Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 8, 1990 TAG: 9007080009
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BRIDGEPORT, CONN. LENGTH: Medium
Some even sent cash after the piece on Bridgeport aired this spring, including a man who wrote a check for $2.50 in appreciation of a General Electric toaster manufactured in Bridgeport many years ago.
"It's still working fine," the man wrote.
"We were appalled and heartsick at the monumental task you face," one family wrote.
CBS depicted Bridgeport, a city of 142,000 about 55 miles northeast of New York City, as a once-major industrial center on the "verge of economic collapse." Viewers were shown shot after shot of blighted housing and abandoned factories in a city described as "depressed, discouraged and broke."
The letter-writers ranged from a Wall Street investment firm to inventors with sometimes dubious claims about the moneymaking potential of their products and consultants seeking to be added to the city's payroll. A chain letter that reached City Hall - and never left - promised good fortune if the letter was sent on. It warned of disastrous consequences if it was broken.
A man from Ohio was not pleased when he saw the mayor cooking breakfast for her husband on "60 Minutes." He told her she could not be both a housewife and mayor of a city with so many problems. In response to the show, a $1,000 prize is being offered to the person who can produce the best videotape showing Bridgeport's good side. The contest, which ends July 30, is called "6 Minutes: Bridgeport Reels Back."
The top entries are to be shown next month at a downtown movie house that the owner has dubbed the "ghost theater" because of the "60 Minutes" claim that Bridgeport has no cinema. The cinema once featured X-rated films but is now a family theater.
Frank Borres, director of communications for the Bank Mart and one of the contest organizers, said the "60 Minutes" segment was "pretty scary because it was real."
Mayor Mary Moran, a Republican who upset two-term incumbent Thomas Bucci last November in her first bid for major public office, said she's grateful for the letters.
"I think it's wonderful that people would sit down and say, `This is what you could do,' whether it was good advice or not," she said.
Moran says the "60 Minutes" piece fell short in not showing the good things Bridgeport has to offer - "the reasons why I would want to become mayor."
She cited the city's zoo, museums, parks, symphony, ballet, P.T. Barnum Museum, and proximity to New York as some of Bridgeport's many attributes.
The legislature imposed state review of Bridgeport's finances in 1988 as a condition for guaranteeing a $35 million loan needed to cover accumulated deficits. With no real growth in the tax base for five years now, the city had to raise taxes 5 percent this year and eliminate about 170 jobs through layoffs and attrition.
Homicides, meanwhile, have been occurring at a record-shattering pace. There have already been 38 homicides here this year, compared with 42 for all of last year, a police official said.
Moran says the best thing to come out of the controversy is that "it made Bridgeporters talk positively about their city for the first time in a long time."
"It was like when someone attacks your child," Moran said.
by CNB