Sure to please the neighbours surrounding Vets Park, the organizers of the Columbian festival failed to show for a hearing to discuss the permit for a second time. On top of that, Alexandra Fenwick’s article details that the organizers have failed to pay the city $5,400 in cleanup and police duty, which apparently date over two years. For some inexplicable reason, the park’s and rec committee keeps tabling the item. It would be understandable if the organizers contacted the parks and rec committee to request a delay on the hearing, but according to the report, no contact has been made.
Members of Colombian American Family Entertainment failed to show up at a meeting to approve their July 20 event for the second time in a row last week, prompting the Common Council’s Recreation and Parks Committee to table the item again.
“At what point do we keep tabling this? There have already been two meetings,” asked City Councilman Steve Serasis.
Council president and committee chairman Fred Bondi said the festival won’t be on the committee’s next agenda unless festival representatives call to request it be included. Bondi said he won’t put an event on the agenda with less than two months of planning time built in, making May the group’s last chance to apply.
“If they want this event, they’ll show up,” Councilman Richard McQuaid said.
But the group owes the city $1,400 in park fees and clean up fees in the aftermath of the festival last year and over $4,000 for extra-duty police presence over the past two years, according to Recreation and Parks Director Michael Mocciae.
The annual festival drew criticism last year for causing loud noise, traffic congestion, parking problems and overflowing amounts of garbage.
“Before they put it back on the agenda, they have to settle their bills,” Mocciae said.
Since organization leader Beatriz Ruiz came to the Recreation and Parks office on Sept. 17 to file an application to hold the event, the city has had trouble getting in touch with her. Ruiz was indicted in November for allegedly lying to federal authorities about her contacts with a foreign government.
A former U.S. Department of Defense employee at Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford, Ruiz pleaded guilty in federal court in New Haven to one count of making a false statement when she denied having any contact with a foreign government on an application for a top-secret security clearance.
But authorities said Ruiz had maintained a social and business relationship with an official of the Colombian consulate in New York since at least 1999.
Ruiz and the government agreed that her social and business activities were intended for her personal benefit, and the evidence did not suggest that she misused classified information or harmed the security interests of the United States.
Ruiz, a former member of the Norwalk Water Pollution Control Authority, faces up to five years in prison when she is sentenced March 18.
She left the WPCA at some point last year, chairman John Atkin said.
Calls to Ruiz were not returned.
“And as far as we’re concerned, we can’t find where they’re registered with the state of Connecticut as a nonprofit and that’s one of our concerns as well,” Bondi said. “They have to be registered either as a nonprofit or a business, because we want to know where money’s going that they’re raising. Maybe they’re in the process of doing that now so I don’t know what the hold up is, but like I said, they haven’t been in contact with us.”
It would seem that policy over at the parks and rec should be, no new permits unless outstanding bills are paid in full. That would be a nice stab at financial accountability. To have held a second public hearing without an explanation on why the first was missed seems like a waste of everyones time. Instead of tabling, the members should have voted it down.
source: The Advocate, Colombian festival’s future put in doubt, By Alexandra Fenwick, January 22 2008
