Heading into this week, there were still a few spots up in the air as Norwalk Democrats plan on holding their convention on tonight. The mood is upbeat, Walter Briggs has already raised anymoney yet, but plans to raise some, and is largely viewed as an unknown challenger, except to historical preservationists who enthusiaticly envision future support of historic preservation issues under another Democratic administration. So the theme that is emerging from the Democratic side is “vision”. Matt “Mad Max” Breslow reports:

Most Democratic incumbents are seeking nominations to run for re-election, and party leaders said last week they like their chances of retaining majorities on the Common Council and Board of Education.
Democratic mayoral candidate Walter Briggs predicted that if he wins, he will carry the council and school board with him. Briggs, who will receive the party’s nomination tomorrow, said he feels “very good” about his chances of unseating Republican Mayor Richard Moccia.
“I think the quality of the candidates on the (Democratic) ticket is exceptional,” Briggs said. “We’ve got some fine young people. We’ve got some experienced people. And if we carry the day . . . we will have a wonderful group of people to move forward with.”
Democrats enjoy a 10-5 majority on the council and dominate the nine-member school board with seven seats.
There are no Republicans on the school board; the term of one of two unaffiliated members, Robert Polley, is expiring, but he hasn’t announced whether he’ll seek re-election. Although he is not a Democrat, Polley ran on the party’s ticket in 2003, when he was elected.

Not so fast, says Republican Mayor Dick Moccia.

But under his administration, Moccia said, Maritime Motors’ long-standing dispute over South Norwalk’s Reed-Putnam redevelopment project was settled, and Stanley Seligson was named preferred developer for the West Avenue revitalization project.

Land-disposition agreements have moved forward for West Avenue and Wall Street redevelopment, he said.

“That’s vision. That’s leadership,” Moccia said.

He said he put more police on the streets and school resource officers in the high schools; repaved roads; maintained the city’s AAA bond rating and kept tax increases reasonable; hired a full-time grants coordinator to bring in additional money; and fostered cooperation with city department heads.

“We have all these projects moving forward,” Moccia said. “What’s their (Democrats’) vision?”

Wells’ idea of vision is a rehash of the Alex Knopp years.

“I think people in Norwalk recognize that the Democrats have done a tremendous amount to move Norwalk forward in the right direction, and they want to keep that happening,” she said.

Despite a popular misperception that the Board of Education spends too much money, Wells said, the school district has improved “tremendously” under Superintendent Salvatore Corda and a Democrat-controlled school board.

By the time Democrat Alex Knopp became mayor in 2001, “years of neglect” under longtime Republican Mayor Frank Esposito had created “enormous” infrastructure problems, Wells said.

She said Knopp, who served two terms before losing to Moccia in 2005, chose to first focus on the schools, where roofs were leaking and textbooks were outdated. Now, Wells said, the city must address other areas of the infrastructure, such as the stormwater drainage system.

“I think we’re going to make it clear during the campaign that it’s the Democrats that really have a vision for Norwalk’s future - that basically (under) Moccia, nothing bad has happened and he has . . . carried on with a lot of the initiatives started by the Knopp administration,” Wells said. “But there’s no new vision for Norwalk.”

Ah, years or neglect. Skipping past the Democratic council’s responsibility in neglecting oh, say infrastrucutre, we should look at the neglect that the Republicans have foisted on the BOE. That’s why, Republicans go on record and say that holding Corda and Opdhal accountable is a good thing because “Norwalk pays 14k per student” and they don’t see “results.” and Democrats say that is neglectful. President Reagan had a good thought about that, “Trust, but verify.” And the BOE really, really needs to verify the fantasy budget numbers Corda spews.

Given that the Republican vision on display for the past 10 months has been a record that the Democrats can attack, or that they have co-opted a Democratic agenda, or that they have done nothing, take your pick the question remains about where the Democrats see the future of Norwalk. Some highlights:

In central Norwalk’s District A, Kenneth Slapin, vice chairman of the Democrats’ district committee, said a full slate of candidates will run but indicated he wasn’t ready to release the names.

School board member Susan Hamilton is seeking re-election.

The District B committee is recommending council members Carvin Hilliard and the Rev. Phyllis Bolden be nominated to run again. For school board, the committee recommended incumbent Migdalia Rivas, who took the seat of her sister, Judith Rivas, after the latter stepped down last year to care for a sick relative.

Each district committee recommends an at-large council candidate, and in South Norwalk’s District B, it’s Second Taxing District Commission member Michael Geake.

Geake said he’s running partly because he’s sick of watching the city’s infrastructure fall apart while neither party’s administration does anything about it.

“We’ve got . . . massive flooding in East Norwalk, we’ve got streets that are somewhat impassable, we’ve got buildings that need repairing, we’ve got parks that need fixing,” he said.

Geake is running to address those problems and has a plan to finance repairs: creating a citywide power authority to buy electricity to distribute to residents through the Connecticut Municipal Electrical Energy Cooperative. The move would cut residents’ electricity rates while raising up to $30 million per year, he said.

And at last we get to what I think at least, is the number one reason to determine if someone should be running for council. If you spend enough time at council meetings, you come to realize that the council serves as the bureaucratic layer that enacts the city business. Its not, by any means, all contract shuffling, but most of it is. Which is why, being able to read a contract, understand what a department needs versus what it wants, and understand what the city needs versus what it wants is a very good thing. In an ideal circumstance, it shouldn’t be at the city budget approval process that questions get asked about whether funds have been spent on infrastructure maintenance items for the very first time.

Those questions should be part of an ongoing process, of management oversight. Something that has been lacking for awhile, particular the last 5 years or so on the Public Works committee of the common council. The glaring reason, the ongoing flooding issues, have been known about since 2002, and yet its 2007 and contracts were just getting started. It shouldn’t take 5 years of excuses by any city department before an obvious action is taken. Michael Geake is absolutely right to point this out, except that its his party’s leadership that has dropped the ball on this issue.

Norwalk, like most towns in Connecticut, has competing needs. Funding infrastructure projects and maintenance is just one of them, and working within a balanced framework beyond 2 year time frames is sorely needed. Which makes the demands of the West ave. redevelopment project an interesting item. While other projects, notably Wall Street’s two have plans to acquire municipal parking lots, and pay the city for them, West Ave.’s has plans to ask the city for $104 million in “infrastructure” support. Of course the infrastructure cited in an Hour editorial:

This will require the issuance of $104 million in municipal bonds to finance roadwork, streetscaping,parking garages and other facilities related to the plan.

City officials assure us that the taxpayers will not be expected to pay off the bonds — this will come through revenues collected from parking garages and a special taxing district that will be created.

Funny how Westport ave. development is halted because the infrastructure of drainage has to be fixed. Older areas of Norwalk apparently have a pre-code hodgepodge of compliance with where storm water hookups are made, in the case of many of the flood afflicted areas, many houses drain storm water into the sewer system instead of the storm water draingage system. Having storm water, with its unpredictable surging, exacerbate sewer lines that may or may not be at capacity is not a good thing. Notably no district A candidates are known yet to reflect on this issue.

In the end though, Norwalk must stay competitive economically. Attracting commercial interests is important in balancing the the city services, and the tax base. Towns that rely heavily on residential property taxes turn into very unaffordable places to live. Norwalkers already feel the pinch of high property taxes, and carelessly raising those taxes without concern about whether the money raised is well spent is a quick way to driving out the middle class, small businesses, entrepreneurs and working families that contribute to the vibrancy of Norwalk’s community.

So it is going to be a good question to ask. Where is Norwalk headed? The question that voters must decide is who is out there asking it.

The District C committee is recommending that council members Kevin Poruban and Fred Bondi receive the nod to run again. Bondi currently represents the district, which is largely southeastern Norwalk, on the council, but he is being recommended as an at-large candidate. Poruban is being nominated to represent the district.

The other in-district council candidate the committee recommended is Laurel Lindstrom, founder and president of the nonprofit Eastern Norwalk Neighborhood Association.

Lindstrom said many issues that arise in her work with the association are similar to those that go before the council.

“It just seemed to be what was going to be the natural next step,” she said of running for council, “and (I) felt that I could , , , actually accomplish more, making this transition at this point.”

For school board, the District C committee is recommending Marina Rivera, who joined the board in 2002 but chose not to seek re-election in 2005. Rivera said she left the school board because she was tired and needed a break, and had health issues that are now resolved.

“Now, I’m ready to go back,” she said.

In northern Norwalk’s District D, the district committee recommended newcomer Anna Duleep, a member of Norwalk’s Youth Services Advisory Board, and Historical Commission member Gail Wall for in-district council seats.

Duleep said she worked on the unsuccessful campaign of Democrat Lex Paulson, a Norwalk resident, for state representative last year.

Campaigning door-to-door, Duleep said she realized many Norwalk residents shared her frustrations. Her priorities include city infrastructure, the school system - which she calls “our human infrastructure” - and historic preservation. There’s a “fundamental difference in values” between her and the Moccia administration, Duleep said.

“I prefer taking a long-term approach in our planning, and I don’t think that’s being taken into account,” she said. At-large council member Douglas Sutton is being recommended for re-election.

The District E committee recommended council members William Krummel and Gwen Briggs, wife of the Democrats’ mayoral candidate-in-waiting, for re-election. School board Chairwoman Jody Bishop-Pullan is being recommended for another run.

The committee is recommending Marc Bradley, “driver, assistant and right-hand man” to Ned Lamont in his unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate last year, for an at-large council seat, according to a committee news release.

Well if you’ve read this far, you’ll note that I took the Republican preview, swapped in the Democrats are ended up with a very similar post, one could say nearly identical.

For those keeping track of biases, I have enumerated them here.

I think that the city infrastructure has been totally neglected, and blame the lack of oversight by the common council for that. That would be controlled by Democrats.

I think the BOE has been neglectful in overseeing the BOE budget and has let Corda and Opdahl squander millions of tax payer dollars because they have not had to squeeze their budgets to reduce operating costs, control construction costs, and become more efficient. That has been a Democratic failure since they hold the majority of the council, but the Republicans could be doing more.

I don’t see a vision here by the Democrats, I see a massive ostrich sticking its collective head in the sand while real work remains to be done right now. In other words, action over vision please.

source: Advocate, Democrats ready to name their slateby Matt Breslow, July 23 2007

source: The Hour, Editorial July 16 2007