Legislative Priorities For Norwalk

Picking up where I last left off after glumly concluding that parts of Norwalk are a dump, I’ve decided to follow through on what legislatively should be done about it. So without the usual preamble:

Garbage

Just by scanning headlines, you’d think I’ve become preoccupied with garbage, and so has the city. The problem is that the big issue isn’t what to do with the transfer station. The big issue is what to do about the trash in our streets. It starts with the people who put out plastic bags for collection. These bags split open, are torn open, and opened. It really doesn’t matter how it happens it does. And the trash spills out and gets blown all over and produces the unsightly mess that we see on Wall Street, North Main Street, Commerce, Harbor Ave. Woodward Ave. Quintard, Van Zant, Fairfield Ave. and Flax Hill. These streets are just the ones that I see the most abuses on. There’s a whole other list of the side streets, the house numbers that I have as well. But while I can certainly keep taking pictures of garbage bags and emailing them to City Hall is not enough. Fines need to be levied and collected. Property owners and residents need to clean up their act. Literally.

The Common Council must change the ordinance that has DPW responsible for enforcing the garabge container ordianance and authorize someone else to do it. This is one of those it will pay for itself policy ideas. Hire a company to issue warnings, citattions and fines, following a warning leading to ever larger fines for repeat offenders and have them paid out of the fines issued. Set the contract to expire or renew based on revenue projection intervals. Add teeth that unpaid fines will revert to tax liens and lead to eventual sale of property.

Revenue Generation

Norwalk has to stop focusing on cutting services and budgets and start focusing on increasing services for those who want to pay. This idea that you can’t charge people for beach stickers, or recycling bins is so ridiculous. Yes, you can charge people, just do it in a way that serves the public well. I’ve mentioned it before, I would pay to fill out a form online to get my beach sticker mailed to me. If 10% of Norwalk’s residents do that at the $20 rate, that would be $20 x 4500 = $90,000. If you get a different colored sticker that means better parking spots, or a free beach chair rental, or whatever, I bet you’d get more. Then the city would have my email info and could start promoting events that happen at the beach, like concerts.

Same deal with the recycling bins. Make the order form to obtain one online. Capture the data of who is actual ordering them. Give a way for low income people to get a free one. Offer delivery service to people who want them and charge them for the service. Otherwise, limit the days and times when someone can pick one up.

Offer express services where if you pay for expedited processing, whatever city service you are using gets done faster. Bulky item pick up on Sunday? Charge for it. I think you get the idea.

Sidewalks

Another pet peeve. Snow removal. Garbage removal. Plant matter overgrowth. There are chronic offenders. Then there’s the broken sidewalks, crumbling asphalt, frost heave, whatever. There are parts of Norwalk, especially the business ares where sidewalks have become unusable. The Common Council needs to do two things. One, like the garbage issue, is to have the enforcement of the existing obstructed sidewalk ordinance be enforced and documented by an outsourced servicing company. Second, is to come up with a program that would either take over sidewalks that have clearly been abandoned by neglect, and repair or reinstall them. Sure it will get messy, property rights will be harmed, but there’s precedent for having the city do so. It doesn’t have to be all stick though. Put a tax credit in place for property owners to bring sidewalks up to the latest specifications, which means wide, concrete, grass edged to the curb types of sidewalks.

Cameras On Known Dumping Grounds

We all know where people like to drop off mattresses, refrigerators and toilets. The areas are the no mans lands of state property or city property or neglected property. So a surveillance camera or two that can snag the license plate of the dumper would be a good thing. But then you’d have to have legislation that would enable you to send a fine to the vehicle owner. That might need some state level legislative action.

Change The Charter

The Council failed to address the four year mayor term. Bring it back and set it to be enacted 5 years from now. But maybe more importantly, address the shortcoming of having a part time council with full authoritative powers. It’s not working. Either give up power to the executive branch, or address the term and pay structure of the council. I’d recommend that the 5 at large council members be full time, with the same term and salary as the mayor. That would leave 10 district representatives at part time status, with an increase in pay of course, and left at the 2 year term. Make the changes effective 5 years out, so that this council would be enacting change at least a couple of election cycles away.

Communication

Get into the 21st century. Text updates, Twitter updates, RSS feeds, project web sites. All forms of digital communication should be used, and the bare minimum legal notice mentality has got to stop.While individual departments are moving in this direction, overall the city needs to embrace the concept. It starts with the Council too. All committee meetings should be digitally recorded, audio is fine, and the resulting mp3 files should be posted to the city’s web site. An archive of the council meetings should be converted to youtube and posted on youtube. Citizens should be able to have email updates from any deaprtment. All this stuff is neither expensive, much of it is free, or time consuming.

I’m sure many of you have some ideas about what Norwalk’s legislative leaders should do. Feel free to add your thoughts.

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  • Diane C: just for starters…

    Bravo on the technology stuff – lets include having all committee and council meeting packets posted along with agendas on the website.
    Also, in terms of communications, instead of all of us having to do email address groups for all of the committees, council, agencies, boards and commissions, I think IT at city hall should provide address groups. For example, if I wanted to email the council, I could click on one link for all 15 members, with mayor on copy. Same for all committees, with staff on copy. Of course I can do this on my own, but it would be a nice service for the citizens.
    Plus, meeting minutes should show full membership, for example. Instead of just noting who was present, also note who was absent. This way all minutes always reference the full group.
    Plus, standardizing agenda and minutes formats would be very helpful.

  • Diane C: and another..

    Put it in this year’s budget to fix the darn acoustics in the council chambers. Can hear crap, and the audio that was used for channel 79 public access is inaudible.

    Also, standardize all public hearings to open with sign up sheets, chair reading “participation rules”. And of course, ALL committees should open or close meetings with public comment. It should not be the discretion of the chair whether to allow public input.
    Committees, agencies, commissions and boards should open with introduction of members whenever there are members of the public in the audience, or each group should have name plates.

    more to come

  • Diane C: more..

    Presentations to boards, council, committees, zoning, etc should be done in a manner that ensure the public audience has full view of the presented materials.

    Presenter handout packages should be available to the public, either in print at the meeting, on their website, or via request.

  • Barnstorm

    All your suggestions for revenue raising were thought-provoking. Some of them might actually work.Others might be worth a shot. Had to laugh at the surveillance camera idea though…I know that was tried in a few places, and just before the cameras were activated they were stolen.
    Since most of the dumping sites are somewhat removed from the mainstream, what assurances would we have that we wouldn’t just be continually replacing lost/stolen or vandalized technology?
    I still have no interest in paying for a beach sticker, even if it does come with a free beach chair.
    I’m all for enforcing the trash and sidewalk clearing ideas, but what if a resident obeys the law and cleans their sidewalk after a snowstorm, only to have a city snowplow bury it again? Who pays the fine there? I smell a lengthy and costly court battle there.
    The worst places that you mention all have one major theme in common…that is, a lot of renters and even more absentee landlords. Many of those renters do not speak or comprehend English, so trying to explain code to them is pretty futile. Who’s going to pay for all the detective work to dig up the names of the landlords?
    Then there’s the issue of people who place their trash out properly, only to have raccoons or seagulls distribute the contents all over the place. Good luck fining the seagulls.

  • turfgrrl

    Diane C: It would be trivial to have email groups as links on the City Web Site from a technology standpoint. Good idea. Also, a redesign of the format for all meeting minutes is a great idea. It can even be cost saving since with a more efficient layout and font selection you can reduce the page counts. Reducing paper costs is not a sexy item to look at, but the effect can be significant.

  • turfgrrl

    Barnstorm: Thanks. The dangers of stolen cameras withstanding, it would be interesting to see if it had an effect, even as a deterrent if from a practical standpoint.

    Good point about the plows dumping snow back on sidewalks. I think a complaint/appeal process can identify the issue. We all know what unshoveled snow looks like versus the pile that the plow leaves.

    Actually, of the streets I mentioned, it’s the businesses there that are the worst offenders rather than the residents. But again, the action needs to be against the property owner, not the resident.

    My rational for that is that it is the property owner who should be maintaining the property to the extent that tenants should be using facilities provided the landlord. The whole argument that the renters don’t care, or don’t speak English therefor are incapable of putting trash into garbage cans or dumpsters is silly. The problem is that we have property owners that think they can ignore the upkeep of their property because they are renting it out.

  • Secondhand Rose

    Aren’t the meeting minutes already “standardized”, since they’re being done by the same company? Seems a bit picayune to me to be so critical of the minutes. Do you have any idea how long it takes to actually do them? Not just sitting in the meetings taking notes, but then having to work at home to write them – it takes HOURS.

    The idea of naming the absent is good, although it should be obvious who was absent by noting who was in attendance. Usually the minutes also note who came in late and at what time.

    Presentations – I think any and all presentations ought to be limited to 1 to 2 people and not go on longer than 30 minutes. I can remember sitting in at least 6 presentations for Zullo’s Norden condo fiasco, several of which lasted until past 1am in the morning, and I can testify that these were some of the most boring presentations I ever heard. Each meeting’s presentation became longer than the last meeting’s presentation, droning on and on and on. One of these presentations took something like 3 hours just to explain, with at least 5 or 6 different people all making their own “mini” presentations within the larger one. One meeting was even held over to the next day so the public could finally speak because the presentation took so long it ate up the public’s time as well as its own.

    Presentations should be short, sweet, and to the point. Since presenters almost always hand out packets of info, most of the presentation should be in those packets and NOT used to beat the listeners over the head during the meeting. And info packets should be a “must-have” for ANYONE making a presentation, for public and commission or committee alike.

  • Diane C: more..

    SecondHand: Amen! I’m convinced that these multi-hour presentations are by design. There should absolutely be a 30 minute time limit, with all the minutia included in the handouts.
    And I hate that they get unlimited rebuttal time and the citizens get none! Citizens should get a 2 minute rebuttal because we are the tax payers and have the most vested interest in these votes. The other option is to NEVER have a vote on the same evening as presentations and public hearings. This would give the public an opportunity to rebut via emails to their councilors and board/commission members. I guess once a public hearing is closed they cannot technically consider any other public input, but one could raise enough questions in an email rebuttal to re-open the hearings (at least I think).
    As to the minutes, standardizing the format would actually make the secretarial services more efficient, not take more time. The minutes are pretty close to standards now. The agendas are a real mish-mash, but that is an internal problem!
    On absent members, if you do not already have all of the committees membership rosters memorized, simply looking at who attended does not help you to see who else is on the committee that didn’t attend. Some minutes note absentees, others don’t. Just asking for some standards across the board.
    Back to presentations for a minute: whenever a presentation is being made by departments or outside reps, whether via flip chart, story boards or powerpoint, they should always be set up to the audience advantage. Some committee and commission chairs are pretty good at ensuring public participation is comfortable – for example, if the meeting is in council chambers, the meeting members would reserve the front row of audience seats and move to the audience to view the presentation. This way they and the public have a comfortable and non-intimidating setting for viewing presentations. Other committee chairs simply ask the audience to come stand behind them or to the side if they want to see the presentation. I don’t think this is right. Citizens should neither have to stand nor be put on display to view a presentation.
    Finally, the newspapers and the city website should provide citizens with a “How They Voted” recap for council meetings. As of today, we are thankful for Turfgrrl who is recording and reporting council votes in a tally form. Eventually I’d like to see “how they voted” recaps for all the committees, commissions, boards and agencies. This is something the League of Women Voters has been working on and I hope the local newspapers and the city website can accommodate.
    Some of these may seem picayune to you, but as a regular attendee and participant, these are the small items that really start to irritate and frustrate residents. And all of these are really “low-hanging fruit” in terms of cost and manpower needed to improve things. Low cost, big bang for the buck, but only if you believe public participation is valuable & necessary, and only if you want to solicit and foster more participation!

  • Diane C: last one…

    Okay, to wrap up my agenda/minutes/public participation gripes, I have a perfect example on how a little improvement could go a long way:
    Take a little more space and have better agenda item descriptions!

    Some committees submit agendas with the agenda items and topics so cryptic that a citizen would be hard-pressed to figure out what the issue is. Here is a great example from this month’s Public Works Committee agenda (1/6/09):

    Business Portion
    Item #6 Discussion and potential action: three tons free at transfer station and yard debris site.

    Now, can you tell from this cryptic description what the issue is that they are going to discuss? Is it that they’d like to add a 3-ton waiver, delete a 3-ton waiver, change the 3-ton waiver or what? Can you tell from this if it is related to commercial vehicles, non-commercial trucks or residential vehicles?

    Turns out from the committee packet handout (which you have to go to city hall to obtain because they are not being posted on the website)that the city has some longstanding policy of waiving the first 3 tons of residental solid waste and yard debris at the transfer station. This has resulted in an estimated loss of revenue of $291k a year. It also gives the opportunity for abuse by commercial businesses who utilize personal vehicles to take advantage of the free 3 tons.
    Now, it doesn’t matter if you agree or disagree with having a 3-ton waiver. What matters is that you’d have no clue as to what this agenda item was all about unless you
    a) went to city hall to obtain a meeting package
    b) called Mr. Alvord or your common council person for an explanation.
    or
    c) decided to go to the meeting to find out what the item is all about.

    Using cryptic descriptions for agenda items can be deceptive, and in my opinion specific wording has been used on hot topic items. Also, I’ve seen instances in the past where the wording appears to be deliberately inflammatory to invoke participation or news coverage. Others, like a discussion item of the issue with mini-golf at Veterans Park, was written so generically, no one who wasn’t in the “mini-golf-gate” loop would have known it was on the agenda.

  • Mark Twain

    “If I Had More Time I Would Write a Shorter Letter”

  • Diane C:

    ROFLMAO – Thanks Mr. Twain. Guilty as charged.
    So much for my own New Year’s resolution to be more succinct. Couldn’t even make it a week.

    But now we’ll be adding Twainisms all night:

    “Coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”

    (Disputed origin, but very funny nonetheless)

  • Anonymous

    Most boring night I ever had was reading Diane C. rants.

  • a little respect

    Nice #12-everyone has a right to rant or summarize. Long or short, rant or not. At least she has constructive thoughts and criticsms. What have you given to the conversations? Apparently you don’t feel that what is being said here is important so why not go to another post where your interests lie? There are people in Norwalk who have interest in how things are done. From budgets to BOE to homlessness, to safety and many other subjects. If you fail to understand that then perhaps sometime you should go through this blog from start to finish and see just how many people are concerned and how many subjects they have touched on since the begining. Some may be boring, too long, off target etc. yes, but a little respect for the writer would be nice.

  • Diane C: ouch

    Thanks #13. I do tend to rant but thought myself entertaining! Tough room sometimes. TG picked a topic that has been brewing with me for while, and well, it just all has to come out at some point….

    #12- TG has no cover fee here or else I would refund your money. Perhaps I have found a new occupation by helping insomniacs fall asleep!