Town Council Public Hearing - 12/2/2008

As promised, here are the videos from the Town Council Public Hearing from December 2nd. The Public Hearing was so long I had to break it into 2 parts.

Part 1 is here or below:



Part 2 is here or below:

Planning and Zoning Comm. - 12/3/2008

The Planning and Zoning Commission had a public hearing and a regular meeting on December 2nd. Most of the items were not controversial and passed easily. The one item that raised temperatures a few degrees was the proposal to rezone portions of Route 80. Since much of Route 80 is zoned residential any property owner that wishes to build a commercial or industrial building must come before the PZC for a special exception. The view is that Route 80 is not a primarily residential street and , therefore, it would be better zoned commercial, industrial or some mixed zone. The Chairman of the PZC, Frank Cappelloni, took exception to not being included in the discussion of this zoning change until the night of the meeting. Since it was just a preliminary presentation to the PZC I think he was over reacting a little. Next month a public hearing will be held to address the proposed zoning change.

Watch the meeting here or below:

Town Council Meeting - 12/2/2008

The Town Council had their December regular meeting on Tuesday, the 2nd. The meeting was preceded by a series of public hearings on various items. The public hearing video will be made available later this week since it is much longer than the meeting. The public hearings took 1 hour 40 minutes while the meeting took around 40 minutes. The focal points of the hearings and the meeting were the removal of a ZBA member for having moved out of East Haven for a couple of months. The Charter requires the members of Boards and Commissions, such as the ZBA, be "resident electors" of the Town of East Haven. The Administration contends that the ZBA member, David Dorsa, stopped being a resident elector once he moved out of Town for 2 1/2 months. The Town Council disagreed and voted to keep Dorsa on the ZBA.

The other big item was the vote to keep Police Captain LaBanca on the force for another year. Since he has passed the retirement age of 65 a vote of the Town Council is necessary every year to allow him to stay on the Police Department. The Captain said he is only planning on staying for the next 6-7 months in order to smooth the way for the impending reorganization of the department. The Town Council seemed to think this was a good idea and voted to allow to him to stay.

Here is the video for the Town Council meeting (the public hearing part will be added when I get it uploaded):

Housing Authority Regular Mtg. 12/1/2008

The Housing Authority held their December meeting at Town Hall on the 1st. The longest discussion concerned the work done by Imagineers, the contractor handling the Section 8 program on a day to day basis. There were a series of complaints about Imagineers not returning the phone calls from the landlords and tenants involved in the Section 8 program. One of the Imagineer's managers was present to address those concerns. He will look into the specific complaints and report back to the Commission members next month. Another significant chunk of the meeting was held in Executive Session because the Commissioners needed to address some personnel issues.

Watch the entire public portion of the meeting here or below:

School Roof Repairs - Architect Presentations

Four architecture firms gave presentations on roof repairs and solar heating to the School Building Committee on November 18th. The 4 firms were the finalists from a field of architects that applied to do the work. The presentations lasted about 30 minutes each and were completed in one evening. Without further ado, here are the presentations in the order they were given:

Jacunski Humes Architects:



Silver/Petrucelli Associates:



Hibbard and Rosa Architects, LLC:



Landmark Architects, P.C.:

Republican Mayoral Race Handicapping

Now that the 2008 election season is over it must be time to start handicapping the 2009 mayoral contest. According to this article by Mark Zaretsky in the New Haven Register three Republicans are looking to unseat Mayor Capone Almon in the upcoming election. Mentioned as sure candidates are long-serving Town Council member Ken McKay. McKay has already filed his paperwork to form an exploratory committee. Another sure candidate is John Finkle, long time Chairman of the Board of Education. As of this morning Finkle has not filed his paperwork to start fund raising yet. The third possible Mayoral candidate mentiond in the Register article was former Mayor Joseph Maturo. However, it did not sound like he was likely to be running. Everyone I have talked to about another Maturo campaign discounted the idea pretty heavily.

There are a couple of other potential candidates that were not mentioned in the article. One is well known local pol Ben Mazzucco. The other is former Board of Education member Robert Parente. In the end I do not think either of those gentlemen will run. The rumor is that Parente is going to be supporting McKay.

Operating under the assumption that only McKay and Finkle will eventually end up running, the crack(ed) team here at easthavenpolitics blog examined the membership list for the Republican Town Committee ("RTC") today to see how much support each candidate has. A very preliminary analysis shows surprising, and almost overwhelming, support for McKay. The RTC has 65 members (although there may be 2 vacancies). To win the nomination from the RTC a candidate would need to get 33 votes the night of the party convention. Of the 63 members of the RTC we know about, McKay appears to have support of 25. Finkle has the support of 10 and we could not make an educated guess about the remaining 28. If these figures hold up, and we will be digging deeper over the next couple of months, the nomination by the RTC seems to be McKay's to lose.

In the Register article both candidates said they will abide by the decision of the RTC. If they are true to their word then Finkle will have plenty of time next fall to watch football since he will not be running for Mayor.