Tuesday night the planning commission held the first of two meetings to go over the capital budget requests by department heads. For those not normally attuned to the intricacies of budgeting, capital budgets are budgets where you stick big ticket items that can either be depreciated, think fixed assets or equipment, or that extend beyond the fiscal year. At the pace of government that last bit could probably apply to the whole budget, but I digress.

The commissioners were given big white binders that served as the detail to the budget. Having access to the binder is essential to follow the narrative of the sending requests. The top line numbers were also handed out and those summed up the totals rather efficiently. While the fire department opened the festivities, I missed most of it, and thus you’ll just have to turn to the Hour for a full report there. Where I pick up is the $64 million dollar question, (and I do mean that allegorically even though I think a case can be made for literally), asked by Leigh Grant. She asked why it was that every year people come in and say that the buildings are not being repaired, or maintained and are now seeking a capital request to repair something that is now broken. While this question was raised during Tim Callahan’s presentation of the Health Department it is the question that hangs over the city of Norwalk like smog hangs over LA.

Callahan responds that it is the city that does the maintenance, which is like saying I guess no one, since each year, like emperor penguins returning to the Antarctic, the calamitous repair requests arrive. Even when it comes to the parks and recreation department.

Right off the bat, planning commissioners all drilled Mike Moccaie about whether the vets park master plan would be a reality after the contention meeting that was held a few weeks ago. The item that sprung the debate was his request for $30k for the Vets Park master plan. Moccaie responded that 80 thousand people didn’t attend that meeting, and only 15 angry people spoke. “The only people that spoke, spoke against everything,” he said. Tension was now dialed up in the room, which was odd because funding a master plan shouldn’t be the part where everybody gets their knickers in a bunch. However, Moccaie justified the plan as something that is needed considering the needs of evaluating everything from sidewalks to lighting to any possible contamination. “A Master plan is a definite need for this park,” he stated, “You can do commercial partnerships, it’s been proven.” Then he went on to list more things that were possible and proven, but alas my typing skills were not up to his rapid fire delivery or the crosstalk that ensued.

The other items were more mundane, bench replacement ($40k), breakwater dock ($70k) sidewalk construction ($35k) Fisherman pier ($210k), amphitheater construction ($250k), expansion of city marina ($200k) and repair of launching ramp ($250k) which started me wondering why he was for capital requests on all these items when the master plan was not done. Do we need an amphitheater and fisherman pier? I don’t know, and it certainly seems that maybe more than 30 people should weigh in on this subject.

For Cranbury Park they are looking and some paving, pavilion repair, lighting and the addition of an awning patio that would increase seating available for the mansion. They want to make the lighting more cost efficient on the athletic fields at Calf Pasture. Moccaie says that doing so, will also mitigate some of the lighting pollution. He considers this to be an investment since, the lighting would enable them to rent the fields for additional city revenue as well. The current poles are undersized and too low. They plan to carry through the lighting on all the walkways throughout the park.

In what turned out to be a theme of the evening, Grant asks about solar power lights for these ball fields. Moccaie responds that they are investigating wind power, and that they are looking at a 3.5” foot wind turbine on a trial basis. The district has already given its blessing on hooking it up. The problem with solar is that the reliability when it is cloudy. Both of the bathroom hot water heaters are solar powered. Moccaie said that the lighting they use now is the most technology advanced. having thus discussed Calf Pasture, they moved on to the school parks and playgrounds.

When I last wrote of this issue, it was at the BOE capital budget request. Then it was Stuart Opdahl, who was attempting to get BOE members to believe that nothing was being maintained or repaired on school grounds because DPW wasn’t doing it. Form the municipal software. She suggests that it would be better to request funds to further study the issue. DiMeglio asks if this is a study or hiring a consultant. DelVecchio answers that its hiring a consultant to do a study. There’s a discussion about how impossible it is to solve the problem, and no other city has found a “silver bullet” solution. Gee I didn’t know we were talking about werewolves here. Of course municipalities all over the county have been migrating to extended technology platforms to streamline operations and modernize financial accounting within agencies.

DelVecchio says that part of the problem is being able to support the solution and says as an example, “we could put SAP in but we’d need 40 people to support it.”

The $728,735 request is broken down by $379 city IT request and $349,735 from other departments.

Just when things got into the weeds on equipment, my battery died. The library needed a microfilm readers, apparently because the Hour does not keep their own archive of papers and pays a nominal fee to the library to stroe the archives in microfilm. Commissioners mention that the Hour should either pay for the machine to upgrade or be charged more. Although the meeting continued, I didn’t bother with notes. The tired tale of how backups were still an issue, how there were many servers running antiquated software, how there was no disaster plan in place in writing, was too much for me to handle. I’ve never been fond of the way that Norwalk incorporates technology into tis operations, and the level of my displeasure on this subject hit 11, because on a 1 to 10 scale, 10 is just not enough.

With that, I’ll stew on the atrocities and affronts to my techie brain, and resume coverage of the capital budget process tomorrow. Same bat channel.