Somehow I missed this Advocate article Tuesday morning. The idea of the flood erosion control board out of Sunday’s debate spawned a new tributary of campaign rhetoric. First the Tim Stelloh article:

With flooding a central issue in the campaign, a suggestion raised by Democratic Common Council nominee Gail Wall at Sunday’s debate is for the city to resurrect the Flood and Erosion Control Board.

Wall said such a board - which she called vital to fixing Norwalk’s flooding problems - would allow the city to apply for state Department of Environmental Protection funds.

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In one of the more bizarre twists coming out of the binding vote today, $2.5 million is headed to Bethel & Danbury despite opposition from current Bethel First Selectman Bob Burke. In the waning days of the bonding package, State Senator David Capiello-R Danbury removed both the $500k for a library expansion in Bethel and $2 million for Danbury to use towards purchasing Terre Haute, undeveloped land in Bethel. Capiello maintained in his caucus that it was his funding requests to cut. The funding was actually requested by State Rep. Jason Bartlett-D.

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This has to be one of the stealthiest campaign seasons ever. Tonight mayor Moccia is conifdent he won’t need a full 10 minutes to chat with East Norwalk residents about the race. I think that sums up the campaign thus far, and that rests with the challenger, Walter Briggs who hasn’t exactly come out of the gate with a strong message. Like Mr. Peabody, I took a trip in the wayback machine to dig up some newsy news from 2005.

Let’s take a look back at what The Hour was writing about 2 years ago by Patrick Linsey:

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It’s been shaken and stirred, more like a snow glob than a martini, but it looks as if a revided bonding package is on its way to Rell, Jodi Rell to sign. From the Courant:

The bill authorizes borrowing $2.9 billion in general obligation bonds for fiscal years 2008 and 2009, plus an additional $950 million in bond authorizations for major renovations and improvements to the Connecticut State University campuses. The $2.9 billion covers everything from local school construction projects to farmland preservation.

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Sometimes it helps to look outside of the Norwalk universe to see what other issues are being chatted about. I picked up this story in the “dumbed down” generation, because it seemed somewhat fitting, after a few days of the BOE debate swirling in my head, that I needed to get a refresher, a reason to to keep writing about the BOE and why its important to vote for reform, vote for change and vote for anything but the status quo. I found it.

American kids, dumber than dirt
Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots
in U.S. history

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First The Hour’s report by Robert Koch:

Five Democrats and three Republicans running for the Common Council found much common ground on issues affecting Norwalk during a candidates’ forum at Mill Hill Historic Park Sunday afternoon.

About two-dozen people — almost all Democrats — sat on wooden benches in the Norwalk Town House off East Wall Street in what one debate participant described as a “town meeting.”

During the debate, titled “Burning Issues 2007,” incumbents and newcomers answered and rebutted each other on six questions leftover from an Oct. 15 candidates’ forum at City Hall.

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Bill Krummel, as chair of the council’s Public Power Committee, is calling for a meeting the last week before the election to discuss how to get from point A, the idea to point B, doing something about it.

The chairman of Norwalk’s Public Power Committee has invited 2nd and 3rd Taxing Districts officials to City Hall Tuesday night to share their experiences in the municipal power realm.”I want to find out more about the two districts in the city that distribute their own power and generate some power, and see if we can’t work out something that would use their base and expand it to the city,” said Councilman William M. Krummel, chairman of the committee.

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Talks are nearing an end in the long running, try since 2005, dispute between the DOT and the Merritt Parkway Conservancy. The DOT may be warming to the idea that they create a cloverleaf interchange. For some reason the DOT is against the idea of cloverleaf interchanges.

The new design is a “slightly altered” version of the blueprint the conservancy has advocated for and “the DOT is giving it a serious look,” agency spokesman Judd Everhart said. DOT “cannot commit to it without further evaluation and consideration of safety and efficiency issues.”

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Well the debate was held and on a fabulous Sunday, the old town hall’s walls echoed with the debate and discussion of an old fashioned, entirely acoustic, debate. One of the downsides of accepting the challenge to “put on a show” in less than 7 days, is that you can’t organize and blog at the same time. So I’m not going to write what I thought about how it went, but will leave the comments to you to engage in that discussion. The media will run stories, undoubtedly, tomorrow as well. I hope that we all continue the energetic discussion of the future of Norwalk and how all these issues tie in to how we are going to get to that happy alien tourist destination that we heard about today.

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Today at Mill Hill there will be a debate featuring common council candidates. The format and questions have been sent to all candidates and posted here.
Come on down and hear the answers to:

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