Farm River 3/30/2010

I went out yesterday and shot some video of the Farm River in a couple of locations. The first one is up near the construction on the bridge near the Pit is being done. The second is the river as it goes past the Old Mill at the intersection of Route 1 and Main Street near the Twin Pines Diner. You can compare the first sequence with the video I took a couple of weeks ago after the last big rainfall here. You can see the river has overflowed more and is flowing substantially faster last night than it was a couple of weeks ago.

Budget Presentation Tonight

The Mayor will give her annual budget presentation at 7PM in the High School Auditorium. She will lay out the budget she is giving to the Town Council including spending and revenue (aka taxes). A big number that a lot of people are waiting for is the BOE allocation for the upcoming year. The rumor swirling around town is that the BOE is getting no increase over this year's allocation. They are certainly not getting the 6.7% increase the Board approved in February.

I will be putting together snippets from the Mayor's presentation, interviews with people attending the presentation and information about the budget itself after the meeting tonight. You should see it here by tomorrow morning and on ETV Ch 18 within the next couple of days, depending on their schedule.

BOE Finance Subcommittee Cancelled

The BOE Finance Subcommittee meeting scheduled for tonight has been canceled.

BOE Subcommittee 3/25/2010 ... a farce in 2 parts

The BOE's Finance and Personnel subcommittees held a joint meeting on Thursday evening. First they discussed what they were going to talk about and then decided to go into Executive Session to have that discussion. Chairman Palladino suggested to wait until the end of the public session to have the Executive Session to discuss the contract negotiations. Superintendent Serio said there was not much to talk about so they could do it quickly. It turns out Serio was wrong in his time estimation since they were actually in Executive Session for over an hour. The only bright side was the Chairman's insistence that the Board go into another room and let the people sit in the Boardroom during the Executive Session. Otherwise, 30-40 people would have had to stand in the hallway while the Board talked.

Upon returning to the regular session they then spent over an hour all talking at once and badgering the Administration about the 2010-11 budget like they had never seen it before despite having voted to pass that same budget and send it to the Mayor last month. When more than 1 person is talking at the same time it is hard to keep track of what is going on. When 8 people are talking at the same time it is impossible.

Here, without further ado, is the video:

Part 1:


Part 2:

BOE Finance Meeting Tonight

The BOE has a Finance Subcommittee meeting scheduled for 7PM tonight. The agenda is extensive in the areas that are going to be under discussion. These include last year's audit and the upcoming budget. It looks like they are going to try and pare down the budget request that they so spectacularly failed to do when the recommendation was sent to the Mayor back at the beginning of February. Rumor has it that the Mayor is going to be recommending a zero percent increase for the BOE when she sends her budget to the Town Council next week.

I am going to cover tonight's meeting and will post video within the next couple of days.

The Week Ahead

This week is kind of the lull before the storm for the town budget process. The Board of Finance has made their recommendations to the Mayor. She has until next week to pick and choose which recommendations to include in her budget address to the Town Council on the 31st. Then the Town Council workshop schedule starts up. The meetings this week are fairly limited. The 2 big meetings are the Board of Education and Inland Wetlands on Tuesday night. The BOE has to vote to inform the non-tenured faculty that they will be laid off come the end of the school year. The number of notices they are going to have to send out is unknown at this time but I expect 60+ teachers to get notified. The Inland Wetlands Commission is meeting to reorganize and review a site plan modification for an Old Stone Lane project. You can check out both agendas on the Town website.

Bottom Line - March 20, 2010

I had 2 guests in the studio today on this edition of Bottom Line. The first guest was Paul Hongo from the Mayor's office who came in for a chat about the budget, the deficit and where they plan on going from here.



And here is the discussion with John Finkle:

ZBA - 3/18/2010

The ZBA had a packed agenda this evening, including a hearing on the self storage facility that is going to be built at 495 Short Beach Road. As you may remember the PZC allowed this project to go forward by giving a favorable zoning change at their January meeting. Tonight the developer was back to get a variance on the height of the building, among other things. Here is the presentation:



After the presentations were completed I ran into one of the time honored traditions of the ZBA which is a recess to discuss the hearings and arrive at decisions. Why no one has ever challenged this blatant violation of the Freedom of Information Act before is somewhat of a mystery. However, when I took my camera into the Board's discussion they were not happy. The Assistant Town Attorney tried to bluff by calling it an executive session but backpedaled furiously when I called him on it. In the end they met out of hearing of the public and virtually whispered in order to keep their discussions private. Bad news for them, I have a very good microphone and some software for scrubbing background noise so I'll have a reasonable quality video of the "private" session by the end of the weekend. Until then take a look at the little discussion I had with Attorney Cirillo. Am I mistaken or does he look like I dumped in his porridge at the end of our discussion? Just to be fair to the other boards and commissions in East Haven, and their attorneys, they should know I am such a believer in the open meeting provisions of the Freedom of Information Act that I carry a copy of the Act with me in my camera bag. Bluffing me is probably not going to work.



***Update***
I am still working on getting the background noise out of the part where the ZBA went into the corner to discuss the presentations. Until then I am posting the rest of the meeting here. I am also working on drafting a complaint to the Freedom of Information Commission regarding the practice of the ZBA to discuss the presentations outside of the regular meeting.

The complete ZBA meeting:

A break from politics for a few minutes....

Last Sunday I went out after the torrential rains to film the swollen Farm River. I shot the video near the bridge that is being worked on near The Pit. The first 15 seconds or so of this short video shows the banks overflowed. The rest of the video shows the river rushing in from the north and then heading south. As you can see in the video the river is moving pretty quick at that point.

Tax Increase at 4.3 - 4.8 mills

The Board of Finance met this evening to decide on recommendations for next year's budget. The 2 major topics were how much to give the Board of Education and what the mill rate was going to be. Several Board of Finance members, including Rich DePalma whose wife is on the Board of Education, thought the BOE should get between $500,000 and $1 million. This leads to a tax increase of 4.3 to 4.8 mills. A one million dollar increase seems to be the maximum the BOE can hope for since any mill rate hike of 5 mills allows the budget to go to referendum under a provision in Chapter III Section 10B of the Town Charter.

For those of you that do not want to watch the entire video, here is the section where the tax increase is proposed:

Full Meeting:

Town Council Audit Review - 3/16/2010

The Town Council had a special meeting on Tuesday night to get a review of the audit for the 2008-09 fiscal year. The meeting lasted a little over an hour so I have split the video into 2 parts. There was a heated discussion about the BOE budget during the second half of the meeting.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Board of Finance Budget Workshop - 3/15/2010

I almost entitled this posting "Beware the Ides of March" since the Board of Finance is closing in on their final recommendations for next year's budget and it isn't pretty. The meeting lasted a little over 2 hours which I have broken up into 3 parts for your viewing pleasure. Superintendent Serio came with the central office staff and presented 3 scenarios depending on how much money they received from the Town Council. The budget, as presented by the BOE, calls for a 6.7%, or almost $3 million, increase and has layoffs for 9 certified staff. If the BOE only gets an increase of $2 million they will layoff 21 certified staff. For a $1 million increase they will layoff 45 and with a flat budget they will need to layoff 64 certified staff. So, with a flat budget, they are saying they will layoff around 20% of the certified staff. Expect some intense discussions around that point over the next month.

The videos of the event follow. I will put each of the segments up as they become available.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Bottom Line - March 13, 2010

I was in the studio with John Finkle yesterday to tape another edition of Bottom Line the budget show we do this time of year. We discussed the impending tax increase, among other things. Next week we will be back to look at the budget that is recommended by the Board of Finance. There is a Board of Finance meeting on Monday night to discuss the final recommendation plus the Board of Education will be back with their "Plan B" since it is unlikely the Town is going to give the BOE a 6.7% increase in their budget.

EH News - 3/13/2010

Marilyn Vitale were in the studio yesterday for a 2nd taping of EH News in a week. So many things had gone on in the week we thought it a good idea to put out another show. We covered the budget, Board of Education and some issues with other boards and commissions. We also had a special guest, Joey Zullo, who was John Finkle's treasurer for the last mayoral campaign. As part of our desire to air good things about East Haven we highlighted the following service organizations.

EH Rotary offers free Amber Alert identification cards
The 3rd Saturday of every month from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM
At the Hagaman Library on Main Street

Foxon Bison's Baseball Team
Pasta Fundraiser for the team trip
Friday, March 19th 5:00 to 7:30 PM
At the Foxon Firehouse Hall Route 80
$5.00 per person

WALK TO EMPOWER 2010
The Mother’s Day fundraiser for Breast Cancer Network of Strength
will be held at Lighthouse Point Park
At 9:00 a.m. on Sunday, May 9, 2010
Information and registration at
http://walk.networkofstrength.org or 1-877-963-7223

Teen Center is looking for donations for their new space at 78 Frontage Road
next to Home Goods. Need:
Area rugs
Floor Lamps
Indoor Plants
They also need volunteers to help lay the dance floor
Contact: Bob Petrucelli 203-468-3297 ehc.bob@snet.net or
Chuck Licata 203-468-3221 clicata@easthavenfire.com

Proposed Expenditures

Here is a file containing the proposed appropriations for the upcoming year. The percentages shown in the last column indicate the increase requested by the Departments heads and not the number in the Mayor's budget. In either event there looks to be a $7M+ increase in the Town side budget even using the Mayor's numbers. For some reason the second page of the pdf is blank. Not sure why it is there at all but I will look into it later after I've had some coffee.

Optimistic Revenue Projections

At the Tuesday night Board of Finance Budget Workshop the discussion turned to the revenue items and the general fund deficit. I mentioned in the previous post that the entire $2.8M deficit in the general fund had to be paid off in one year. Since that alone would account for a 2.2 mill tax increase the enthusiasm for paying off that deficit in one year was noticeably lacking. The Board of Finance discussed one option, put forward by Butch Geelan, is to be "optimistic in our revenue projections" in order make it look like we are going to be paying off the deficit. (See the video below) "What is the problem if we fall short," asked Geelan. We are in this mess because of overstated revenue projections, so I am not sure we want to keep heading down that path.

How High Can They Go?

After doing some digging today I have concluded that we are in for a significant mill rate increase in the 2010-11 budget. Last week officials from the State of Connecticut paid a visit to Town Hall and informed the Administration that the entire deficit in the fund balance has to be made up in the upcoming budget. That means the general fund deficit of $2.8M has to be eliminated. This is on top of all the other items that are leaving a vast hole in the Town budget. Doing some back of the envelope calculations I believe we are looking at a tax increase of between 3 and 4 mills. As Paul Hongo mentioned the other evening at the Board of Finance workshop there is a $6.8M shortfall that needs to be made up somehow and that is even before the Board of Education any increase in their budget. As things stand now the average homeowner is going to be looking at a $600 to $1,000 increase in their real estate taxes next year.

Board of Finance Budget Workshop - 3/9/2010 *Updated with part 3*

Here is the 1st of 3 parts of the budget workshop held last night. I will post the other 2 as they become available.

Part 1:


Part 2:

Part 3:

BOE Budget Presentation to the Bd of Finance

For those of you that are interested, here is the video for the Board of Education's budget presentation to the Board of Finance last night. One rather annoying moment was the failure of the cameraman (that would be me) to turn on the microphone at the start of the meeting. That epic failure caused the first 3 minutes of the Superintendent's presentation to have the sound quality of a mime's show.

Part 1:



Part 2:

Town Council Budget Workshop Schedule

The Town Council Budget Workshop schedule is located here. The Mayor is scheduled to give her budget presentation to the Town Council on March 31st. The following week the budget workshops start and continue through the month with public hearings for the budget scheduled on the 15th and 19th or April. The Town Council is scheduled to adopt the budget on the 22nd but that could be pushed back till the 28th if they need more time to decide what to do.

What they probably not be able to avoid doing is raising the mill rate. As you can see by the clip below, Paul Hongo states that there is a $6M+ hole in the budget for next year that needs to be filled. He mentions that taxes are going to be part of the solution to filling that hole.

As someone who has been paying close attention to the budget this year, I am not surprised in the least by the need to raise taxes in the upcoming year. The fact that the possibility was raised last night, a couple of weeks before the Mayor gives her budget address, might just be the way of softening the blow when the Mayor announces the tax increase. In any event I am anticipating a 2-3 mill increase. That an increase would be in the vicinity of a 10-15% increase for every homeowner.

Hagaman Library Trust

At last week's Board of Finance budget workshop, Doc Schlagel said he had been unable to find the IRS Form 990 for the Hagaman Trust on the IRS website. The Hagaman Trust is the trust created when Union School was sold and the money was put into trust for the library to use. The form 990 is filed by all charities and shows the donations and expenditures. On the EH News show I taped with Marilyn Vitale this weekend we discussed the "missing" form 990 and I said I would look into it. This morning I emailed the library director, Karen Jensen, and asked her if she had found the form 990. She responded with an email this afternoon pointing to the site that had the form 990 for the Hagaman Trust. Karen also mentioned the official name of the trust is "Isaac Hagaman Trust UW". 


However, I was still perplexed why Doc Schlagel could not find the trust on the IRS website since I know Doc is pretty good with computers. So I went to the IRS website myself and searched for charities with the word "Hagaman" in the name. Two were returned but neither of them had anything to do with the library. Thinking there is some weird search criteria that the IRS, and no one else, uses I decided to try putting in "Isaac Hagaman" and selecting search for a match using "At least one of the words" to maximize my chances of funding the trust. Not surprisingly I had many pages of results most starting with the word Isaac. So I decided to scroll through the results and finally came across the "Isaac Hagman Trust UW". It took me a second to realize the name was Hagman and not Hagaman. That is why neither Doc nor I was able to easily find the 990. When I searched using Google for the Form 990 in Rhode Island, where the trustee is located. The site I found there also had it under Hagman. It looks like we are going to have to change the name of the library or get the IRS to update their website.


Since the point of this exercise was to find the Form 990s, here is a link to the most recent one.

EH News - March 6, 2010

Along with filming the Bottom Line show yesterday, Marilyn Vitale and I were in the studio to tape the latest edition of EH News. We discussed the happenings with the budget, school reconfiguration and I had an interview with Al Cronk on the Foxon Bison's baseball team.

Bottom Line

John Finkle and I were in the studio yesterday taping another edition of Bottom Line. The show focuses on the town budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Right now, as most of you know, the Board of Finance is running a series of workshops where department heads come in and present their budget requests. Last week there were 2 budget workshops which John and I discussed.

BOE Grade Reconfiguration Presentation - 3/4/2010

Here is the Administration's presentation at the High School last night. I will try and get the Q&A part of the meeting online later this weekend.

Board of Finance Budget Workshop - March 3, 2010

The Board of Finance had the second of their workshops last night. The fire and police departments, library, public works and animal shelter budgets were all examined.

Part 1: 





Part 2:

BOE Grade Reconfiguration Meeting Tonight

There is a BOE meeting at the High School this evening starting at 7PM. The topic of the presentation will be the grade reconfiguration proposal from the Administration. My understanding is that the Superintendent and his administrators will make the presentation.

Board of Finance Budget Workshop - 3/1/2010

The Board of Finance opened the budget season last night with a workshop. The workshop lasted about 100 minutes and examined the budgets of most of the smaller departments in Town Hall. Watch it below: