Tonight there was a full house at the Common Council meeting, meaning no council members was absent, but Mary Roman, the City Clerk was absent since she is in Italy competing at a seniors Olympics event. The Hour did a nice profile of the event earlier in the Month.
After a moment of silence for 9/11 the council worked over the last minutes with minor corrections. It seems ages since I was last at a council meeting, and the night had a sort of a back to school flavor.
Mayor Moccia withdrew to the name of Karen Tobin as Human Relations Commission, because, as he explained that her husband is running for political office. Must be that election season reasoning, one that supercedes common sense and replaces it with hyper partisan sense. I suspect that someone will make hay with the Briggs and Briggs team running for mayor and council in some delightful yet arcane recounting of votes concerning planning issues that perhaps should not have been taken without disclosure.
Speaking of Briggs, Gwen that is, she spoke in favor of Michael Stewart being promoted to Tax Assessor. She mentioned that it was nice to see someone being promoted from within the department. Phyllis Bolden also said the same thing. I wonder if both of them have that same fond feeling when it comes to Board of Education hires.
The mayor did mention that the 9/11 ceremony held at (City Hall?) this morning was reported on NPR this morning. Before the consent calendar, the mayor reminded everyone that Kathryn Hebert lost her brother that day, and that many cities are no longer holding these types of ceremonies. The mayor was appropriately solemn and statesman like. Mike Coffey spoke briefly about the ceremony as well.
And then it was back to the business. Coffey reading the consent calendar, and the rest of the council doing their best first day back school impressions.
I spoke to Lt. David Wrinn about the Segways that I saw at the Oyster festival right before the meeting. Apparently the guys at the Segway booth loaned the Segway to the police for the event. It was cool to see Norwalk police on them and for a moment at least then, I was hoping that Norwalk has gotten cool all of a sudden and managed to get a grant to get them. Alas, it turned out that was not so.
The attendance tonight was the usual assortment of political flunkies, flunkie wannabes and the various people here to see what was happening with particular issues. It did not appear that anyone signed to speak during the public comment section.
Mike Coffey explains that he met with the Democratic caucus and spoke to the Secretary of state Susan Bysiewicz. Coffey wanted to make sure that the council could change the ballot as needed. He said that they needed to change the order of who appears on the ballot.
This was an issue because the number of candidates will require that the ballot be printed on two sides. There was some confusion as to what the order was, and after they resolved that Hempstead remarked that it was a Chicago ballot. Being from Chicago I got the joke, but it took awhile for the rest of them to figure it out. Hempstead was referring to a sample ballot that was handed out with the names being all dead people. Matt Miklave said it was the voters that were dead in Chicago that were voting, not the candidates. I was waiting for the next line of vote early and vote often, but no one went down that path. The ending order that they voted on was: Mayor, treasurer, city sheriff town clerk, council at large, district city council in district, board of Ed, selectmen, constables, taxing districts.
The consent calendar as usual, had the various items that needed to be yanked. This time a DPW item was yanked by McQuaid and he asked for a 5 minute recess to discuss with his caucus. They looked very serious as they filed into the room. The Democrats all hung out near their seats and seemed not so serious.
The hullabaloo concerns item 13a and b, which was the awarding of a contract to Brunalli construction for the Reed Street Extension Railroad Underpass. Apparently, Brunalli was not the lowest bidder, something that was discussed in an earlier Hour report. The end result was the McQuaid asked that the item be tabled and referred back to the law department. 6 people opposed it (Matt Miklave, Kevin Poruban, Doug Sutton, Gwen Briggs, Bill Krummel and Phyllis opposed it, but it passed.
McQuaid said afterwards that there were concerns raised about the process of choosing the bidder and that the lowest bidder on the project was indicating that they might appeal the award. A referral to corporate counsel is what they have done in the past. Hal Alvord was apparently distressed that the council didn’t approve the authorization. As explained, the money to be used for the project was coming from the state, however, and with bonding issues tied up between the legislature and the Governor’s office it doesn’t look like anything could have been done. Perhaps Alvord was planning on using other funds, but that did not get communicated to the council members.
McQuaid also announced that it was Joanne Romano’s birthday. So Happy Birthday Joanne.
Then Herb Grant explained that voting procedure on the next item. They were to vote on rejecting the Arbitration award on Successor Contract between the Fire Department and City. A vote No meant that were voting to accept the contact. It passed 14-1.
Coffey N
Poruban N
Roamno N
Sutton N
Grant N
McQuaid N
Bolden N
Hillaird N
Bondi N
Kydes N
Hempstead N
Strnaiti N
Briggs N
Krummel N
Miklave Y
And then they adjourned. Afterwards I tracked down a rumor that an ethics complaint was about to be filed on Nick Kydes. Kevin Poruban, who it should be noted is running against Nick Kydes, is filing a complaint that Kydes has violated the ethics code by voting on the present Ethics ordinance. Based on Kydes announcement that he would not act improperly in the future is the justification that he may have acted improperly by not disclosing his brother’s property interests in the Wall Street redevelopment plan.
Kydes vs. Poruban will surely make the district C races even more lively with this hanging out there. Council members were reluctant to discuss how this will be handled, but it is probably going to some sort of hearing under the old rules.
