Finkle Files For 2011 Mayor's Race

John Finkle filed the paperwork to form a committee for the upcoming mayor's race this week. He is going to have a formal announcement at Antonio's on December 13th at 7PM. Marilyn Vitale and I will be covering the announcement for EH News. His campaign manager is Joseph Zullo and his treasurer is Jim Farrell. His website is live at:

http://www.johnfinkleformayor.com

Whether John is going to have any challengers on the Republican side is an open question at this point.

BOE 11/23/2010

The BOE met on Tuesday night. There was a Policy and Bylaws subcommittee meeting at 6PM followed by the regular BOE meeting at 7PM. The subcommittee was putting together a list of changes to Board policies that will be worked on over the next several months. One of the big changes regards the drug and alcohol policy which was not well understood the last time it became an issue with the football team in 2009. The regular meeting had a presentation by Randall Osborne on an expansion of the network capacity and a lengthy discussion of the bills. The financial report showed many accounts with negative balances and no transfers into those accounts. The Chair of the Finance subcommittee, Christine Maisano, raised the issue of knowing how much is left in any one account until they do the transfers to bring those negative balance up to zero. There will be a subcommittee meeting to discuss that issue in the near future.

Policy & Bylaws Subcommittee Part 1:

BOE Subcom. Part 1 11/23/2010 from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

Policy & Bylaws Subcommittee Part 2:

BOE Subcom. Part 2 11/23/2010 from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

Regular Meeting Part 1:

BOE 11/23/2010 Part 1 from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

Regular Meeting Part 2 (Technology Presentation):

BOE 11/23/2010 Part 2 from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

Regular Meeting Part 3:

BOE 11/23/2010 Part 3 from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

Regular Meeting Part 4:

BOE 11/23/2010 Part 4 from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

Regular Meeting Part 5:

BOE 11/23/2010 Part 5 from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

Economic Development Commission 11/22/2010

The Economic Development Commission met last night. The big item on the agenda was a survey to be sent to all businesses in town regarding their plans for the upcoming year.

Economic Dev. Comm. 11/22/2010 from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

At least we aren't last!

I happened to run across an interesting little tool on the ConnCan site this morning. For those of you who don't know ConnCan is a public interest organization that is dedicated to improving public schools in Connecticut. While I may not agree with all their proposals they do have a wealth of good information on their site. One of the tools they have allows you to select certain criteria and see where your school is ranked within the state. For example, if you choose "Performance Gains" for middle schools you get an ordered list (from best to worst) of:

"Average one-year change among a cohort of students (such as 2010 4th graders’ change from 2009 3rd graders) in meeting state goals across all subjects"

Imagine my total surprise (NOT!) when I ran that criteria to see where JMMS ended up and saw we were next to last. Our performance gain (actually loss) was -9.4%. For the students measured year to year they were actually doing WORSE after being taught at JMMS. The score for JMMS in this category put us at #176 out of the 177 schools in the list. At this point I would like to send out a big thank you to MicroSociety Magnet School for coming in at #177 with a -23.3% performance gain. If they did not exist we would be in last place.

Board of Finance - 11/17/2010 ***Updated***

***Update***
I just uploaded the Town's November finance report that I received from the Finance Director. You can see it here.
***End Update***

The Board of Finance met last night. A few items of interest, (a) we may run out of cash prior to the 3rd payroll in December; (b) the audit of the BOE is not finished yet; and (c) the revenue projections for the current fiscal year are falling far behind what was budgeted.

For an overview of the BOE budget for the last and current fiscal years check out the document provided by Jason Lathrop.

Board of Finance - 11/17/2010 from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

School Building Committee - 11/16/2010

The School Building Committee met Tuesday night at the high school to brief members of the BOE on the ongoing solar panel installation and the electrical work needed at JMMS. The solar panels at the 3 elementary schools are ready to go live. The electrical work at JMMS is awaiting completion of the change order and state approval. The entire meeting only ran 40 minutes which is a nice change of pace from the multi-hour extravaganzas that are known as BOE meetings.

School Building Comm. - 11/16/2010 from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

Things This Week

This is a busy week for meetings.

***Cancelled Monday Housing Authority 7PM Giamo Room
Tuesday School Building Committee 7PM Conference Room EHHS
Wednesday Board of Finance 7:30PM Giamo Room
Thursday ZBA 7:30PM Senior Center

Unlike their usual meeting place, the School Building Committee will be meeting at the high school. The big item on the agenda will be the discussion of the solar panel and the electrical project at Mellilo Middle School. The School Building Committee has been wanting to give a presentation about this project to the BOE for quite awhile.

At the Board of Finance meeting on Wednesday maybe the Board can ask how come we running such a large deficit in revenues again. I would also like to see how the audit of last year's finances is progressing. Last year was a disaster so far as getting the audit completed. With any luck the audit will be coming out on time this year.

EH News - 11/11/2010

Marilyn Vitale and I went into the studio this week to tape another edition of EH News. Joining us was Andy Esposito to talk about the ongoing quarry project in Foxon that was the subject of a PZC hearing last week.

Also coming into the studio for an interview was Sharon Bass of East Haven Patch (easthaven.patch.com).

Marilyn and I also talked about the CAPT presentation at the BOE and the state of the BOE finances. We both agreed that the BOE Finance Subcommittee chairwoman, Christine Maisano, was doing a very good job in making sense of the BOE finances after decades of neglect by the previous Boards. They finally have a general ledger in place that should allow them to track expenditures more closely. That is a good thing for the taxpayers but does put a crimp in the ability of the school administration and BOE to hide where they are really spending money.

So far as the CAPT scores go, they are pretty bad. The CAPT is taken by 10th grade students and is used to determine whether the school is making adequate yearly progress (aka "AYP") for the federal No Child Left Behind law. The high school failed to make AYP based on the scores from the test taken in March of this year. Not only did we fail to make AYP we also scored very low in all categories within our DRG which is made up of towns with similar demographics as East Haven.

Another hot topic of conversation is the "Rooster Attack" that happened at the Town Council last week. To paraphrase Al Cronk, 9 years and 1,000 blasts and our Town Council does nothing. One person complains about a rooster crowing and the Town Council falls all over themselves to rush an ordinance onto the agenda.

We also discussed two other issues that came up at the Town Council meeting. One was the projection by the Finance Director, Tommy Thompson, that we are going to be $654,000 short in our revenue account this year. According to Mr. Thompson, the areas where we are not taking in as much money as we expected are "Prior years Taxes, Suspense and Interest and Lien Fees". To come up that short in those accounts is somewhat surprising since the budgeted amounts for those accounts was just over $1M which means we are taking in less than half what we expected. Since we have had big problems with our revenue projections over the 4-5 years I am amazed they still have not gotten it right. This is something our Board of Finance should be looking into.

Paul Hongo also mentioned that there is an issue with the property we just purchased to build the new Fire HQ. Apparently, quite a bit of work has to be done to raise the road and property before any building can be done. I will get more information on this for the next show.

EH News 11/11/2010 from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

When Roosters Attack!

***h/t to Fran for the photo

Last night the Town Council met for a couple of public hearings and their November meeting. The most interesting part of the their agenda was a public hearing on a rooster noise ordinance. It was such a slow news day that Channel 8 even sent a reporter and cameraman to cover the proceedings.The issue was whether the Town should adopt and ordinance limiting the noise being made by roosters after complaints from neighbors. Several farmers from around East Haven showed up to defend their need for roosters. Including Larry Cifarelli, whose family has been farming in East Haven for 5 generations. After hearing from both sides the Town Council tabled the ordinance for the time being so a subcommittee can look into the matter and report back.

Here is the video from the public hearing.

Town Council 11/09/2010 Public Hearing from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

Regular Meeting:

Town Council 11/9/2010 Reg. Mtg. from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

PZC - 11/3/2010

Last night's PZC meeting was one of the longer non-BOE meetings I've been to in awhile. The public hearing portion started at 7PM and stretched on for 2 1/2 hours before the developer decided to pull the application for the quarry modifications after some opposition was voiced by Paul Hongo on behalf of the Mayor. Many residents also showed up and voiced skepticism of the entire project as anything more than a way to continue pulling rock off the site. Having seen the plans earlier in the day I am not surprised they felt that way. When I looked at the plans I could not understand how the proposal the developer was making made any kind of sense.

Instead of having the proposal defeated the developer voluntarily withdrew it. However, at the advice of the PZC chairman, they will be submitting a new proposal in the coming months. I admit to a certain surprise that this was defeated today since I spoke with several people on the Democratic Town Committee and in the Administration on election day and they were all in favor of the proposal. This is not over by a long shot. Expect a lot of horse trading between the developer and Town Hall over the next several months.

The meeting was so long that the video is going to be split into several parts which I will upload as they become available.

Part 1:

PZC 11/03/2010 Part 1 from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

Part 2:

PZC 11/3/2010 Part 2 from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

Part 3:

PZC 11/3/2010 Part 3 from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

Public Comment:

PZC 11/4/2010 Public Comment from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

Public Hearing Wrap-up:

PZC 11/3/2010 - Public Hearing Wrap from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

Regular Meeting:

PZC Regular Meeting - 11/3/2010 from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

Planning and Zoning - Quarry Again

The Foxon quarry is back on the agenda at the PZC tonight. There are a series of items on the agenda that will allow the quarrying to continue for years to come. From discussions at the polls yesterday with various people it looks like Town Hall is pushing for this to pass with the hope of increased tax revenue from the developer. Look for more on this after the PZC meeting tonight.

Apologies

Apologies to the readers of this blog for the missed probate call which happened last night. I relied on some unreliable numbers from another source from North Haven.

Probate Results

East Haven
Albis - 5,408
Brandt - 2,668

North Haven
Albis -
Brandt -

Total
Albis -
Brandt - winner

Results

Lawlor - 3,770 (wins)
Monaco - 2,951

Probate - East Haven Only
Albis - 5,408
Brandt - 2,668

Election Day - 5 PM Numbers

Voting continues along the expected line with 38.66% having voted by 5 P.M. Here is the breakdown by district:

1 1,105
1S 109
2 1,389
3 1,212
4 1,164
5 1,042
5S 62
Total: 6,073

Election Day - 3 P.M. Numbers

Voting continues along the expected line with 30.43% having voted by 3 P.M. Here is the breakdown by district:

1 849
1S 96
2 1,107
3 963
4 908
5 811
5S 54
Total: 4,788

Look for the normal voting surge later this afternoon when people stop to vote on their way home from work.

Election Day (cont. #4)

The District 1 voters at Tuttle School were treated to the presence of a large number of Democratic celebrities early this afternoon. Rosa DeLauro, Nancy Wyman, Dick Blumenthal, Mike Lawlor, and Mayor April Capone Almon all converged on Tuttle School around 2PM to shake hands and greet voters. Here are some pics of the celebrity gaggle:

Election Day (cont. #3)

The 1 P.M. voter numbers:

1 696
1S 73
2 865
3 766
4 693
5 638
5S 49
Total: 3,780 24.0%

The voter count is about 2-3% less than the last mid-term election in 2006. However, these numbers do not include the 500+ absentee ballots that have been received so far. It is on track to be a fairly normal election total in East Haven. Look for 2,000 +/- in each district when the voting is all done this evening.

The Registrars office is doing their normal excellent job in very cramped quarters. Since they have moved to the garage behind Town Hall there is not a lot of spare room for them.

Over at Overbrook School in District 4 Mike Albis was campaigning with his son. Here he is trying to convince, what appears to be a homeless man, to vote for him:

What a minute, on closer examination that looks like Joey Zullo. A well known figure about town who has, apparently, forgotten how to shave:

Election Day 2010 (cont. #2)

The 11 AM show 2,640 voters have gone to the polls already. We are well on the way to the expected 10-11K voters which will vote in East Haven by the time the polls close at 8PM. The voting at Deer Run seems a little hectic. However, considering both Districts 3 & 5 are voting at the same place that is to be expected. Here is the 11AM voting breakdown:

1S   52
1    491
2    585
3    546
4   484
5   446
5S  36
Total:  2,640  16.8%

One thing that I have noticed is the huge number of McMahon signs everywhere like this stretch on Hemingway Avenue:

At the polling places everything seems to be going along smoothly. Here is the bus from Mariners Point bringing residents to Momauguin School to vote around 11AM.

Election Day 2010 - (cont.)

The 10 AM numbers are in and here are the voter totals:

1S   30
2     441
3     418
4     366
5     342
5S  20
Total    1,617

The numbers for district 5 do not seem to be too out of whack even though the polling place has changed from Hayes School to Deer Run. Overall the numbers have picked up substantially from the 8AM numbers. Looks like people are running a little late this morning.

Deer Run School:

EHHS Sign telling voters to go to Deer Run:

Election Day - EHHS Sign from Edward Foley on Vimeo.

Election Day 2010 * now with 8 AM voting numbers*

Thank God the day has arrived. The day when the political ads finally stop. I am so very tired of McMahon, Blumenthal, Foley and Malloy ads on my television that I thought of throwing it out the window last week.

So far this morning I have been to District 4 where, at 7:45, there were 189 voters. I then swung by District 1 at Tuttle School. Mike Albis was out front campaigning with his son. There was one other person there campaigning for Monaco but it was subdued.

Mike Albis at District 1:

Monaco at 2nd District:

The 8AM voting numbers by district:
1S 10
1 170
2 223
3 188
4 170
5 156
5S 10
Total: 927 5.9% voted


Linda Monaco Campaigning in 2nd District from Edward Foley on Vimeo.


Go to the Town Website for the correct polling places.