.” Far too many people view items as disposable and unfixable, when in reality this only adds to a waste crisis that has gotten much worse over the past few years to be ignored.
So, what to do instead of throwing away that old coffee maker that has a leak? Bring it to the Repair Café to see if it can be fixed. The town brought together volunteers with expertise in electrical, woodworking, electronics, textiles, jewelry, bicycles and garden tool sharpening to help the public — and over 100 individuals brought one or more items to be repaired at only the first event. There was even a kid’s craft table to introduce them to the principles of sustainability.
It was so popular that the community has been asking for the café to become a regularly scheduled event in town, and many of the volunteers from the initial events are “ready to sign on for future events.” The town really had no choice but to happily continue providing this service for their community, now holding it twice a year, in the spring and fall, and with the exception of signage, the event was practically free to hold thanks to donations from businesses and of course the volunteers.
We would be remiss to mention that some of the donated items included refreshments from Haven’s Harvest as well as pastries from Claire’s in New Haven, so it was like a traditional café in this respect. But most importantly, sustainability is all about investing in now. That pair of jeans you have would be just fine with a little patch, that lamp would work just like new with a new plug, and you don’t need a new lawn mower, you just need to sharpen those blades. So think before you buy something new and turn the old one into waste, it might be a waste of money.
Camp Sunrise - Glastonbury
Topical Award - Creative use of resources
Each year, CCM chooses a special topic for the Municipal Excellence Awards, and in 2024 we chose to highlight the creative use of resources, partnerships, and collaborations. We know how important it is to work together in towns and cities, across municipal borders, and at the state and federal level — our motto is “collaborating for the common good,” after all. The many submissions we received for this award shows that there’s no shortage of innovative ideas amongst our members, but Camp Sunrise Summer in Glastonbury wowed our judges, winning this year’s special topic.
Camp Sunrise is a structured therapeutic day camp that provides a recreational environment for special needs children, ages 3 — 21. The camp is designed to accommodate children with physical limitations, intellectual disabilities, and social and emotional difficulties. According to the submission, the primary program goals are to enable each camper an opportunity to enjoy a typical summer camp experience at an individualized pace, explore a variety of activities designed for their capabilities, build friendships, and feel a sense of belonging.
Managed by Glastonbury Parks and Recreation and administered by the Glastonbury Recreation Supervisor, the camp runs seven one-week sessions from June until August, with structured activities like music and STEM, pool and splash pad time, as well as field trips to
youth-oriented destinations like beaches and mini golf. Of course, this summer camp is already a winning idea, aimed at helping a population of children and young adults who need special considerations. But Glastonbury has gone the extra mile when it came to planning Camp Sunrise. Right now, the camp is open not just to children who reside or attend school in Glastonbury, but students from surrounding towns like Rocky Hill, Wethersfield, Newington and Cromwell.
And to keep costs down, Glastonbury applied for and secured multiple grants as well as a successful volunteer program. According to the submission, the town partners with the Glastonbury High School Physical Education Department to offer a credit-based volunteer program. Students who take the AP Physics class can forego their PE class period in exchange for 60 hours of volunteer time at the camp. About 90 high school age volunteers assist weekly, and about half of the current staff are former volunteers.
Glastonbury exemplified not just one facet of our special topic, but showed the creative use of resources, partnerships and collaborations with Camp Sunrise. We hope that other towns and cities across the state look to this program as a model of excellence, and not just replicate it, but build upon this program for many summers to come.
Community Resource Hub - Norwalk
General Entry Award: Category 3 (Population 40,001 and Over)
As we enter the year 2025, it’s hard to imagine that the pandemic was already a half-decade ago. To some, that might feel like yesterday, and to others it might be eons ago, but what we can say for sure is that we live in a post-pandemic world still. One of the most pressing issues that became evident in the winter of 2020 was the need for connection in a time of great disconnect. That is the thought behind the City of Norwalk’s Community Resource Hub.
Created in 2022, the Community Resource Hub was a response to new needs among children and families throughout the city following the launch of the city’s Family Navigation Program. Housed in the Community Services Department, the idea is to connect residents directly with providers of support services such as a food pantry, clothing, employment resources, and health and mental health resources.
Too often, communities are providing resources for individuals and families in need, but those connections are never made. Sometimes it’s because they weren’t aware of a program or there was a language barrier to accessing the program, and other times, it could be that they erroneously believed that they wouldn’t qualify. Norwalk’s Community Resource Hub helps these residents “identify, understand and navigate” these services and resources. The city makes it easy to access, as residents can visit City Hall, call, email or contact via the website, and they have navigators who speak English, Spanish and Haitian Creole (along with forms in each language) to make sure the process is as simple as possible.
In Fiscal Year 2024, the resource hub helped well over 1,000 households, comprised of over 3,000 individuals, find the resources they needed including access to food and clothing, housing resources, and employment opportunities.
According to the submission, the program was initially set up for students who were struggling with remote learning, but the Chief Officer of Community Services noted that families in need of internet connectivity were likely to be particularly vulnerable during the pandemic and the program evolved to accommodate these needs, which they describe as a “no wrong door” approach to connecting residents.
That is the innovative idea behind the Community Resource Hub — there is no wrong way to ask for help, especially when the resources are there to provide that help. In Norwalk, it’s a matter of collaborating and streamlining to connect residents to a myriad of providers, some they might not have even known about before calling, that makes the difference in residents’ lives. To put it another way, there’s no wrong way to help.
