What are we doing?

 

Welcome! We are the PILOT messaging team, a project group comprised of both Trinity College and Capital Community College students from the Liberal Arts Action Lab located in downtown Hartford. Over the past four months, our team has met with government officials, conducted interviews, and researched public interest regarding Connecticut’s PILOT program. Our overall goal was to produce a variety of well-researched messaging strategies that resonate with Hartford’s surrounding suburbs. Proposed by Councilwoman Bermudez in partnership with The Open Communities Alliance, our team was tasked with learning how suburban residents interact with Hartford and their perceptions of the city while also gauging suburban residents’ current understanding of the existing PILOT program. All of these opinions were considered in our team’s creation and publication of messaging materials geared towards cultivating support for PILOT.

Why was our research needed?

 

PILOT is a state program that has received relatively little attention from residents and politicians since its inception. PILOT is a highly technical and complex program that has dramatic implications for cities’ fiscal stability. Before we conducted our research, there was not a significant amount of data that showcased how suburban residents interacted with the city; learning how suburban residents interact with the City of Hartford was important in formulating our research questions and creating our messaging materials