Voting Machine Testing - Part Deux

I just got off the phone with Democratic Registrar of Voters, Joe Buonome, who informed me that the problem with the absentee ballot machine has been fixed. As you may recall from an earlier post the A/B machine was not functioning correctly on Saturday during the machine test. Joe told me the company that sells the machine was called on Monday to get a new memory card. It appears, however, that the card was not malfunctioning. The test was run using the wrong memory card. Once they tried the test with the correct card it worked fine.

Lawlor v. Musco Campaign Financing - Part 2

Here and here are the latest campaign finance reports from the Lawlor and Musco campaigns. At the end of the reporting period, October 21st, Lawlor's campaign had $14,215 left and Musco's campaign had $16,350 left to spend. Most of that money, I am quite sure, has been spent already on last minute mailings, GOTV operations and polling. Musco seems to have spent the bulk of the $10,570 she spent this reporting period on advertising related work with a firm from Ohio. Lawlor spent $12,481 with one firm, DIRECT ADVANTAGE/ PRIMOTIONS (should that be Promotions?), from Hamden. The money was spent on PRINTING, SORTING, ADDRESSING, POSTAGE, & DELIVERY FOR CAMPAIGN MAILINGS. So those folks seem to be responsible for the mailings that have been showing up in your mailbox.

Town Council Special Meeting - October 27, 2008

The Town Council held a special meeting tonight to vote on approving a new trash disposal contract and a contract to allow tax bills to be paid with credit cards. The fee for the payment using a credit card will be 3% over the amount of the bill itself. I am testing out a new video service this evening. Let me know what you think of the quality of the video. Watch the meeting below:


East Haven Town Council - 10/27/2008 from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

Voting Machine Testing ***Updated***

At 10:00 A.M. on the 2nd Saturday before the November 4th election a crowd gathered in a dimly lit hallway in Town Hall to test the voting machines. The Democratic and Republican Registrars, Joe Buonomme and Donna Norman respectively, oversaw the testing. In attendance were the Assistant Registrars and Moderators from each voting district, as well as representatives of the two political parties. Donna graciously agreed to come on camera and give an explanation of the testing procedures. The background noise is a little high in the video of Donna but the acoustics in that hallway are bad and the assembled politicians did not quiet down while I was taping.



The testing went pretty well except for the machine that is going to be used to count the absentee ballots. The machine refused to count ballots no matter what was done. The Registrars and machine mechanics could not get the machine to work. It was finally decided that the memory cards from the manufacturer were bad. The Registrars will call LHS, the manufacturer, on Monday to get new cards sent to East Haven. When the cards are received that machine will be tested again. One of the Registrars attempted to call the company's support line this morning but there was no answer. It may just be a quibble, but how hard is it for a voting machine company to have someone oncall for a couple of weeks before an election.

***Updated With More Video***
Here are 3 more videos of the machine testing on Saturday. The 1st video is of Donna Norman swearing in the poll workers for the election. The second video is of a successful machine test. The ballots went through the machines without a problem except for the one that was intentionally incorrect. The 3rd video was of the attempting testing of the absentee ballot machine.



Successful test:


Unsuccessful test:

Lawlor v. Musco Campaign Financing

The latest campaign finance reports are available on the State of Connecticut website. They show a remarkable similarity in the amount of cash on hand with each campaign having a little under $27,000 in the bank as of October 1st. With each side taking part in the public financing system the amount of money they could raise and spend was $30,000. Under the new campaign finance rules, each campaign raised $5,000 and then they received $25,000 from the state. It looks like each side is saving the bulk of their money for a push in the last month. The next campaign finance report is due on October 28th for the period from 10/1 thru 10/21.

Here is the Lawlor's finance report and here is Musco's report.

Meetings This Week

There is a full slate of meetings this week, including Board of Education and Board of Finance meetings. Monday is the Columbus Day holiday so no meetings will be held. I will be taping the Civil Service Commission on Tuesday and the Board of Finance meeting on Wednesday. I have become fond of the Board of Finance meetings which, inevitably, turn into a caricature of your government at work. The Board members' pomposity belies their near total powerlessness. They do, however, make for great television.

Here, without further ado, is the meeting schedule for the week:

Tuesday October 14th
Board of Education High School 7PM
Civil Service Commission Town Hall 7PM

Wednesday October 15th
Board of Finance Town Hall 7:30PM

Thursday October 16th
Library Board Hagaman Library 7PM (cancelled)
Zoning Board of Appeals Senior Center 7:30PM

Quarry and Inland Wetlands

The quarry developer, Oakledge, has requested an extension of their Inland Wetlands permit. The Commission met last night to consider the request. As was pointed out at the meeting, the letter making the request did not have all of the information required. That did not stop the Inland Wetlands Commission from granting the extension so long as the information is provided by the developer. With the experience the PZC has with getting information from this developer, giving them such leeway is just asking to be stiffed. Watch the Commission's discussion of the request here or below:

Meetings This Week

This will be a fairly busy week for meetings with 3 on Monday, the Town Council on Tuesday and one on Wednesday and Thursday. Without further ado here is the list of meetings:

Monday 10/06
Counseling and Community Services 7PM 495 Thompson Avenue
Flood and Erosion 7PM Senior Center
Housing Authority 7:30PM Town Hall

Tuesday
Town Council 7:00PM Senior Center (there is a public hearing tonight)

Wednesday
Inland Wetlands 7PM Senior Center

Thursday
East Shore Health Distritc 7:30PM 14 Business Park Dr. Branford

Mayor 2009 Race Has Begun

It looks like we are getting an early start to the 2009 Mayor's race. On September 26th Ken McKay became the first candidate to file papers to form an exploratory committee for mayor. My sources tell me he will not be the last Republican to jump into the race. The other names I have heard mentioned are John Finkle, Bob Parente, and, of course, Joe Maturo. From McKay's filing it looks like has the support of Lori Musco's team with Robert Cubellotti serving as his Deputy Treasurer and former Town Council member Robert Sand as his Treasurer.

I will try to keep on top of the filings for new candidates and the finance reports for this race which should be exciting. On the Democratic side I do not see anyone coming out to challenge the sitting mayor.

Quarry, Lies and Videotape

Before the Planning and Zoning Committee meeting on October 1st, Channel 8 reporter Crystal Haynes interviewed Al Ippolito. Attorney Ippolito is a partner with State Senator Len Fasano. The Fasano firm represents the developer before the Planning and Zoning Commission. Attorney Ippolito answered a question regarding the large contributions given to the East Haven Republicans by saying "they were not made to any mayoral candidates..." Watch it here starting at around the 2:05 mark:



Since the donations were not given to a mayoral candidate I guess it is fine. You would have to ignore the fact that the mayor and his minions controlled the Republican Town Committee. But Attorney Ippolito would not mislead the public about something like that. If he says no contributions were given to a mayoral candidate then I'm sure no contribution was given to a mayoral candidate.

There is, however, one problem with Attorney Ippolito's statement. It is not true. When I heard those words coming out of Attorney Ippolito's mouth on the 11 PM news last night I nearly fell out of my chair. I was the campaign manager for Marilyn Vitale when she ran for mayor in 2003. I distinctly remember the Maturo campaign receiving some large, out of state contributions during that race. So this morning I went into my files and pulled out one of the finance reports from Mayor Maturo's campaign. Sure enough, the first Maturo report I pulled had over $1,000 worth of donations from the developer. How can you believe the developer or his representatives when they make such untrue statements about matters large and small about this quarry. Take a look at these pages from that finance report (click on the images to enlarge):

PZC - Quarry Again

The Planning and Zoning Commission held their October meeting tonight. The night started off with a public hearing on the Special Exception at the quarry to continue rock crushing on the site. As expected there was a very large turnout of local residents. I will be uploading some of the public comments in the next day or so but there was not much in the way of surprises. The public was still upset by the noise and dust from the rock crushing.

The interesting parts had little to do with the public comments. The first very interesting part was the absence of Lenny Fasano, Nick Mingione and Tim Lee. Seems like most of the lawyers in Fasano's firm decided to take the night off. Instead, they sent Al Ippolito to handle the application. He was not as insufferable as Tim Lee but it was not like you could call him pleasant. He even questioned the accuracy of the photo used in this morning's New Haven Register article.

The second point of interest was the presence of the developer and his minions from New York. I am not sure he helped himself much when he said this project was going to be going on for years before the housing is completed. My guess is that it is going to be going on for years before they even start construction.

Third, look for a story on Channel 8 news tonight. They had a crew at the meeting and I expect to see something on the 11 o'clock news tonight.

Fourth, the Town Engineer wrote up a report on all the things that the developer had agreed to deliver from previous applications before the PZC and noted that most of them had not been provided. Since even this PZC could not vote to approve the application with all the items they had promised to provide, and had not provided, the application was tabled till the next meeting.