Monday night starting at 6:30pm City Hall will be the epicenter of political hot air, as candidates and supporters will cram into the community room to participate in the spectacle of election debates. This year, the debates are being sponsored by the League of Women Voters and the local cahpter of the NAACP. This year the council and mayoral candidates are on tap. The problem is that the most important issue facing Norwalk these days isn’t who is mayor, or who is on the common council. The $145 million BOE budget drives everything that anyone can cite as the most important issue, and none of the BOE candidates will be on hand to debate that race Monday.
Despite that glaring omission, the round of debates will offer residents an opportunity to hear something more or less about each candidate. The 6:30 start features the 10 at large council candidates. Then the showdown of audience questions with the mayoral candidates. For 15 minutes. Each. There are 15 reasons why this format, impromptu questions on index cards might not be a useful format for peeling out real issues that should be answered by these candidates. The odder thing is local LWV president’s assurance that, “we trained members collecting the cards to pull out all personal attacks.” Who is the arbitrator of what is a personal attack? Isn’t it a valid question to ask why Scott Merrel is running, why Walter Briggs tenure as Planning Commission Chair took so long to develop a Master Plan, and why Dick Moccia as Mayor keeps pointing to the removal of parking meters on Wall Street when new parking meters get added to areas in SoNo? Are these personal attacks? We don’t know, because the LWV has provided no guidelines for us to determine in our judgment what a question should be.
As for the council races, there are many questions that might be good to have answered by all the candidates, regardless if they are in district or at large. The long term capital budget planning issues of infrastructure, maintenance of city property and the planned growth fostered by redevelopment would be of interest to all residents.
Taxes, will be of many minds Monday night. But real answers, without the BOE, will be short on substance. As long as most of the tax revenue Norwalk raises ends up directly in the unaccountable pockets of the BOE, nothing any of these candidates will say will mean anything.
on Concord street where this sunday morning they have only taken one patient to the hospital so far for the day.
