FROM WALLINGFORD - Town Council closes the door

As published in the Record Journal, Sunday November 20, 2011

This week’s FROM WALLINGFORD was written by Mike Brodinsky a former town councilor from Wallingford, chairman of the School Roof Building Committee, and host of public access show “Citizen Mike”

The Citizen Mike show airs on cable Channel 18 at 9 p.m. every night, except Sunday. It can also be viewed on demand at wpaa.tv. Comments or suggestions can be sent to citizenmiketv@gmail.com.

If you can’t catch the show on TV you can catch it online on their Video On Demand page.

After spending more than an hour behind closed doors on Tuesday night, the Town Council summarily considered a very big collective bargaining agreement between the Board of Education and the teachers’ union. Unfortunately, the Council did not follow an open and transparent process.

One of the precepts of a democracy is that people have the right to watch their government in action and learn how and why their officials make decisions. Usually, that is done through a free press which reports on the doings of government.

If too much is done behind closed doors, however, voters cannot know how thorough and thoughtful their representatives have been. Were the public officials acting honestly and reasonably under the circumstances? Was the public interest protected? Were the outcomes scripted and orchestrated?

It’s not that easy to be a public official. The decision-making process can make a legislator/councilor uncomfortable, in part because the public search for information, logic, and wisdom can appear clumsy. An unguarded comment made, or question asked in good faith in the course of the legislative process, can be seized upon, taken out of context, and published. In tackling an issue, as new data develops, positions can change. An approach that seemed very reasonable one hour, may look embarrassing the next. And unfortunately, some in politics use the public arena to make themselves look good by making another look bad. A politician, therefore, can be made to pay a price unfairly. Yes, democracy is sloppy.

I understand why some public officials may want to keep their work as private as possible. It’s a matter of self protection. They may want a more comfortable venue for decision making. On occasion there could be more sinister reasons for wanting privacy. But no one wants the perception that the real work of legislators is done in a “smoke filled room.”

To address abuses, years ago, the Federal government and state legislatures enacted “open meeting laws” that require the public’s business be done in public except in very narrow circumstances that have nothing to do with the comfort level of the public officials. In Connecticut, these rules are collected in the Freedom of Information Act. It states that meetings of a public body, like a Town Council, generally speaking are to be open to the public.

The Act lists exceptions to this rule which are intended to be in the public’s interest, too. One of the exceptions is that if a Town is engaged in labor negotiations it shouldn’t be required to publicly talk about the negotiations and give away its strategy to the other side. That talk can be done in private, in what we call an “executive session.”

By Tuesday night, however, the Board Of Education’s negotiation strategy on the collective bargaining agreements had already run its course. The Wallingford Board of Education and the teachers’ union already had a signed agreement. It called for an increase in salaries of 6.21 percent over three years, costing $2.75 million, and lots of other complicated terms. Having placed the matter on the agenda for consideration, the Council’s job was to debate and decide in public whether the labor contract was good enough to accept or bad enough to reject. I would have expected a rigorous questioning and some public debate airing all sides of the issue.

Instead, the Council and representatives of the Board of Education spent more than an hour behind closed doors. Maybe they spent the entire time talking strategy. But if they had a full and frank discussion about what the agreement provided and what it didn’t provide, and the costs and savings associated with various provisions, that conversation should have been in an open meeting. The public needed to hear it all. Obviously, the Council disagreed.

Just one week after the election, I am looking for a public official who will champion open government. Better luck next time.

From the Editorial Page of the Record Journal: Vote with confidence

As published in the Record Journal on Election Day, Tuesday November 8, 2011

Voting is Democracy’s bedrock — a truly American activity which should not be taken for granted.

Elsewhere on this planet other societies don’t have it so well. In recent Arab Spring uprisings, thousands risked lives to demonstrate in favor of ballot-based elections, rather than further remain subjects beneath despotic leaders who abuse authority and employ violence to retain power. For centuries we have enjoyed what these modern protestors fight for. Today we can celebrate their efforts, and our first-world freedoms, by exercising one of a U.S. citizen’s most important rights — voting.

At last, Election Day has dawned. Local political clamor will soon yield to results. In copious political opinion letters to the Record-Journal, readers have expressed preferences for individual candidates and thoughts on pertinent issues in oft-times unequivocal terms. But mistake not the numerous political-letter- writers as enough interested individuals to decide an election. Every vote counts, and it is your responsibility — not someone else’s — to register your opinion.

As our country continues preparations for next year’s presidential race, municipal voting comes to have its own unique flavor in comparison. People familiar with one another in the same community get to express support, or lack thereof, for local candidates who are neighbors, and not TV personalities or names in a newspaper. It’s a chance for civic leaders to see what sits well with voters — issues and allegiances come into political alignment.

Campaign season is a long haul, and even though many candidates enjoy getting out and meeting people, it’s just possible some have rung enough doorbells by now. Nevertheless, let’s not forget that extensive efforts by political hopefuls and their supporters add impetus to the fullness of Election Day’s turnout and significance. Underscore this point: voting — it’s part of a great American tradition and the exercise of a powerful right in democracy — a freedom not to be wasted or squandered.

And before exercising such rights, residents should fulfill their responsibility to make informed, confident decisions. Do research. Learn not only about candidates as community members but also where they stand on important issues. For instance: in today’s entrenched fiscal stagnation, those running for municipal office have by now expounded personal financial and economic development policies of all sorts. Citizens should identify which proposed monetary measures they believe as best suited to propel more expeditious economic recovery, and vote accordingly.

In coming days, supportive signs will swiftly dwindle from front lawns and political ads will disappear from television air time. Election Day will fade into tomorrow. But the results — candidates authorized to take office, some replacing incumbents while others gaining additional terms — will last for two or more years. Thus, we hope that all voters participating in today’s election have done reasonable, if not thorough, homework. Make that vote count — know your mind. Vote with pride.

CRAIG FISHBEIN - Why I Support the Referendum

Why I Support the Referendum by Craig C. Fishbein
As originally published on the CRAIG FISHBEIN for TOWN COUNCIL website.

As a matter of principle, I am opposed to government picking winners and losers. It is for that reason that I opposed the GM bailouts, as well as those that were given to AIG. Similarly, in recent months, Wallingford made a decision for the town to pay for the restructuring and re-paving of the 130 parking spaces in the rear of Simpson Court, and for the following reasons, on November 14th, I am voting "YES" to repeal the parking deal that was recently approved by the Wallingford Town Council.

In addition to the re-paving, the town will also install cobblestoned pavement in the alleyways, decorative lighting, as well as dumpster enclosures, and it would assume the ongoing maintenance of the lot, including trash and snow removal, plus electricity to light the lot, and the property owner's insurance bills for the lot's safety. All of the above, in exchange for a thirty year lease for public parking in the lot, with this municipal parking being limited to four hour slots (for some).

The town has currently committed to expend up to $500,000.00 for the above, that figure having doubled in just the past two years (as recently as 2008 the estimated costs were only $250,000.00).

Yes, the plan would more than likely be of benefit to the merchants in Simpson Court, however, here comes the rub: while privately owned by four entities, the property owners are not paying anything for the improvements to their property; there are no additional spots being added to the lot (which is already being fully used); and the property owners are being given 90 passes to be given to people of their choosing that exempt the holder from the four hour parking restriction (the town is not monitoring to whom the passes are being given). Additionally, the town is prohibited from metering the lot so as to re-coup their expenses from the actual users.

Please note that all of this has occurred while the Wooding Caplan property (one that the town actually owns) remains vacant, overrun by weeds, virtually unlit, marked by ditches that used to be potholes, and the town was recently forced to sell the American Legion Building right next to the Town Hall because it could not find the approximately $25,000.00 to fix the roof and to repaint it.

It is true that the funds for the initial infrastructure improvements come from a fund that is held by the town, paid by the electric division in lieu of taxes, that can only be used for capital projects. However, in my opinion, that is just a "shell game" as this past year, as well as last, there were capital projects in the town budget that could have been paid for with the funds that are being expended on this project. In both of the past years, there were tax increases to pay for those capital projects.

In fact, this year it is estimated that the town will be issuing bonds for in excess of 25 million dollars for new school roofs. The annual interest alone on this project will be about $500,000.00 (the amount that is being expended on this project, with no financial buy in by the property owners).

The property owners have countered with threats that, unless the town redoes their lot, that they will shut it down to municipal traffic. In my opinion, while they threaten to become the manufacturers of tumbleweeds, the same property owners would be shooting themselves in the foot.

In order to operate a business, a merchant needs a certain amount of parking. In order to continue to rent to their merchant tenants, the property owners would have to allow someone to use the lot. In order to come through with their threat the property owners would have to monitor the lot for those parking there that were not patronizing the owner’s property. I highly doubt that that would ever happen.

Here, the property owners are stating that they are in the center of town, and therefore that they deserve preferential treatment. Maybe that is true. However, in many other towns, those who demand preferential treatment pay higher taxes. It is for that reason that other towns have downtown tax zones. While I am not in favor of such a proposition, I can see how they come about, especially when private property owners try to hold their own town hostage.

I have proposed that the property owners contribute a portion of funds for the initial infrastructure improvements. My suggestion has been $50,000.00 liens on their properties, payable when the properties are sold or ten years (whichever comes sooner), accruing interest at 4.5% per year. That, in my opinion would be at least somewhat fair.

The cost savings to the town could be put into improving the Wooding Caplan property for increased parking in our downtown. In my opinion, that would be of best benefit to the town of Wallingford. Additionally, the parking passes should be issued by the town to the individual users. It is not the re-doing of the parking lot that I object to, rather it is the deal that has been struck. Therefore, on November 14th I will be voting "YES" to repeal the terms of the current lease as, next time, it needs to be negotiated with the whole of the town of Wallingford in mind.

FROM WALLINGFORD - Bond ratings and perspective

As published in the Record Journal, Sunday October 9, 2011.

This week’s FROM WALLINGFORD was written by Mike Brodinsky a former town councilor from Wallingford, chairman of the School Roof Building Committee, and host of public access show “Citizen Mike”

The Citizen Mike show airs on cable Channel 18 at 9 p.m. every night, except Sunday. It can also be viewed on demand at wpaa.tv. Comments or suggestions can be sent to citizenmiketv@gmail.com.

If you can’t catch the show on TV you can catch it online on their Video On Demand page.

The Town’s credit or bond rating comes up during every municipal political campaign season. And it should. A good rating is a sign of financial strength. It’s a legitimate credential, measure of the Town’s financial wellbeing and ability to pay off debt. Wallingford has the best bond rating possible. Let’s not minimize that. The bond rating is a source of civic pride. Fair enough. Let’s give credit where credit is due. But let’s not overdo it and stretch the meaning of a great bond rating beyond the breaking point.

A bond rating can be a misused lethal political weapon. It should not be the ultimate argument to end all political arguments about all management decisions. Misused claims about a bond rating are no better than bumper sticker logic. A great bond rating is not proof that all decisions are sound or even businesslike. It is not a fair report card on everything, or even a report card on a term of office.

It doesn’t measure the business wisdom, for example, of passing up more than $500,000 in state grants, which is what Wallingford did in 2010 when it failed to approve the Incentive Housing Zone (IHZ) plan. If that had been approved, the zoning regulations would have provided a great opportunity for growth in the Grand List and downtown revitalization by private investment. A great bond rating doesn’t measure the business acumen of offering to reconstruct, at public expense of up to $500,000, the Simpson Court parking area, owned privately but which may be leased to the town for 30 years. This plan would transfer significant benefits to the adjacent property owners, including reduced maintenance expenses. The Town, however, did not get a dime from them as either a contribution towards construction, or a contribution towards maintenance, insurance, repairs, or snowplowing the property. Adding together the IHZ and Simpson Court issues and I’m up to a million dollars. Sooner or later we’ll reach real money.

The bond rating isn’t an approval of an embarrassingly backward policy on not using technology to either streamline operations or to provide reasonable public services. It doesn’t measure the degree of humanity, or inhumanity, caused by the reduction of paramedic service in the face of such crowed-about financial strength. It doesn’t bless the drop in the Grand List two years in a row, or the management decisions that resulted in significant operating deficits in the last two years out of three, which deficits aggregate about $1.2 million.

The bond rating doesn’t endorse the business judgment behind a ideologically driven labor relations strategy that calls for binding arbitration with unions, when the results of that strategy keep producing one expensive adverse result after another.

So why was the bond rating upgraded to AAA? CRRA, the former trash plant operator, recently distributed to the Town about $12 million. That makes Wallingford more credit worthy and the money is added security that Wallingford can repay debt.

Additionally, Wallingford has been in a sweet financial spot not created by any recent decision of any public official. The Town is not burdened with a decaying and costly inner city that some other cities and towns have. Wallingford has benefitted from yearly payments from CRRA, and more recently from Covanta who now runs the trash plant.

Wallingford has been getting paid big bucks on account of the new power lines. But most importantly, over the years, the Town has had the Electric Division, which pumps about $2 million per year into the Town’s capital projects fund. This means the Town can use cash and not borrow as much for capital projects. Repeat this benefit year after year — a benefit other towns do not have — and we better have a darn good bond rating.

These sweet circumstances could turn lots of mayors into triple AAA managers. We have a good bond rating. And let’s keep a realistic perspective about it.

Lemonade? Don’t try it!

This op-ed piece was written by Rich Lowry who is the editor of The National Review. It was published in the Record Journal on Sunday August 7, 2011

There’s no more poignant symbol of American childhood than the lemonade stand, evocative of long, lazy summer days and pie-in-the-sky entrepreneurial dreams.

It inevitably was a subject for a Norman Rockwell print, with a brassy kid confidently hawking cups for 5 cents each. If Rockwell were to update the image today, he might have to include an officer of the law nosing around the stand to ensure its compliance with all relevant ordinances.

In various localities around the country this summer, cops have raided and shut down lemonade stands. The incidents get — and deserve — national attention as telling collisions between classic Americana and the senseless pettifogging that is increasingly the American Way.

There should be an easy rule of thumb for when enforcement of a regulation has gone too far: When it makes kids cry.

Setting up a lemonade stand has always been the occasion for early lessons about the importance of hustle and perseverance, and some business basics — like location, location, location. It shouldn’t be the occasion for dealing with the unreasoning dictates of The Man.

Police in Coralville, Iowa, a few weeks ago conducted a sweep and shut down three lemonade stands, some within minutes of their opening. The offenders had started their renegade operations the weekend of an annual bike ride across the state. The town requires vendors to have a permit during the days of the event. None of the perps did, including one 4-year-old girl who shamelessly made $4 before police intervened.

One mother said she could only laugh when the police told her the cost of a permit was $400. Uncomprehending, her kids cried. They figured only the inadequacy of their handmade signs could have made the city’s law enforcement want to put them out of business.

A Coralville civic eminence subsequently explained that the ordinance was in place to protect the health of the bike riders, who are apparently robust enough to bike 472 miles but might be felled by 6 ounces of lemonade.

In McAllen, Texas, two kids were shut down and their grandmother threatened with a fine on similar grounds. Audaciously, the youngsters started selling lemonade for 50 cents a cup in a park without a health permit or licensed food handlers to prepare or serve their lemony libation. Hoping only to fund the upkeep of their two hermit crabs, these two children had stumbled into a murky world way over their heads.

In Midway, Ga., three girls were told they needed a business license, peddler’s permit and food permit to set up a lemonade stand on their front lawn. It might have taken all summer just to navigate the bureaucracy necessary to begin selling the lemonade. The chief of police explained why she had to act to protect the public from the unauthorized sale of the unknown substance purporting to be “lemonade”: “We were not aware of how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade, of what the lemonade was made with.”

Chances are that it was made of the usual dangerous cocktail of lemon juice, sugar and water. If children — or their parents — aren’t to be trusted to prepare lemonade, presumably people lured by the prospect of a cool drink on a hot day can calculate the risks on their own and take their pocket change elsewhere if they feel safe only with professional-quality product. Invariably, the parents of illicit lemonade stand vendors protest to the authorities, “but they’re just kids.” That should be a clinching, self-evident argument. But not when an unbending legalism is ascendant, and there’s a law for everything. It’s in this spirit that we pat down children in the security lines of airports.

People in authority are afraid ever to be caught rendering common-sense judgments.

For now, the lemonade-stand crackdowns are a bridge too far. They usually bring cries of public outrage and embarrassed backpedaling from officials. So belly up to the lemonade stand — while you still can.

FROM WALLINGFORD - November 2 is Election Day

As published in the Record Journal on Sunday October 24, 2010

Jason Zandri

Faithful readers have come to know that my big slant every election season is to get people out to vote. They know that the times in between I push the message “get informed, get involved.”

Is it enough to at least go out and “just vote”? Some might say that the mostly or totally uninformed should just stay home with those that are unwilling to vote as they cause more harm than good.

While I would much rather have an informed electorate, at the minimum I want an involved and interactive one. If the most you can do is go into the booth and “pull” your party line at least you’ve taken some action for yourself.

Get over the notion that your vote doesn’t matter.

Everything you do matters and that includes casting your vote on Election Day. It’s unfortunate that most of the people running for office for this election have leveraged heavily on the negative advertising tactics. While I cannot say I have seen all the ads, I can say I’ve seen many. I have only seen one to date that was straightforward and spoke of skill, ability, plan and direction and that didn’t tear down the other people running for that office.

I think that is something that most of our candidates misunderstand and it’s a lost opportunity to connect with their constituents.

Especially in times like these, where the economy is still in rough shape and the recovery is slow to take hold across all sectors, an opportunity presents itself to the candidates who wish to serve to reconnect with “Joe the Plummer” and offer some hope and positive direction.

Why did we as children look up to the likes of Superman and Joe DiMaggio? Because they were all we could hope to be and they were positive influences. In many cases they were all that we could never be but they were positive influences all the same.

Why do we as adults fixate on Hollywood and the rich and famous more so than on our neighbors down the street? Some of it is because of the allure of what we can’t have and for the most part could never hope to obtain (but we dream we could anyway). The rest of the reason why is because the rich and famous have prosperity and that is another of those positive things.

It’s true that folks enjoy nothing more than when some famous person of the day is caught up in a divorce, scandal or some other downfall because that makes them as human and every day as everyone else.

Much of what draws us to them in the first place is the potential of being successful and “having it good,” something sorely lacking with the current state of things for most everyday people.

When it comes time for us everyday people to consider our choices of who will govern for us for the next term it’s unfortunate that most of what is presented to us is negative information on the other candidate.

I am foolishly hoping that perhaps next year will be a better year for campaigns and that people running for office would focus their efforts on the positive side of things, things they believe they could accomplish in office rather than deciding how to showcase how their opponent is lacking the ability to do something.

Running for office is like applying for a job; if any of these folks went in to an employer “selling” themselves by saying what the other people for the position cannot do I doubt any of the lot would be hired.

Nothing important is easy and voting is important — we are going to have to wade through all the negative information and try to make informed choices.

We owe it to ourselves and to our families.

Get informed, get involved and vote on Election Day.

FROM WALLINGFORD - Time for a new game-changer

This week’s FROM WALLINGFORD is written by my counterpart on the column – Stephen Knight

Transportation Game-Changers: The Appian Way of ancient Rome, the Erie Canal of the 1820s, the 19th century Clipper ship, the transcontinental railroad completed in 1869, the New York City subway system of the early 20th century, the Interstate Highway System begun in 1956, the Boeing 707 developed in the late ‘50s, and the Sea-Land containership. These are but a few of the transportation projects that have not only transformed how we move about but eventually transformed either national or worldwide society.

With that as a backdrop, I have read with great interest the debate in the Record-Journal about the commuter railroad that the State of Connecticut is committed to building. The letters in the Record-Journal in response to the hyperbole- laden, this-is-the-answer-to-our prayers rhetoric from Speaker Donovan (I ask you: do they teach courses at the capital to write like that?) have been thoughtful and articulate. I especially enjoyed Bud Sielaff of Wallingford’s analysis of the supposed benefits of the project.

I would like to weigh in with these two observations: 1) proponents of this project – and I include myself in their ranks – really should level with the people as to the actual costs, and 2) the benefits of this project will take years if not decades to be realized.

First of all, let’s talk costs: the $800 million price tag is just to build the system. If this system is built, there will have to be an annual subsidy of millions of dollars to operate it. There is not a commuter rail system on the planet that is self-sufficient. I ride Metro North into New York on a fairly regular basis, and the trains are invariably packed, yet the State of Connecticut supplements their operating budget by many millions every year. And the State is buying 300 new railcars to the tune of $760 million to replace the 30 to 40-year old rolling stock now in use. Bottom line: these rail systems are big bucks to build and to operate.

Now that that’s on the table, we had better talk about benefits. And I’m not talking about 4,000 jobs, billions of gallons of gas saved and all the other supposed benefits Speaker Donovan listed that letter writer Sielaff so deftly refuted. I am speaking of the long-term benefits of an attractive, efficient alternative to the motor vehicle, long-term being defined as a period of at least fifty years. Yes, intelligent transportation planning needs to look to that far of a horizon.

Connecticut is one of the most densely populated states in the country, and despite the unattractive economic climate here presently, it probably will remain so for the next century. We have been told that miles driven in Connecticut are up by 30 percent over the past twenty-five years. That rate of increase is unsustainable for the future, given that land for additional lanes of interstate is almost impossible to purchase given current land values — even if the land were available, which it is not. We are built out. And can you imagine the disruption of constructing a fourth lane of I-91 in each direction? We’d all be at each other’s throats by the time we got to work each day. A veritable ten-year road rage epidemic.

So the ultimate benefit this commuter rail line will have is to protect the quality of life we enjoy here — in Wallingford and in Connecticut. It will be expensive. It will take decades for its impact to be realized. It is politically risky for our state leaders to ask Connecticut voters to assume this financial obligation at this precarious time.

All that said, we just have to find a way to avoid the slow, inexorable strangulation we are facing because of our total dependence on the automobile. Our transportation arteries are clogging. We need a bypass. Commuter rail from New Haven to Springfield is one of those “procedures” that will keep our state economy alive.

FROM WALLINGFORD - Checks and balances at WHA

As published in the Record Journal – Sunday August 1, 2010

by Jason Zandri

Over the past few days there have a number of articles in the paper regarding the Wallingford Housing Authority. In addition to the stories there have been even more letters to the editor regarding the same.

Not surprisingly, the comments in the letters to the Editor have fallen along party lines.

I’d like to review some of the accomplishments that have been made recently. I personally view these changes to be a positive for not only the best interests of the tenants but for the taxpayers as well.

Some of the letter writers opined that the changes that have occurred since Chairman Fischer was elected Chair of the WHA have been politically motivated and have not been in the best interests of the tenants.

So I offer these to you to make your own assessment.

The WHA by-laws, established in 1985, were replaced with new by-laws that are now in compliance as some no longer complied with more up to date State statutes.

Recently, a labor attorney was hired to negotiate the new contract between the Authority and Union employees. Previously, Director Nere and Commissioner Prentice negotiated for the Authority. It is important to note that Director Nere received benefits that were awarded to the union employees. Given these facts, there is the possibility of a conflict of interest when someone is a key negotiator and a recipient of the final agreement.

WHA employees can no longer use Authority vehicles for their personal use. In a day and age of responsible use of resources I am all for this. I say this should get reviewed for possible additional expansion to other town departments.

Another change that was made was to rotate meetings among the different elderly complexes making it easier for tenants to attend. Prior to this, all meetings had been held at the administrative office of the WHA.

Public question and answer periods are now a regular part of the Authority agendas where before they were not. This allows for open discussion from tenants or residents that attend the meetings.

Are these changes in the best interests of the tenants? I think so.

The Democrat commissioners supported Bill SB 320 authorizing tenants to appoint their own commissioner instead of the Town Council doing so. Director Nere applauded the Governor for vetoing the bill.

How is that action in the best interests of the tenants or the Wallingford taxpayers? This could have made it possible for the tenants to have voice in choosing the body that manages their complexes much in the same way they control their own destiny when they vote for their representation at the Town Council level.

The Democrat commissioners voted for a forensic audit to evaluate the books and records of the Authority. The Republican members voted against this.

I realize there is an associated cost to do this but it is comparatively low when you look at the total amount of funds that the WHA is responsible for. When you additionally look at some of the reported expenditures and the resulting purchases that do not seem to be comparable there is at least enough argument to defend the valid need for this audit.

If the audit doesn’t turn up anything then it was a piece of mind exercise that cost little more than what the town recently spent defending itself in contract arbitration. The argument for arbitration and the logical expenditure was made in an effort to try keeping salary costs in line. Performing an audit in an atmosphere of questionable accounting results is a logical expenditure as well.

If there’s nothing to find, nothing will be found. If something can be found then monies can be saved / returned / reallocated.

Why the “no” votes opposing an audit?

A good check and balance system, especially in government, should always be considered.

In light of the tight economy it should be mandatory.

FROM WALLINGFORD - Politics’ third rail

This week’s FROM WALLINGFORD is written by my counterpart on the column – Stephen Knight.

Eminent domain is the third rail of politics in Wallingford. There is no more thankless task for the public official here than to request a rational discussion of its use, for he has thus waded into a political swamp that is almost impossible to navigate. Within minutes, any sought-after calm, methodical discussion of the subject quickly disintegrates.

Which is why you saw otherwise lucid and articulate elected officials rhetorically head for the exits when asked about the use of eminent domain to force a conclusion of negotiations over the 10.3-acre Chichowski parcel they voted to purchase some months back. Never mind that the discussion took place in executive session. Their real reluctance to speak to this issue springs from their honest fear that no matter what is said, how articulately it is stated, or how logically the argument is made, they will be accused of being insensitive, power-hungry, rights-stealing political thugs that would steal bread from the mouths of babies if given half a chance.

This predicament is the result of two factors, one uniting and the other divisive: 1) the Kelo vs. City of New London decision having aroused the inherent skepticism Americans have of governmental power that is part of our political DNA and 2) a bit of recent history here in town when the subject last arose.

First of all, the Supreme Court decision in Kelo vs. City of New London sent a shockwave through the national political psyche. To most Americans, the decision legitimized the notion that government power may be used to seize the property of one private party and turn it over to another private party. The concept of “public purpose” was absurdly expanded at the expense of our Constitutionally-guaranteed right of due process, giving rise to a legitimate hypersensitivity to and skepticism of government and its use of power over the individual.

It is worth noting that is was a 5-4 decision, with the conservative, originalist justices decrying the decision of the liberal, Constitution-as-an-evolving-document majority. The positive we can take from this decision is that many states, including ours, have rewritten their eminent domain statutes in such a way as to prevent a recurrence of this travesty.

Secondly, the last time that eminent domain was raised here as an issue was a few years ago when the mayor, in an effort to do some long term land use planning for the town, sought to survey property in the northeast corner of the town. It was thought that possibly, in the distant future, expansion of the I-5 zone allowing industrial parks might take place assuming [note carefully] that this outcome might be the desire of the property owners at that time. At the mere mention of this request, the mayor’s primary political opponent at the time, to further his own narrow political career interests, weighed in, accusing the mayor of attempting to condemn their property. Through blatant distortion of the real issue at hand, he shamelessly manipulated the property owners into believing that they were in danger of having their property taken from them. The discussions in the Town Council were a sad three-ring circus, with the frightened, lied-to, trusting property owners railing against the innocuous survey request while he stood in the back of the auditorium smugly viewing his handiwork. It was politics at its worst, and it has poisoned the well of discussion of land use in that area to this day.

So this is the table that has been set for any discussion of eminent domain in Wallingford. Somewhere there is a balance between our individual rights as property owners and the responsibility of the community to plan its future. We can find this balance, but only if we are willing to approach it as the sophisticated, complex topic that it is. Those who will be living in our town fifty years from now are depending on our ability to do so.

Paradise and Paradise Lost

As Published in the Record Journal Sunday May 30, 2010

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By John Bau

I’m John Bau. I have a daughter at Dag Hammarskjold Middle School, a son at Moses Y. Beach Elementary School, and another who will be at MYB in just a few years. I’m not originally from Wallingford, but I got here just as quickly as I could.

Over the past several months, I’ve uttered these words— or something similar — as I’ve stood up to speak at countless meetings, forums, and ‘focus groups’ as Wallingford has examined the reconfiguration of its eight elementary schools. I always thought it provided a good, quick synopsis of the origins of my point of view. I’m a dad who loves his family and is proud to have chosen Wallingford as his home. I grew up in a 1970s development of cookie-cutter homes in Virginia. When I bought my first home in North Carolina after college, I chose a brand-new house in a neighborhood of cookie-cutter homes. I figured, isn’t that how everyone lives in our modern society?

When I took a job that moved me to Connecticut in 2001, I was charmed by the state’s ancient hamlets anchored by historic neighborhoods clustered around storied town greens or quaint central business districts. Having a lifelong love affair with our great nation, its history, and even two summers under my belt leading tourists through military drills as a “sergeant” in Colonial Williamsburg, I believed that towns like Guilford or Chester only survived in the movies. When I saw the home prices in those towns, I learned that I needed to be a movie star to afford to live there.

Then I found Wallingford.

Founded in 1670(!), Wallingford featured a recently-revitalized downtown with shops, restaurants, Victorian streetlights, and more. It was comparatively affordable and — miracle! — I was able to scrape together enough to buy a small, charming (if rundown) home tucked in between the public library and the elementary school right on Main Street. Who knew that places like this still existed?

I worked hard on that house and it became a little gem. We could walk to the school, walk to shops, and generally live a life that was otherwise consigned to textbooks and storybooks.

When life changes forced me to sell that home, I settled on a ramshackle house one block off Main Street. I was still downtown, and my children would not have to change schools; they could continue to walk to Moses Y. Beach, to church, to the YMCA. This new neighborhood was not quite as polished as Main Street, but is still a place where folks — rather than hunkering down on private backyard decks behind tall vinyl fences — sit on their front porches and talk to each other, chat with passersby, and generally engage with their community. Wallingford as Mayberry, if you will. And my family gets to live here.

Paradise.

The reconfiguration of Wallingford’s eight community based elementary schools into four pairs of K-2, 3-5 partner schools is not a patently bad idea. It helps to ease some of the disparities in class sizes that our town’s ridiculous and ridiculously-outdated school districts have long assured. Like middle schools, high schools, and industrial monoculture farming, it allows for certain efficiencies and economies of scale that arise when you conduct more of any single process — be it fifth grade or growing soybeans — in one place. It lets my seven-year-old ride a bus to school instead of a bicycle. It might even save our town $199,149. I get it. I really, really do. I shall embrace it and support my children and their schools because I’m a dad and that’s my job. Reconfiguration is good.

But in the process, it takes one more swipe at a fabled way of life in our proud nation. And it takes one more step toward making Wallingford into just another suburban zip code.

Paradise lost, anyone?

FROM WALLINGFORD - Memorial Day

This week’s FROM WALLINGFORD is written by my counterpart on the column - Stephen Knight

As Published in the Record Journal Sunday May 30, 2010

Follow all the news directly on the Record Journal Website for the most up to date information. www.myrecordjournal.com

Write a letter to the editor letters@record-journal.com

Tomorrow is Memorial Day, a day set aside to honor those who sacrificed their lives in the service of our country. Over the years, while the day has lost some of its solemnity, it has somewhat evolved into a second Veterans Day, where we not only honor those no longer with us but extend gratitude to those who are. This is entirely appropriate, and, to that end, I would like to excerpt a speech I gave on Veterans Day of 2007: “We are the most fortunate, the most blessed people on earth. We live in the United States of America. I have never been able to say United States of America without thinking what incredible good fortune that is. Never in human history has there been a society of such astonishing opportunity, of such unparalleled freedom and such breathtaking abundance as what we enjoy here. And the bedrock, the foundation of all that makes America great is the essential goodness, dignity and generosity of the American people.”

“We are here today to honor and thank the finest examples of those traits: those citizens among us who have answered the call and continue to answer the call to serve in the armed forces of the United States. From Valley Forge to Lake Champlain to Gettysburg to Verdun to Normandy to the Chosin Reservoir to Hue to Kuwait to Bagdhad to Kandahar and countless other places in the world, the American soldier has stood and defended this country with honor and distinction, first with the ferocity and determination to win the battle and then the kindness and compassion to win the hearts and minds of those they have liberated. They have always conducted themselves under the rules of international law and those of common humanity, and have been quick to condemn those incredibly few within their ranks who would stain that record of honor. And in their service, the American veteran — whether protecting the freedom of hundreds of millions of human beings in peacetime or liberating many hundreds of millions from tyranny and enslavement in wartime, has been a positive force throughout the world and has brought credit to this country.”

“But there is one special trait that, in my mind, makes the American soldier, sailor or airman an almost unique figure in the history of conflict. In almost every armed conflict you can name, one side was pursuing conquest and the other side was defending itself from that subjugation or annihilation. The defenders had a personal stake in the outcome, that oftentimes being survival itself.”

“But if you examine the history of the wars in which America has been involved, especially those in the 20th and 21st century, you see our involvement not only to protect the security and interests of the United States but in a larger sense to defend the concept that liberty and freedom are a basic right of all of humanity. To have risked their lives in defense of this high ideal and not just the protection of their homeland puts the US military men and women in a category unique to human history.”

“Let me give you a quote to illustrate my point from Nicholas Sarkozy, the president of France, speaking to our Congress [on November 8, 2007], ‘…America did not teach men the idea of freedom; she taught them how to practice it. And she fought for this freedom whenever she felt it to be threatened somewhere in the world. It was by watching America grow that men and women understood that freedom was possible.”

“What made America great was her ability to transform her own dream into hope for all mankind.”

“The men and women of my generation heard their grandparents talk about how in 1917, America saved France at a time when it had reached the final limits of its strengths, which it had exhausted in the most absurd and bloodiest of wars.”

“The men and women of my generation heard their parents talk about how in 1944, America returned to free Europe from the horrifying tyranny that threatened to enslave it.”

“Fathers took their sons to see the vast cemeteries where, under thousands of white crosses so far from home, thousands of young Americans lay who had fallen not to defend their own freedom but the freedom of all others, not to defend their own families, their own homeland, but to defend humanity as a whole.’ ” To view photographs of the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in France where 9,387 US servicemen are buried is to understand Memorial Day. The sight renders one speechless at the thought of such heroism. That we are privileged to call these people our countrymen is an honor beyond words.”

FROM WALLINGFORD Teacher layoffs - paradigm shift

This week’s edition of FROM WALLINGFORD was written by my counterpart Stephen Knight

As published in the Record Journal - Sunday March 21, 2010

“We must hang together, gentlemen … else, we shall most assuredly hang sepa­rately.” — Benjamin Franklin

If the Connecticut Education Association (aka: teacher’s union) had that as its credo, the substantial layoffs in the Wallingford school system that are loom­ing might be avoided, But, alas, layoffs are being touted as the only possible way to address the town’s budget shortfall for the coming year. The suggestion to reopen the contract between the CEA and the BOE, and thus avoid these devastating dislocations to so many lives, has been dismissed by union leadership. They will have none of it.

Why is that? Well, there are two reasons that they are unable to bring themselves to doing so: 1) they have never had to, and 2) there is too much else at stake. This is not, mind you, a condemnation of the CEA. Far from it. This is just a picture of the reality that has been constructed over a long period of time, a pathway that they walk that has been built stone by stone over many decades.

First of all, neither the union nor the government has ever faced quite so stark a situation. It has become obvious to most of us that the taxpayer base is plain tapped out. Up until now, for as long as any of us can remember, contract negotia­tions have gone like this: The two sides meet. The town says “We have no money.” The union says “You’ll find it.” They talk. They come to an agreement. The union goes to its members and says “we fought hard and got you this.” The town goes to the taxpayers and says “you’re lucky it wasn’t more.” Everybody stays put. Taxes go up. Everybody moves on. Today negotiations are like this: The two sides meet. The town says “We’re $4 million short. We can’t raise taxes. The state is cutting our funds. We need to talk.” The union responds “You always say that. We have a contract.” The town says “But really. Something has to give.” The union responds “We feel your pain, but we have a contract and we aren’t touching it.” The town says “But people will lose their jobs.” The union responds “If we re­open the contract once, we’ll be doing it forever. No can do.” In other words, they have no idea of how to surmount this ob­stacle, and even their legal advisers are telling them: better to throw forty teach­ers under the bus than to risk setting a precedent you will have to live with in the future. It seems counterintuitive to the stated goals of unionism, but that is the re­ality.

Which brings me to my second point: Unions are no different from any other or­ganization. While the mission statement may say otherwise, the number one goal of the union is survival of the organiza­tion, the same as it is for The March of Dimes, the Red Cross, the US Army or Microsoft. In this case, the union has made a choice that its bargaining position for the future will be irreparably harmed if it concedes to renegotiate its contract with the town. As much as they regret it — and I truly believe that their leadership does regret it — they see these laid off members as casualties that have to be borne for the long term protection of the union’s position.

There will be more dislocation to fol­low. There is a paradigm shift taking place in our economy here in the 21st century, and our comfortable and familiar 20th century methods of coping with these shocks to our system are obviously inade­quate. These forty are a testament to that fact.

Technorati Tags: From Wallingford,Opinion,union,schools,layoff,contract

FROM WALLINGFORD - ‘It ain’t the money!’

This week’s edition of FROM WALLINGFORD was written by my counterpart Stephen Knight

“If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”

This quote, attributed to President Harry S Truman, could also serve as good advice to those who serve on some of the boards, committees and commissions of local Wallingford government.

An interesting February 26th Record-Journal article on these local bodies begs for elaboration. The article focused on the few whose members receive some finan­cial compensation, and referred to mem­bership in others as patronage positions. I suppose that’s fine as far as it goes, but those are isolated aspects of a much larger subject. I want to expand on why these people serve and how they are chosen, and then include a discussion of other committees serving the town govern­ment.

1) Why do they serve? Well, it ain’t the money. If the people serving on these town boards were paid by the hour, the town would have to request exemption from state minimum wage laws. That in­cludes Town Councilors, who receive $6,000 in annual compensation. The Board of Education works gratis, a strange anachronism of state law, by the way. Of the twenty-five boards, committees and commissions, only eight have compensa­tion of any kind, and much of that is for reimbursement of expenses.

Patronage? Webster’s defines that as “the power to make appointments to gov­ernment jobs especially for political ad­vantage.” Consider the contentious mosque-on-Leigus-Road issue at Planning & Zoning, the potentially hundreds of tax appeals coming up in this revaluation year, or the recent fun of being a political football as a member of the Board of Ethics. I’m not sure what you would call it, but it isn’t political patronage. And even though the Town Council and Board of Education are elected positions that of­ficeholders actually ask the voters for, you have to say that the hours spent at the fun ­filled Wooding-Caplan Town Council meetings or the recent Board of Educa­tion elementary school reconfiguration deliberations are not exactly rewards for doing anyone’s political bidding.

2) How are these folks chosen to serve on all these boards? Obviously, the Town Council and Board of Ed members are elected. Of the other twenty-three, twelve are Mayoral appointments and eleven are Council appointments. And even within those, only a handful of people are actu­ally chosen with input from the political parties. Many are chosen because they have become well known as community volunteers; others because of their inter­est in the subject of concern to that board. Yes, you certainly have a leg up if you par­ticipate in local politics, but that is hardly the only avenue. But the old adage “If you want something done, ask a busy person” fits. Many get asked to serve for that rea­son alone.

3) Lastly, the discussion of those serv­ing on Town of Wallingford boards and committees would be incomplete without mention of the ad hoc committees, espe­cially building committees, formed to oversee a specific project or study a particular issue. Space does not allow for list­ing them all, but the three School Building Committees of the past fifteen years and the Library Expansion Building Commit­tee will serve as the best examples. In each case, a relative handful of individu­als provided the town with expertise which would have otherwise cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to procure, and spent thousands of man­ hours overseeing huge and complex con­struction projects to a resoundingly suc­cessful conclusion. And, at the same time, answering to public officials, some of whom had lost sight of the fact that they were dealing, not with contracted vendors, but unpaid volunteers — if you get my drift.

So of the 150 or so individuals serving on twenty five boards, committees and commissions, 39 are compensated. And that compensation has no relationship to the responsibilities borne, the hours spent, or the javelin catching, chainsaw juggling work that these public-spirited people are often called on to perform. Ku­dos to them all.

Technorati Tags: FROM WALLINGFORD,opinion,committee,appointment,boards and commissions

Teachers’ wages

An editorial written by By Richard P. Harkawik P­resident, Wal­lingford E­ducation Association – as published in the Record Journal on Saturday February 20, 2010

A common misconception concerns the salary increase Wallingford teachers received as a result of the last contract nego­tiations. The belief that all teach­ers received a 4.2 percent in­crease in salaries this year is not accurate.

The 4.2 percent represents a percentage of last year’s salary account.This “pool” of money is then used to first pay the cost of increments that are part of the contractual salary schedule; the remainder is then applied to all teachers as an increase. Thus, a 4.2 percent increase does not add 4.2 percent to all salaries. In fact, the majority of teachers re­ceived a 2 percent increase this year, as opposed to the national wage increase average of 2.8 per­cent. Much time was spent dur­ing negotiations in determining how we could “fix” the salary schedule so that it would be more evenly balanced between the different steps, and to make Wallingford more competitive in attracting and retaining quality teachers.

In fact, Wallingford lagged be­hind almost every other town in New Haven County when salary schedules were compared. In or­der to make Wallingford’s salary schedule more equal with the other towns, the 4.2 percent in­crease was necessary. Addition­ally, the teachers also made sev­eral concessions to help this happen: a step freeze this year, and the addition of one step in the schedule. Teachers now have 13 steps; other town unions have between 3 and 5 steps.

The contract itself was ap­proved by the Board of Educa­tion and the Town Council, dur­ing the worst of the economic crisis. Both had the opportunity to reject it; neither chose to do so. It was not long after this con­tract was passed last year that teachers were asked for give­backs. This year, again, we have been asked to make concessions. One has to wonder why agree­ments are made if the intent is not to honor them.

The process of negotiating a contract involves give and take. Wage increases are negotiated in the context of other components, such as insurance co-pays, premium shares, and other ben­efits. Aiming for this balance,the contract was negotiated in good faith, and we now look to the mayor and town council to honor their commitment to the education of our town’s children at the level of excellence they have always received from the teachers of Wallingford.

Technorati Tags: Wallingford,opinion,schools,wages,salary,contract,union

The FROM WALLINGFORD that wasn’t – Choate and a piece of the town budget

by Jason Zandri

NOTE – This was my submission for this weeks FROM WALLINGFORD article. The Record Journal could not use it the way I had submitted it so I have presented it below as originally submitted and in its entirety.

They explained the reasons to me and I understand their position and their decision.

Since there’s not enough time for me to create a new submission ahead of the publication deadline I believe the paper is going to run something else in the place of FROM WALLINGFORD this week.

With all the discussion lately regarding the Board of Education budget, reconfiguration, and what the Council and the Mayor will or will not approve there had been a number of different questions that have come up in the different discussions at some of the meetings and online.

Should we fire all torpedoes and raise the taxes?

Should we cut here and fund there?

Should we tap the rainy day fund and if so how much?

What are we planning to do about next fiscal year's costs?

One of the questions that came up from one of the parents that I found interesting and that I followed up on personally was with respect to the number of students that are housed on the Choate campus and attend schools in the Wallingford Public School system.

I thought there was a logical question in this topic.

There are some housing units (a few) on the campus that ARE taxed and ARE feeding into the town’s tax base, so the families that live there and are using the school services are, in effect, paying in (regardless of who is footing the actual tax bill).

There are also other housing units to consider. These are other buildings on the Choate campus that also house Choate students and their families where that real estate is not assessed for tax purposes. In some of these other housing units there are younger siblings and they are students that go to the elementary schools in town.

In an effort to find out what the cost impact was to Wallingford's bottom line with respect to this situation, I decided to contact Superintendent Menzo to see if he had these numbers or perhaps just the number of students that attended Wallingford public schools that lived in these untaxed housing units. As it turned out I needed to follow up with Headmaster Shanahan at Choate to get this information as Superintendent Menzo did not have this data.

I emailed Headmaster Shanahan and asked: how many students attend Wallingford Public Schools and live in housing belonging to Choate that are not assessed for tax purposes?

I didn’t expect the number to be really high (I was figuring about 20 to 24 students – guessing off the top of my head).

I thought it was a simple sounding question but it really wasn’t because there is a little more to it than just what I was asking.

Here is the response that I received.

OUR RECORDS INDICATE THAT WE CURRENTLY HAVE 12 CHILDREN FROM 7 TAX-EXEMPT HOUSES ATTENDING WALLINGFORD PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

BUT CHOATE IS CURRENTLY PROVIDING A HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION FOR SOME 56* WALLINGFORD CHILDREN, 50% OF WHOM  RECEIVE SUBSTANTIAL (I.E. $2.4 MILLION) OF SCHOOL FINANCIAL AID.

[ONLY 30% OF NON-WALLINGFORD CHILDREN RECEIVE FINANCIAL AID.]

*CHOATE THEREBY IS RELIEVING WALLINGFORD PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS OF THE COST OF EDUCATING THESE 56 STUDENTS EACH YEAR.

This just goes to show you that sometimes there is a little more to a simple question than what meets the eye.

Where some felt there was a burden (and I admit at face value I initially thought there was too) there was actually a benefit.

Wallingford may be footing the bill for 12 additional children but we do not have to carry the burden for an additional 56 high school students. That is a net savings of whatever the cost burden is of 44 students.

I am sure that raising these points is going to have some of the nit-picky crowd coming up with a bunch of counterpoints. Some of the comments may well have some justification but the way I see things in this instance and with specific regard to the Board of Education budget, Wallingford is coming "ahead" of the game with a cost savings with respect to the net additional students.

For me, that is a little ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak and overcast budget forecast.

Technorati Tags: FROM WALLINGFORD,opinion,Wallingford,taxes,budget,Board of Education

MY TAKE on testimonial dinner for Mayor Dickinson; next week’s FROM WALLINGFORD

So I have posted the article from the Record Journal written by Dave Moran; the post is Statute a sticking point for Dickinson dinner

I have a POLL question up this week regarding the same here on the blog. Please consider weighing in.

Additionally, I have the actual statue - Sec. 9-609. (Formerly Sec. 9-333k). Party committees; designation as campaign treasurer. Limitation on multiple committees. Fund-raising events and testimonial affairs – posted from http://www.cga.ct.gov/2009/pub/chap155.htm#Sec9-609.htm on the blog as well at Supporters of Mayor Dickinson are having a testimonial for him – is this in violation of Connecticut General Statutes?

I am planning to do my next FROM WALLINGFORD article on this topic as well.

Somewhere between the desire for the supporters to have a celebratory event for the Mayor, the statute itself and its interpretation, what is legally binding (or not), and political bravado, there are three simple sayings that keep going through my head:

 

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions”

“No one is above the law”

“No good deed goes unpunished”

 

Be sure to check out FROM WALLINGFORD next Sunday.

Technorati Tags: FROM WALLINGFORD,Wallingford,Opinion,Testimonial,Mayor,Democrat,Republican

FROM WALLINGFORD – Process and reason

This edition of FROM WALLINGFORD is written by my counterpart on the column, Stephen Knight

“ An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in mo­tion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbal­anced force.” Newton’s First Law of Mo­tion.

“ Congress shall make no law . . . abridg­ing . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Amendment 1, U.S. Constitution.

Please keep these two concepts in mind as you read how Wallingford School Su­perintendent deals with the reaction to his proposed 2010-2011 Education budget. Dr. Menzo came to Wallingford a few months ago. Surely he liked what he saw — a successful school system in a suc­cessful community. The temptation to continue with business as usual must have been strong. But Dr. Menzo also saw that his administration could not kick the financial can down the road any longer. The severe fiscal constraints at hand fi­nally had to be dealt with. There is a po­litical version of Newton’s First Law of Motion, and the resulting proposal is at­tempting to overcome it, and I applaud him for his effort.

As a consequence, he is now dealing with the inevitable pushback by all those whose lives will be affected by these changes. We read about the various meet­ings and forums and workshops being held to discuss how these changes would be implemented. This is all good, and is in recognition of the bedrock American tra­dition spelled out in the First Amendment quoted above. I truly believe that the re­sult of all of this will be a school budget in line with today’s financial reality paired with a constituency (parents, students, teachers, administrators, employees) that will have impacted the final design and implementation of these changes.

There are those, including my counter­part Jason Zandri, that hold that the process should have been reversed; that the administration should have convened a series of focus groups and workshops that included all the “stakeholders,” out of which proposals would have been devel­oped. Hence the process would have been a more transparent and cooperative one and thus easier for people to accept.

With all due respect, does anyone think that such a process would have resulted in anything other than protecting the status quo (See Newton’s Law above)? Would recognition of the fiscal corner we are painted into triumph over the under­standably limited albeit legitimate aim of preserving the existing jobs, programs and school system structure? Who would have developed any proposal to honestly confront the serious budget shortfall the town faces if they had no real responsibil­ity for mitigating it? Only Dr. Menzo and the BOE do, and we have to accord them the authority to carry out that responsi­bility. In exercising that authority, he has brought forth a proposal. Now it is being vetted by the public.

That is at the heart of a representative democracy. We elect people, therefore handing over power to do the govern­ment’s business. We do so recognizing that a municipal government of 43,000 people would devolve into anarchy if we all demanded input on every matter com­ing before it. We expect them to act, but if we take issue with those actions, the First Amendment empowers us to confront those public servants. That is the purpose of all the meetings. The result will never satisfy everyone, but it is the correct process being carried out in the correct order.

To quote Winston Churchill: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” Our oftentimes messy, noisy chaotic political system has at its foundation a constant search for that perfect definition of “consent of the gov­erned.” That is what is playing itself out in Wallingford with regard to the BOE budget. The process will not have been easy or pain-free, but it will have been fair.

Technorati Tags: FROM WALLINGFORD,opinion,Schools,Board of Education

Testimonial tussle

As published in the Record Journal Sunday January 24, 2010

Follow all the news directly on the Record Journal Website for the most up to date information. www.myrecordjournal.com

Write a letter to the editor letters@record-journal.com

Editorial

Wallingford Republicans are holding a $40-a-ticket testimonial dinner for Mayor Bill Dickinson on February 6.

Some 200 tickets have been sold to date, yielding $8,000. The money will cover the cost of dinner and anything left over, accord­ing to Republican town Councilor Craig Fishbein, will go to the Wallingford Foundation for the Arts. None will go to Dickinson, who, in his characteristic way, has said he is a “reluc­tant participant.”

This is all well and good, but there happens to be a state law, General Statutes sec. 9-609(b). It defines a “testimonial” as being “an affair held in honor of an in­dividual who holds . . . an office subject to this chap­ter.” Then the section adds [with some significance given Dickinson’s “reluc­tance”] “No testimonial af­fair shall be held without the consent of such per­son.”

The section then forbids testimonials for anyone during the term of his or her office, except to raise funds as defined in the rest of the chapter.

What is a testimonial din­ner, anyway? It may mean merely a dinner at which tribute is paid to someone. More likely, especially in sports, it’s a fund-raiser. Hence, in the chapter of state law applying to elec­tion campaigns and ex­penses, it comes as no big surprise to find testimonial dinners regulated.

On the other hand, if no funds are to be given to Mayor Dickinson but will go instead to the Arts Foun­dation, a bona fide charity, is there any reason for a prohibition? There would seem not to be.

But there is a statute. The law is the law. Democratic Town Chairman Vincent Avallone, an attorney, has sent a letter to his counter­part, Republican Chairman Robert Prentice, referenc­ing the law in question. He has also been in touch with the State Elections Enforce­ment Commission, but has not filed any complaint.

Councilor Fishbein, who is also an attorney, has said he doesn’t think the dinner constitutes a violation of the law any more than a birthday party would. A birthday party could actu­ally be more of an issue since it results in gifts which are not condoned under the ethics rules.

So it boils down to con­flicting legal views of the situation, and that’s why our society has attorneys. Most laws and rules are ca­pable of multiple interpre­tations, and it is tough to be sure all the time. Perhaps the SEEC will be asked to rule, perhaps not.

One cannot live in the shadows of possible viola­tions, and one can only ad­mire Chairman Prentice’s approach: “You know what? We’ll go through with it be­cause what are they going to do to us, fine us?”

Exactly.

Technorati Tags: Opinion,Politics,testimonial,republican

MY TAKE – How the parents can address everything going on with the Board of Education and the School Budget

Full disclosure – My oldest son, Andrew, is in Kindergarten in Stevens School and will be affected by the proposed changes and I have three more kids yet to enter the school system.

Since the press release in the Record Journal of all the planned changes proposed as part of the budget for the Board of Education, there has been a frenzy to get more information and a rally among parents with respect to “what’s next" and "what can we do”.

I’ll probably write my next FROM WALLINGFORD article in next Sunday's Record Journal on the subject but here are some immediate thoughts.

Make sure you have all of the information that you can get your hands on with respect to this proposal; both what is being proposed by our Superintendent and the Board and what has been tried elsewhere. Not everything they are suggesting is bad or out of place especially in these tough financial times. We need to review everything and make sure we point out to them what has worked elsewhere and what didn't.

Grade Span Configuration Research Study at http://bit.ly/5VLjZq is one example; I am sure there are others.

A friend of mine recently commented “kudos to the BOE in Wallingford for trying to create a budget based on some fiscal responsibility... The budget process in government is (usually) based on the premise that there are unlimited resources.”

He’s right.

Government generally never bases its budgets on fiscal responsibility because there is the ability to just up taxes or levy fees on a captive audience - the Wallingford business owners and the Wallingford home owners.

If Main Street businesses ran their business like this, allowing their costs to spiral out of control and raised prices indiscriminately to meet these expanding costs, you the consumer would just take your dollars elsewhere and they would cease to exist. As a taxpayer to a given town and state you are captive to that environment and bound to pay the taxes and fees as levied. The only way to avoid that is to move and then you’re subject to a different set of taxes and fees.

Taxes and fees are all devised the same way from town to town and from state to state. Some may be more favorable elsewhere (better tax rate, lower fees, etc) but they all are the same – generally put together based on the premise that there are unlimited resources because of the captive audience that is the citizenry that MUST pay taxes.

Quite frankly too, it’s all our fault.

The same 12 people attend the town council meetings.

The same 30 people or so run for public office every two years. Once in a while there is a new name and a new face but they are coming out of the same pool.

The same 45% of the local registered voters turn out at local election time and the majority of them put the incumbents back into office. (One incumbent was voted out in 2009).

This last election in 2009 that registered voter turnout number was below 37% the lowest number in about twenty plus years.

Did you vote?

The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results. You cannot put an incumbent that goes a certain way back into office and expect them to suddenly do something different for you. If they already match your line of thinking – great. If not, you need to get to know the other candidates and support them at election time. That means not only voting for them but getting your friends out to vote for them too. You don't cheer for your favorite football team alone - you want to recruit other people to do the same. You need to get jazzed up over local candidates for office in the same manner. It sounds totally off the wall but shouldn't you be as much of a cheerleader for someone running for office that has the same heart and mind as you do? Some of you have a tremendous amount of distain when someone proposes something COUNTER to the way you think; turn that into a positive in 2011 and really push for the people that will get you what you want and need.

Most people claim they can’t afford the time to get involved so the government machine churns on with no one minding the store, save the politicians elected to the offices. Everyone needs oversight or they will follow human nature and do whatever they please. How can you afford NOT to get involved? Part of the reason you're so busy is you're working extra to pay the taxes and fees that your representatives are setting.

“We the people” are supposed to be that oversight but no one volunteers for duty. Oh a few claim they do every year at election time (again - locally less than 45%) but after the vote where are they for the next two years?

So I ask all of the parents specifically – after this issue is over – favorably to what you’re looking for or not, are you going to stay engaged so that it never happens again?

The sad part of is that most of the citizens will disengage and they will not come back to fight until the next time there is a major issue to address.

That is the mistake.

This fight never ends – it is always ongoing and you must be involved as part of the process or the elected individuals will go about doing their job the way they see fit because they are not getting a whole lot of input.

Some will try to do the best job they can.

Others will do the job the best they can while having it be most self serving to their career.

Some will only do the job in a way that is most self serving to them and that is it.

What can you do?

Make it a point to stay engaged; it is a lot of work but this is not a one issue thing. We are not suddenly where we are today by a single erroneous event from the last fiscal year. Some of this is years and years of not planning correctly and being reactive to issues rather than proactive. That is what has gotten us here and has required this sudden, drastic move by the Superintendent needed to try to steer us back onto the rails.

Attend the meetings and provide your input. Enough with the "I need to be careful of my job" and "I can't speak up because of my delicate position in the town / school system / social status in the sewing circle" - I know some of you, you're not that delicate and you usually don't allow people to walk all over you. This is your town and these are your tax dollars - make sure they are both handled the way you expect them to be.

Letter writing campaigns - write the Board of Education, write the Town Council, write the Superintendent and write to the Mayor. Tell them what you like and what you don't like about the proposals. Offer other suggestions that might be used as solutions. It's fine to say "this stinks" but unless you offer an alternate consideration for them to explore what do you expect them to do? They are presenting this and they are looking at it as the best solution they can come up with to the problem. If you have a better idea to save money offer it.

Write letters to the editor at the Record Journal. As you make your thoughts known to others in town on such a wide scale with your letters in the paper you might encourage others to come out and get involved as well. Not everyone is an extrovert and not everyone feels confident to speak and be heard. Some people are slow self starters and need good peer leaders to help them find their footing to speak out. Be a leader and encourage others. It helps the cause and it helps them.

Finally, if you feel like you can't bring yourself to do these things for you then do it for your kids. They are in the school system and they will be impacted by these changes.

Some of you grew up with me; you never left town either (or you left and came back) - what are you leaving to their future if they decide to do the same and stay in Wallingford.

What is the Wallingford that you want them to inherit?

This is your town - get informed and get involved.

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FROM WALLINGFORD - Ordinances and outrage

As published online at MyRecordJournal.com for print publication in the Record Journal on Sunday December 6, 2009

The Wallingford Ordinance Committee is tasked at their meetings to review the ordinances in place and to discuss new ones. The next meeting is Tuesday, December 8, 6:30 PM at Town Hall, Room 315.

I understand the need for local ordinances - not everyone will govern themselves near what most would consider baseline behavior of a citizen on their own; you need to have rules that set and explain what those baseline expectations are.

Some people will not break rules while others do whatever they please because they assume they won't get caught (or they simply do not care).

The recent parking enforcement issue at the Carini Bowl is one example. I'm not happy people got ticketed that day, but I am gratified that the rules are getting enforced as it vindicates those of us that follow them when the rule-breakers get pinched.

Many people that got ticketed, even after being told to move, said, "Well, I saw the sign - was told to move, but I just didn't think I'd get a ticket."

And that is actually the crux of the issue; generally the ordinances are not enforced. When we start everyone is up in arms because they are caught off guard that we're "suddenly" doing something we should be enforcing unilaterally and consistently.

Take the sidewalk obstruction ordinance that requires residents to clear sidewalks around their homes or businesses within 18 hours after a snowstorm . . . I see many sidewalks that NEVER get cleared by anyone - so all this talk about how the ordinance works is interesting, but do we use it in practice? I am not asking: have we ever used it? I am asking: do we enforce it regularly as the infractions are reported? When was the last $25 ticket issued for not clearing the sidewalk? When was the last time a resident had their walked cleared by Public Works and then billed for it?

So what's the answer to all this? That is a tough question.

The ordinance committee will tell you they create and review the ordinances but they are not in charge of enforcement. Those that are responsible for enforcement (often different groups; it is not always the police department) will often tell you why they are not successful - no real enforcement power (no ability to fine or take action), not enough manpower, etc.

My thoughts are we should put all the ordinances up on the town website.

If someone breaks a specific ordinance in a 12-month rolling period from the time of the infraction, they should get a written warning, a printed copy of the specific ordinance and it should be cataloged. If the infraction occurs a second time, they should be fined.

Fines should be dramatically increased - a huge deterrent. If I park illegally 50 times and pay just $15 once, I can justify the cost. Not that I want to throw away $15, but it can cost more to park in a New Haven garage. Fines have to grow to the cost of the times, and then some - they need to be a burdensome expense to stop causal infraction of the law by people who don't care in the first place.

If responsible enforcement divisions are understaffed, then contract out the position to enforce the ordinances; with heavier fines, we can justify the cost against that revenue. If there isn't enough work, then allow the departments to take the work back on and end the contract position.

We should be enforcing ordinances unilaterally and consistently. If the argument is that we do not need to have that kind of iron fist mentality, then I suggest that ordinance doesn't need to exist and we should take it off the books.

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