Board of Finance Budget Meetings

The Board of Finance has published the list of budget workshops and meetings for the 2010-11 fiscal year's budget. The workshops start next week on Monday with another workshop on Wednesday. The following week they have workshops scheduled for Monday the 8th and Tuesday the 9th. The entire March 8th meeting is dedicated to the Board of Education budget and the room should be packed. All the meetings are in the Mario Giaimo Conference Room at Town Hall and start at 7PM. On Wednesday, March 17th, the Board of Finance meets and votes on the budget they are going to recommend to the Mayor. As with last year's meetings, I will be taping them all and putting them up online and on ETV Channel 20. In conjunction with the meetings I will be taping the show Bottom Line which you can see on ETV Channel 18.

School Reconfiguration?

I was looking at the agenda for the Board of Education meeting tomorrow night and I noticed there was no mention of reconfiguring the schools. Not sure if that was an oversight or whether they have decided to put it on the back burner for now. The last BOE meeting was quite contentious and maybe it got a little too hot for the new Chairman to handle. If they want to reconfigure the schools for September of this year then they do not have much time.

Board of Finance - 2/17/2010

The Board of Finance met Wednesday night with a rather long agenda. The 2 biggest items were the hiring of an outside firm to identify places where the property assessments were below value. If the dollar value of property reported by a business is less than it should be then the Town misses out on revenue it should be collecting. These types of firms get hired periodically to track down misreported property values.

The second big item was a review of the just completed audit. The discussion of the audit starts around the 17:15 mark on the first part of the video and continues through most of the second part. From watching last night's discussion it appears that the BOE is going to be blamed for overspending their budget. This should make for an interesting budget season.

Part 1:

Part 2:

School Building Comm. - 2/16/2010

The School Building Committee met last night to pay some bills and find out about the status of the rebid for the solar panels. Two outstanding bills were authorized to be paid for the school roof work that was done last year. The solar panel rebid was progressing but had not gone out yet.

Here is the video of the meeting:

EH News 2/13/2010

This last weekend Marilyn Vitale and I went into the studio to tape a couple of half hour segments for the EH News show. The first segment contains a discussion with Probate Judge Michael Albis and a tour of the construction for the new probate court. James Dougherty, Chairman of the Town Council, came in for the second segment. We had a good discussion of issues before the Town Council and to get his ideas about where the budget is going in the upcoming year.

Segment #1:

Segment #2:

Busy Week

Although this is a short week it is going to have some very interesting board meetings. On Tuesday night the School Building Committee meets to discuss the solar panel project. That should be an interesting meeting since this will be the first meeting after the Town decided it needed to go out to bid on this project again. The meeting starts at 7:00 PM in the basement of Town Hall.

Wednesday night the Board of Finance meets for their February Regular meeting. That will start at 7:30PM in the basement of Town Hall. I have not seen the agenda yet but I cannot imagine the recently released audit will not be discussed. Combine that with the editorial in today's New Haven Register and I think the discussion will be lively.

Bottom Line - FY 2010-11 Edition

I taped the first installment of this year's Bottom Line show with John Finkle on Saturday. As you may remember from last year's show we discuss the upcoming budget starting with the Board of Education recommendation and running through the budget workshops, public hearings and adoption by the Town Council. We also have a wrap-up show for when the Board of Education decides what to do with the allocation they receive from the Town Council. On Saturday we discussed the 6.75% request from the BOE and the recently completed audit. We will probably be back on the air with another show once the Board of Finance starts to dissect the department heads' requests in early March. You can watch the show below.

***Geek Alert***
The embedded video below is in 720p HD. Generally that would be a very good quality video. However, for those of you with lots of bandwidth I am including a link to the 1080i version of the show. It is the same video except the 1080i is better video quality and MUCH larger. If you do not have a fast internet connection I would strongly suggest avoiding the 1080i version.
***End Geek Alert***

1080i version

Red Light Cameras

Apparently some of our state legislators and municipal officials have time on their hands. They are working to have the legislature pass a law to allow red light cameras. This story in the New Haven Independent gives a run down of the coalition arrayed to stop people from going through red lights, infringe our personal liberties and get money into the hands of the government all at the same time. For those of you not aware of what red light cameras are, they are cameras positioned at intersections that take photos of the license plates of cars going through red lights. Then the municipality mails you a ticket based on the picture. If you think that sounds a little like government over reach you are not alone. Note to our legislators, Orwell did not write 1984 as a how-to guide for government action. Why don't you go back to fixing the state budget which you have managed to drive into a ravine over the last couple of years and leave the good people of Connecticut alone.

Live Snow Webcam

*update*
This initial test of ustream.tv was successful in getting the configuration and webcam functioning and able to broadcast. I might do some testing at one of the meetings at Town Hall within the next month. The two big problems aregoing to be integrating the webcam with a good sound source so the viewers can hear the broadcast and getting an internet connection in the location where the meetings are being held.

This is a test of a new webcam attached to my computer and focused on the bird feeder in my front yard. I use the ustream.tv service to stream the video. I want to see if I can get the technical details worked out so I can stream board and commission meetings from the Senior Center and Town Hall. Let me know what you think.


Live TV : Ustream

2008-09 Audit Now Available

The just completed audit for the 2008-09 fiscal year is now available online at the Town website. I have not had a chance to read through either document yet but will be doing so prior to the taping of the show I do with Marilyn Vitale. There are 2 documents. One is the Financial Audit and the other is a single format audit for the Federal and State governments which accounts for the money received from the Feds and the State of Connecticut.

Here are the links from the Town site.

Fiscal Year 2008-09 Audit

State and Federal Single Audit

Brush Fire Off Hemingway Avenue

A brush fire started in the swampy area behind Calabro Cheese on Hemingway late this afternoon. According to Fire Marshall Tony Moscato the fire was called in around 5:30PM. By the time I arrived at the scene around 6:25PM the fire was mostly out. A large contingent of East Haven firemen responded plus 2 trucks from Branford. No cause of the fire was known. Besides myself there were press crews from Channels 3 and 8. Take a look at the end of the raw video I have uploaded and you will see the reporter from Channel interviewing Tony Moscato.

PZC - 2/3/2010

Here are the videos from last nights PZC meeting and public hearing...

Public Hearing - 495 South Beach Road

Regular Meeting:

Town Council - 2/2/2010

The Town Council met at 7 last night for a Public Hearing followed at 7:30 by the Regular Meeting for February. Overall it was a pretty boring evening. The Public Hearing concerned the moving of some money from an interest account to a principal account. It was so boring I believe I heard snoring during the presentation by the Finance Director.

The Regular Meeting was similarly boring for most of the items on the agenda. The one extended discussion took place on the issue of collecting a fee when a burglar alarm goes off and the police department has to respond. The ordinance on the books requires a $25 fee after the alarm goes off 5 times. Apparently, Chief Gallo decided that this ordinance did not need to be enforced sometime in the Maturo administration. The sense of the Council is that Paul Hongo should tell the Chief to start enforcing the ordinance again.

Public Hearing:

Regular Meeting:

BOE Finance Subcommittee - 2/1/2010

Here is the video from last night's BOE Finance Subcommittee meeting. For now I will leave the commentary off since I have some things to do. Enjoy the budget and school reorganization discussion:

Part 1:

Part 2:

BOE Wants 6.75% Increase

If the Board of Education gets its way the taxpayers of East Haven will be looking forward to a significant tax increase in the 2010-2011 fiscal year. The Board approved a budget calling for a 6.75% increase over this year's budget. That would amount to a total increase of over $2.9M. Such an increase equals about 1.5 mills extra in spending by the BOE alone. That 1.5 mills does not take into account any increase the town may have to make in their budget. Even with the huge tax increase the BOE is asking for, the size of classes is set to rise to levels unseen in many years. Some classes are set to rise to 24-25 students under this budget. One has to ask what they are planning on doing with this extra $2.9M? The entire Special Meeting called to pass the operating budget for next year took only 10 minutes. It is amazing that the BOE could take so little time when asking the taxpayers of East Haven to hand over such a huge pile of money in the worst recession in decades. Watch for yourself ...