Press release from the ChooseCOO group:
UNIONS AND MAYOR MAKE CONVINCING CASE FOR COO
If ever there was a time for a COO, this is it. Local union leaders, by their actions, have made a convincing case for the COO (aka ‘Chief Operating Officer’ or ‘City Manager’).
The Mayor needs help. This is a given. Our present Mayor and past mayors have acknowledged this fact. However, while the unions and their Mayor are saying in words that they are all about the taxpayer, their recent actions paint a different picture.
Local union leadership is against the COO, but all they want to talk about is the cost, not the benefits. In fact they are running the anti-COO campaign. Of course they’re against the COO – do you really think they want someone hired to focus on the efficient delivery of City services? Do you really think they are going to put the best interest of the taxpayers ahead of their own self-interest? Let us give you an example: A new city committee is looking into the possibility of using money from overfunded pension accounts to pay for retiree health benefits instead of asking taxpayers to pay the tab – a move that would lower property taxes by nearly half a mill. Nine of the 19 members of this new ‘GASB 45 Committee’ are union representatives and some others are friendly to the unions. Do you think union leaders are ready to throw their support behind a decision that will save taxpayers $1.8 million now and much more in the future? Wouldn’t that alone more than pay for the COO position?
Further, union leaders have the Mayor in their hip pocket. How do we know? Well, first the Mayor loaded this GASB 45 Committee with union members. Then, the Mayor issued a press release parroting the unions’ argument against the COO. Do you believe that his actions are not politically motivated? Whose turf is he protecting? Do you think there is any conflict of interest here? After all, when the COO position is introduced, doesn’t that lessen his job duties and, perhaps, his pay?
This community may be facing the greatest economic challenges in our history in the coming years. Our present system is laden with cronyism and lacking accountability. Taxpayers, this is your chance to say, “Enough politics!” and get the professional leadership we need -- someone with the expertise of a Chief Operating Officer – by voting ‘Yes’ to Question #5 on Election Day.
With nearly as many voters its rolls as ever before, Bristol may see busier polling places than it has in decades.
But election officials, who have been figuring out how to deal with the crush for months, anticipate few problems at the polls Tuesday.
“We spent a lot of time planning for this,” said Bob Badal, the Democratic registrar.
There are 34,708 registered voters this year in Bristol, more than 84 percent of them Democrats or independents. Republicans trail badly.
Still, city GOP chairman T.J. Barnes said that his party has the potential to do well in Bristol this year, with its emphasis on keeping state Rep. Bill Hamzy in office and getting newcomer Jill Fitzgerald to join him.
Voters will get the last word on a number of political contests, from the presidential slugfest between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain on down to uncontested local races.
They’ll also decide whether to change Bristol’s charter to create a chief operating officer as well as four non-controversial charter change questions. There’s also a hotly debated state issue on the ballot about whether to require a constitutional convention.
The 1st District congressional race features U.S. Rep. John Larson, an East Hartford Democrat, and two long-shots, Republican Joe Visconti of West Hartford and Green Party champion Stephen Fournier of Hartford.
The most watched race among Bristol’s political insiders is in 77th District.
Fitzgerald is locked in what appears to be a tight race there against Democrat Chris Wright in northeastern Bristol. The two are vying to succeed state Rep. Ron Burns, a Republican who opted not to seek re-election after a single term in Hartford.
Hamzy is scrambling to fend off Democrat Jacqui Denski in the 78th District, which includes Chippens Hill.
In the 79th District, state Rep. Frank Nicastro is facing a token challenger, Republican David L. Norton, who stepped in at the last minute to replace Derek Jerome, who apparently committed suicide last month to escape financial woes.
In the 22nd District, which includes fewer than 1,000 voters in the Forestville section of town, state Rep. Betty Boukus, a Plainville Democrat, is facing a challenge from Republican Scott Saunders.
State Sen. Tom Colapietro, a Bristol Democrat who has represented the 31st District since 1992, doesn’t have an opponent for the first time in his career. The district includes Plainville, Plymouth and part of Harwinton as well as Bristol.
To deal with the many voters expected to show up at the polls, Badal said there are going to be two check-in lines for voters at the precincts.
Moderators at each precinct have also worked up floor plans to speed people through as quickly as possible, Badal and Republican Registrar Ellie Klapatch said.
Klapatch said that it will help if voters are prepared to show identification at the check-in tables.
She also said that the machines and ballots are ready to go.
“Everything’s running smooth,” said Klapatch, who’s been supervising elections in Bristol since 1971.
The precincts with the most voters this year are 79A, 78A, 79B, 79C and 77A, the registrars said. All of them have more than 4,000 registered voters, Badal and Klapatch said, so voters there should give themselves some extra time.
The polls are open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Polling Places for the Election will be as follows:
Council District One
77A– Edgewood School – 345 Mix Street
77B – Northeast School - 530 Stevens Street
77C – Mountain View School – 71 Vera Road
Council District Two
78A – Chippens Hill Middle School – 551 Peacedale St.
78B – Clara T. O’Connell School – 120 Park Street
79A – South Side School – Tuttle Road
Council District Three
79B – American Legion – 22 Hooker Court
79C – Greene Hills School – 718 Pine Street
77D & 22 - Stafford School – 212 Louisiana Avenue
Note: An earlier version of this entry provided a bigger number for the registered voters tally because of an error at the registrars' office. It is now correct.
Faced with the need to pump as much as $8 million annually into a fund for health care for retired city workers, officials are eyeing three potential options.
One is to continue a ‘pay as you go’ tradition that is currently costing taxpayers about $1.8 million annually, though that number could rise tenfold within a decade.
Another is to renegotiate the post-employment benefits that municipal workers receive to lower the cost, perhaps by reducing the 10-year period that worker remain eligible for full health care coverage.
Finally, a new city committee is eyeing the possibility of tapping into overfunded pension accounts in order to use some of the excess to pay the tab – a move that would immediately lower property taxes by nearly half a mill.
City Councilor Ken Cockayne, who pushed for the committee’s creation, said that shifting the money is “the one drastic step” City Hall could take to help ease the burden on taxpayers.
After hearing the options laid out in detail by city Comptroller Glenn Klocko this week, the new GASB 45 Committee, named for an accounting rule, plans to study the information carefully before taking any action.
“We should probably take some time and go through this,” said T.J. Barnes, a member of the new panel.
Mayor Art Ward said the committee will make its recommendations to the Joint Board, which consists of city councilors and Board of Finance members. It will have the last word, the mayor said.
Klocko said the city needs $71.7 million to cover the anticipated future costs of the post-employment benefits other than pensions. He called the figure “the problem child we’re dealing with.”
It has a trust fund established to cover that tab, but “the problem is we don’t have any funding” for it, Klocko said. The trust fund is empty.
Klocko said that bond rating agencies want to see that Bristol has a plan for dealing with the issue, not necessarily a complete solution to the problem.
Continuing the ‘pay as you go’ practice, the comptroller said, “is going to get very difficult” because rising costs will eventually make it almost impossible for taxpayers to cover the yearly tab.
In Norwalk, which adopted a plan recently, officials plan on putting $2 million a year in tax revenues into a trust to pay the cost. They also renegotiated the benefits union members get in order to lower the overall expense.
Under Internal Revenue Service rules, the city would have to leave at least 120 percent of the expected pension fund needs intact in the existing trust. It could only tap money over and above that figure.
This week, the city’s fire and police pension funds are still so flush that the city could easily meet the IRS rules to tap into them. There’s also enough in the general city trust fund to dip in on a yearly basis.
Overall, the three trust funds totaled $426 million as of Tuesday. They reached a low of $412 million at the low end of the market this fall. They have been as high as $550 million last spring.
Claiming that “Mad Dog is back,” city Councilor Ken Cockayne today blasted the mayor for being a 'coward' who's in the pocket of the unions.
Cockayne decried Mayor Art Ward’s decision to put so many union representatives on a new panel looking into the possibility of tapping excess pension cash to lower property taxes.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” Cockayne said. “The unions basically control the whole board. This is not a fair and balanced committee.”
Nine of the 19 members of the committee are union representatives and some of the others are friendly to the unions.
“When I looked at the list, I almost fell off my chair,” Cockayne said.
Cockayne said the pro-union leaning of the panel is “another example of Ward pandering to the people who got him elected.”
Cockayne also took a shot at Ward for failing to put himself on the panel.
“Removing himself from the issue is just cowardly,” Cockayne said. He said the mayor ought to be the panel’s chairman so he would have a stake in its decision.
Ward “has really stacked this committee knowing the outcome,” Cockayne said.
“Here’s an example of direct savings for the taxpayers and we know what their answer is going to be,” Cockayne said.
He said the unions won’t agree to transfer money from the pension accounts to cover their own health care without getting something extra in return.
Cockayne said the decision about how to handle the pension excess is “a management issue” and “not a collective bargaining issue.”
There’s no reason to give unions so many seats at the decision-making table, Cockayne said.
Ward said this week that he wanted each of the city’s unions to have a representative so they would all understand the issues at stake and know what’s going on.
Here's the committee membership list:
Phyllis Amodio (public health union)
T.J. Barnes (Retirement Board)
Cliff Block (City Council)
Greg Boulanger (Local 818)
Dan Carter (BPSA)
Dale Clift (city attorney)
Ken Cockayne (City Council)
Steve DeVaux (school business manager)
Diane Ferguson (personnel director)
Jack Hines (Fire Board)
Paul Keegan (Local 1338)
Glenn Klocko (city comptroller)
Peter Kot (police union)
Chad Lockhart (Local 2267)
Rich Miecznikowski (finance chairman)
Peter Munn (fire union)
Collen Ryder (education secretaries)
Mayra Sampson (Local 233)
Bill Veits (city treasurer)
One month ago, Bristol native Matt Lavoie lay wounded on the ground in Iraq, his arm shattered and gushing blood, screaming for his buddy Lennox.
"I remember everything getting cold and blurry, real foggy," Lavoie said Wednesday. "I almost died right there."
But Lavoie, a 2005 Bristol Eastern High School graduate, pulled through from his Sept. 30 injuries caused by a roadside bomb.
Though he remains in pain, and can barely walk, he is on the mend at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the nation's capital.
"He's got a long way to go," said his mother, Pam Lavoie, who's been at his side most of the time since he arrived back in the United States on Oct. 4. "It's a very bad injury."
Matt Lavoie, a U.S. Army corporal, said he signed up for the infantry after working a number of dead-end jobs after high school. He said he wanted to be a soldier and fight for his country.
Though he said "I wish I'd never signed that paper," he also said that he would give anything "to go back to my boys in Iraq" because he misses them so much.
Lavoie said he spent "my whole tour outside the wire" in Iraq, going on patrols.
On the day the bomb went off, he said, his unit had gone on a patrol at a fish farm and taken roads that appeared "perfectly safe."
But during the 90 minutes the troops were checking things out, Lavoie said, "one of them little slimeballs" put an explosive device along the road they'd taken.
On the way back, Lavoie drove the lead vehicle, which had a mine roller attached to its front that's designed to set off roadside bombs before the truck itself reaches them.
"It's supposed to blow up before you get to it," Lavoie said.
But about a mile and a half down the road, "I heard the biggest explosion of my life," Lavoie said, and realized that he was six feet in the air.
The truck crashed down at a 45-degree angle and the steering wheel went through his leg, he said.
"I honestly don't know what happened to my arm," Lavoie said, but his right arm was "completely shattered" and bleeding profusely.
"All I heard was everyone screaming" to get out, Lavoie said, but he couldn't move. He did, however, manage to shift around so the gunner could step on his head to escape the wreckage.
"I actually yanked the steering wheel out of my own leg," Lavoie said, and then scooted out himself.
He lay on the dirt, he said, and yelled for his best friend, Lennox, who rushed to his side to help with the bleeding.
As he began to feel cold and groggy, Lavoie said, he thought about "friends and family back home" and snapped to life again. He said he nearly died three times that day, including once on the 15-minute helicopter evacuation to the hospital.
His parents heard from the Army that their son had suffered injuries to his "lower and upper extremities," leaving them worried about all sorts of possibilities.
Four hours later, Matt called from the hospital in Baghdad.
He told his mother that he had "busted my arm."
She asked if it was in a cast and whether he was OK.
"No, Mom, I'm not OK," he answered, explaining that his right arm was shattered.
"I freaked," Pam Lavoie said Wednesday.
But through 10 surgeries so far – with at least a couple more likely – doctors have begun to repair the damage, putting in a titanium rod, attached muscle and skin from other parts of the body and carving out dead and dying flesh and muscle.
Lavoie's mother said she's been able to be at her son's side most of the days he's been at the hospital because her employer, the Plainville-based Gems Sensors & Controls, has been generous and kind.
"I love being here with him," she said, even though "it's the worst that a mother wants to go through" to see her son in so much pain.
Lavoie said he is "tired of being here" and determined "to work my ass off" to get better so he can leave.
The former high school wrestling team captain said he managed to "walk like a little penguin" for four feet this week to a chair in his room. His next goal is walk to the toilet.
But he's got his eyes set on a full recovery as fast as he can do it.
"I want to be in Bristol," he said. "That's my home."
Fundraiser to help Lavoie
A fundraiser has been scheduled for Nov. 13 to help Corp. Matt Lavoie and his family cope with the expenses related to his care.
Organized by his mother's boss, Carrie Tonon, the $15-a-person pasta dinner fundraiser is slated for 5 to 7 p.m. at Nuchies.
Lavoie called it a "very nice" gesture.
"I wish I could go," he said, adding that he probably can't.
But Pam Lavoie is hoping they can rig up a webcam so at least he can make some sort of appearance.
State Rep. Frank Nicastro, a former mayor who put in 30 years in the military, said that Lavoie is "a young man who placed his life on the line for his country" and deserves the help of the entire community as he tries to recover.
Nicastro said that it is "well worth the money" for everyone to attend the pasta supper and to lend a hand to a brave young soldier.
"This family could use all of our community support," Mayor Art Ward said.
Tickets will be available at the door or by emailing Tonon at tonon@snet.net or ctonon@gemssensors.com.
*******
It’s been a quarter century since so many people wanted to vote in Bristol.
At the close of business Monday, with one more day left to register to vote, the city voters rolls totaled 34,362 – with almost 1,200 of them signing up in the past three weeks.
“It’s like a zoo,” Republican Registrar Ellie Klapatch said Monday.
Voters have until 8 p.m. tonight to sign up to vote at the registrars’ office on the first floor of City Hall.
Klapatch said that given the expected swarm on Tuesday, the final registration tallies for Bristol probably won’t be done until Thursday.
But already they show the highest number of registered voters since the early 1980s. They far exceed the registration numbers of any presidential race in 20 years.
For the first time in a couple of years, the number of unaffiliated voters – those who didn’t pick a political party – exceeds the number of Democrats.
Democratic Registrar Bob Badal said there was a jump in the number who signed up as unaffiliated voters.
“Now they know it’s a general election,” he said, and they don’t need to pick a party as they would in a primary.
“The young people know what’s going on,” Badal said. He said he hopes the new voters will vote in all the races, not just the presidential contest.
There’s an unmistakable Democratic tide to the overall picture.
Since October 8, there have been 181 new Republicans added to the voter rolls. The Democrats, on the other hand, have added 774. That’s a 4-to-1 margin.
The number of unaffiliated voters stood Monday at 14,367 while Democrats trailed slightly with 14,316. Republicans claimed 5,635. There are 44 people registered to minor parties.
The election is Tuesday, Nov. 4.
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“Foreclosure isn’t just a problem for individual homeowners,” said Senator Colapietro. “It hurts property values and strains communities, which is a problem for all of us. The state has programs available that may help people who are having trouble with their mortgage, but they have to know where to look and who to call; and it’s not always easy to figure it all out.”
Programs for individuals and families facing possible home foreclosure are available through several agencies. Connecticut resident can also contact the state Department of Banking’s Mortgage Foreclosure Assistance Hotline at (877)472-8313.
The Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA) offers three financial assistance programs for homeowners who qualify:
Connecticut Fair Alternative Mortgage Lending Initiative and Education Services Program (CT FAMILIES): CT FAMLIES loans are for individuals and families who bought any current home using an Adjustable Rate Mortgage, or who had an Adjustable Rate Mortgage and refinanced into another Adjustable Rate Mortgage. You must reside in the property as your primary residence and must meet certain income guidelines to qualify.
Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program (EMAP): A program for homeowners who have received a Notice of Foreclosure dated on or after July 1, 2008, the EMAP loan is available to eligible homeowners who are not able to meet their monthly mortgage payment obligation due to extenuating circumstances. CHFA provides assistance in paying a portion of the homeowner's monthly mortgage payment for a maximum of five years.)
Homeowner Equity Recovery Opportunity Program (HERO): HERO is a $30 million program that allows CHFA to purchase mortgages directly from lenders and place eligible borrowers on an affordable payment schedule for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. To qualify for HERO assistance, borrowers must have made an effort to meet financial obligations, have a sufficient and stable income, have the legal title to the mortgaged property and reside in it as their permanent residence, show an accounting for their cash flow and agree to attend in-person financial counseling at a CHFA-approved agency.
The General Assembly also created the statewide Mortgage Crisis Job Training Program through The Workplace, Inc., which offers customized employment services, job training scholarships, job placement assistance, financial literacy, credit counseling and referrals to other needed services for borrowers who are at least 60 days past due on their mortgage payments on their primary residence in Connecticut and have a household income of less than $120,000. There is no cost to qualified participants.
To for more information on financial assistance programs or to contact CHFA, visit www.chfa.org or call (860)721-9501.
For more information on the Mortgage Crisis Job Training Program or to contact The Workplace, Inc. call toll-free (866)683-1682 or visit www.workplace.org/mortgage.asp.
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With the state facing a budget gap this year that tops $300 million – and is likely to be much higher next year – the candidates for Bristol’s 77th District have different ideas about how to deal with the red ink.
Republican hopeful Jill Fitzgerald said that among the ideas worth pursuing are an early retirement program for state workers, a shift to a paperless bureaucracy and pulling the plug on about $300,000 worth of pagers and beepers carried mostly by highly paid state supervisors who also carry cellular phones paid for by taxpayers.
Democratic contender Chris Wright offered no specifics, but said that Gov. Jodi Rell’s plan to deal with the current shortfall “has merit and should be considered.”
“It is very difficult for the state to obtain significant savings in the short term with spending cuts without seriously impacting vital services and local property taxes,” Wright said.
The two candidates are vying on Nov. 4 for the northeastern Bristol House seat that Republican Ron Burns has held for the past two years. Burns, who defeated longtime Democratic incumbent Roger Michele two years ago, is stepping down after a single term.
Wright said that in terms of dealing with budget, “the bottom line is that the state has spent too much money for years, and it is times like these when those spending habits catch up with us.”
Wright said that private companies get can save money in the short run through layoffs, “but the state faces more demands for services in hard times, and layoffs would only increase the workload of the state employees who provide those services.”
Also, Wright said, “since the state pays unemployment compensation only after a layoff and must pay terminated employees for any accrued vacation and sick time, savings generally occur only in the second year.”
Wright said that new programs the state needs – which are often shoved aside as too costly during hard times - may take priority over older ones that are already in place.
“It is not always true that new programs are not as important as programs which already exist,” he said.
“As the needs of society change, so must the services which the state does and does not provide,” Wright said.
Fitzgerald said that she stands with the state House Republicans in their call for the Democratic-controlled legislature “to rescind a request for a nearly 8 percent spending increase over the next two fiscal years.”
She said that state agencies need to tighten their belts and that there should be “no budget increases.”
“Just like families are being forced to prioritize and cut spending,” Fitzgerald said, “I am a proponent of this in the state. I don’t believe that tax increase should be imposed in the midst of an economic downturn.”
She said improvements can wait “until better times” return.
Fitzgerald said an early retirement program would save the taxpayers $163 million and shifting to a paperless bureaucracy would save more than $10 million annually.
“In this day and age when almost every document is reproduced online, we need to consider a policy to get as close to a paperless state government as possible,” Fitzgerald said, adding “this is a great environmental choice as well.”
Dumping the beepers and pagers, Fitzgerald said, would eliminate “a glaring example of wasting taxpayers’ money.”
State lawmakers serve two-year terms and earn $28,000 for their part-time positions.
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Some people have likely already cast a vote that won’t be counted.
The apparent suicide of Republican state House candidate Derek Jerome in the 79th District forced election officials to reprint13,300 ballots for voters in his district to use at the polls on Nov. 4.
But it was too late for those who have already voted by absentee ballot.
Republican Registrar Ellie Klapatch said that absentee votes for Jerome, whose name appears on the first run of ballots, won’t be counted.
Election officials also had to send the counting machine memory cards to a Massachusetts company to have them reprogrammed to take into account the change in the 79th District’s Republican candidate.
The GOP’s decision to name a successor candidate for the position, David L. Norton, had no impact on the necessity to reprint ballots, officials said.
“They were going to have to reprint all the ballots anyway,” said city Republican Chairman T.J. Barnes.
Barnes and Klapatch said that if the party hadn’t named Norton to take Jerome’s place, the new ballots would simply have had an empty slot for the Republicans in the race against incumbent state Rep. Frank Nicastro, a Democrat.
It isn’t clear how much the scramble to fix the ballots and reprogram memory cards is costing taxpayers, though it certainly reaches into the thousands of dollars.
Klapatch said that the federal government is picking up the tab for ballots this year – part of a national effort to modernize voting – so city taxpayers don’t have to cover the expense, as they normally would.
She said she has “no ideas” how much the reprinting will cost.
It’s not clear yet whether the absentee ballots that include Jerome’s name can be counted by machines or if they’ll have to be counted by hand, Klapatch said. The city clerk and the secretary of state are looking into it.
Klapatch said that the changes required “a lot of extra work” by many officials, including her office and the city clerk’s office.
But, she said, she appreciates “the team effort” by everyone involved to speed the work along so that it would be done in plenty of time for Election Day.
