Councilwoman: 30 min to Vet Deputy Ample Time

Councilman Serra & Mayor Drew

Today the Hartford Cournat quoted Councilwoman Hope Kasper regarding the vetting of candidate for deputy police chief Michael Timbro. Kasper remarks were in regards to Councilwoman Kleckowski's allegation of due process in notifying Personnel Committee members not being followed.
"I know it was short notice but there were alternatives [to leaving the meeting]," Kasper said. "If she didn't have the opportunity to pick up the information before the meeting she could have asked for maybe a 30 minute recess to read the materials. I feel very strongly that this needs to move ahead for the police department." As quoted in the article by the Courant here: http://www.courant.com/community/middletown/hc-middletown-deputy-chief-0112-20130111,0,1827905.story

Apparently, taking 30 minutes to vet a candidate for the second most important position regarding public safety is more than enough time for speed reader Councilwoman Hope Kasper. Scary.  I guess when you are Kasper, on personnel committees in which you hire your own son-in-law as she did in the case of Josh Berger,  it wouldn't  take 30 min to fairly evaluate someone's whole career!

Earlier in the week, Kleckowski was screamed at by an angry Mayor Drew after she questioned the timing of the meeting  with little notice of the materials needed to vet the candidates.  Read about Mayor Drew loosing his cool here.

Last year, Councilman Bob Santangelo was caught on video having a melt-down directed  at fellow council persons and members of the public who came to a public safety meeting taking place there.
http://middletowneyenews.blogspot.com/2011/10/bad-behavior-at-public-safety.html

The issue at hand and continues to be with this Mayor and the Democratic majority is that the minority party, and the public, are purposely kept out of the loop. The requirement is the the process for delivery of official documents, whatever it is, be fair. In this case, delivery of the record in such a manner or at such a time as to render it meaningless would violate  due process. Giving information to the Democratic majority before others is also a violation. Of course the laws don't apply in Middletown!

City Government Re-Org - Part I

The Insider staff has been reading over Mayor Drew’s Report on Government Re-Organization put together by his Task Force on Government Efficiency aka a bunch of buddies he meets with at night at city hall. 

The objective of the task force appears to contain a predetermined remedy for what were yet-to-be discovered problems. Translation: The task force already has the answers to the questions and issues they are investigating.  Imagine that you are not qualified for a city job, but the city, due to favors that it owes to your uncle, who happens to be on the common council member, votes to change the job description to suit your needs.   Typical Dem response: "That never happens in Middletown, or the infamous keep my mouth shut and don't comment on the situation because I may get something for own personal 'political career' later down the road.

A.      IT Dept. The issue is mainly with regard to the lack of a strategic plan and no advisory committee. The reason the City IT Dept. is the way it is because of it lacks any sort of plan or vision.  Imagine if they had a mission statement or kept track of their monthly goals rather than just get through every day?

The whole creation of the IT Dept. was another "remedy in search of a problem" process. Mayor Thornton and the Council commissioned a study that concluded: " a separate IT department was needed, without first determining what the City's needs were, what functions would be best enhanced by existing or emerging technologies or how to implement them." Just form a department and then we'll figure out what it's going to do was the philosophy they adopted.  Reminds one Nancy Pelosi's attitude toward Obamacare: "Just get the votes in and we can figure it out later." 
 

Reader, if you have a chance, ask Gerry Daley about Bauer's TAC proposal, you may a good holiday story over that one. If the powers that be were to merge the IT department with, let's say the Finance and Revenue Department would this impact the efficiency of the existing issues with IT or would it allow the department time to organically work out the problems. This blog has no quarrel with the concept of the creation of a political Technology Advisory Committee, but why now? When Councilman David Bauer (R) proposed this concept to the Common Council three years ago, the noise and level of frustration by those council members made King Kong look lame by comparison.    What this recommendation fails to address is the fact that EVERY department utilizes IT in its operation. Another strange thing that wasn't considered in the plan was the fact nobody outside of Nostradamus can see the future with regard to the IT department. With technological advances happening at a rapid pace, one would assume that the need for IT services by all departments in Middletown would be something that would build into the master plan.  We guess that would hard since no master plan exists.  

B.     Grant Writer. Mayor Seb Giuliano proposed hiring a grant coordinator two years ago and the Council removed it from the budget. (Quick Lesson: The Middletown Common Council controls the votes. With their 2/3 Democratic majority they have lots of power. This has been happening to your town since 1991). The individual department directors are all grant "writers"; what the City needs is coordination of grants, so the directors can maximize the benefits. Another positive attribute about hiring a city wide grant writer would be the fact that this position would be much better positioned to assess objectively what the town commitments with regard to acceptance of particular grants would require.

to be continued...

Taxpayers & Pensioners Time to Open Your Wallets

     

Story time kids! Word on the street is that Mayor Drew is trying to rid the City of two of his least favorite department directors, and to do so, he is planning to offer a golden handshake (read more details here) of gold shower caliber. Again this political punt is not only at the expense of  hard working individuals who had in the past spoken their minds against the Drew regime, but it is at the expense of tax payers. One of the directors being offered this buy-out is the Personnel Director, former aid to past Mayor Dominique Thornton (D). The Personnel Director’s past actions dealing with the Water & Sewer Department's mismanagement were unfavorable in the eyes of certain key Democratic Council members who presumably felt sold out that the Personnel Director actually worked in a non partisan professional way with the then Republican Mayor and did not entirely do the bidding of the Democratic party who felt that she be indebted to them.     (We will explain the  connection between the Council, Personnel Dept. & Water & Sewer below.)   If half of the eligible employees take this early retirement package, resulting in about a dozen upper management employees cashing out,  it will cost at least half a million dollars in bonuses. The pension fund is self funded; however, these bonuses will come from the general fund - tax payer money. That is not counting the retirement up to 85% of their pay for life which will put all current, and future retirees at risk of the fund running dry and not being able to sustain everyone it was set up to and had been able to.  Dan Drew and the Democrats on Council raised your taxes once already and are about to do it again. Should the Mayor be tethering Middletown to inevitable tax increases for his second year in office with these uncertain economic times over his petty differences with a couple of people in management he wants out??      You seen your water bill?!?? If you noticed a huge increase double or even triple your last bill you are not alone.  The Insider has received numerous reports of bills going out with huge increases, some without even a unit cost per unit shown on the bill! We have a few instances where businesses have be grouped in with other businesses and double billed. If this has happened to you speak up! In a brief synopsis here is why this is happening:       In 2009, then candidate Dan Drew stated on record in an interview with the Wesleyan Argus that:"Not to mention, our city's sewer department is in dire straits financially. If it were privately owned, it would declare bankruptcy. We don't know where we're going right now." Why does the Insider bring up this quote? Fact is Drew acknowledges on the record that the W&S is f***** in 2009, but in 2011 contradicts his own statement by advocating for an investigation to prove that actions taken to remedy a situation he acknowledges existed should not haven happened.  Huh? Yeah no kidding. After much resistance on the part of the Democratically controlled Common Council to remedy the situation, Mayor Giuliano, as any good teacher would with a wayward student- moved the pupil closer to the teacher's desk so to speak in order to keep a closer eye on the issues with the indebted and problematic department. Mayor Giuliano moved the managerial portion of the Water & Sewer Department from their location across town to City Hall. He then followed procedure with a indebted department and had the Finance Department monitoring funds to find out why the department was hemorrhaging money. Also at question was why changes that W&S was supposed to have made as of 2008 after the department had to be taken over by then Finance Director James Reynolds due to lost of funds, had still not been implemented.  In 2008 $100,000 had been spent to overhaul the department including a reorganization plan that according to Mayor Giuliano, was never enacted by W&S Director Guy Russo as ordered. In addition to the extreme departmental debt and numerous warnings to basically fix things before they hit the fan, an  unprecedented number of grievances by employees were filed at this time and on the job accidents spiked leading to the logical conclusion that at the very least management needed to  be scrutinized.         Flash forward to October 2011. In an attempt to legitimize Dan Drew as having some government experience (other than student government)  5 months before he is manufactured into their next Manchurian candidate, the Democrats pony him up to take the spot of Councilman James Loffreddo following his resignation. After this the Common Council,  voted to spend $10,000 to do an independent investigation of not just of the Water & Sewer Department, but the Mayor's Office & Personnel Department to see why they had suggested the moving of the  W&S Department, despite the fact that is was clear as day the department was mismanaging many areas. Dan Drew then is quoted extensively by the Press in no coincidence – as Viktoria Sundquivst is still editor of the Mess and lap dog of the MDTC. Drew went as to far as to accuse Mayor Giuliano of "grandstanding" by ordering the W&S to be looked into.  In March 2012 it was reported to the Common Council that the report was complete and that the Water & Sewer Department would be moving back to its building. Nothing more was said. No copies were made available to Council members, the conclusions were actually summarized to give the appearance of transparency but not full & lawful disclosure. The audit found that the department was in fact far in the red, taxpayers were still finding inaccurate billing incidences in large numbers, but other wise business as usual! The other recommendations by the independent auditors were never put in place, it would be nice to know what they were, but unfortunately this report has never seen the light of day - even though taxpayers paid $10K to find out why the W&S Department is bleeding money. What is there to hide?? How many chances does this director get?      Why is W&S allowed to be mismanaged as a dysfunctional and resource draining department? No one can be certain, but the fact that Majority Leader Councilman Tom Serra (D), a pivotal person & political puppeteer in the Drew regime, is the untouchable first cousin of W & S Department Director Guy Russo could be some cause for concern. Oh what a tangled web.  Now in 2012 nothing has changed and taxpayers are getting screwed with outrages bills & W&S is still in shambles. What say you now Mayor Drew? There is a special WPCA (Water Pollution Control Authority) Commission meeting this Thursday  at 5:30 pm Water & Sewer Dept. located on Berlin Street where citizens can bring water bills they believe to be miscalculated.   Why 5:30 pm when Council orders are to hold all public meetings at 7:00 pm to allow the working class public to attend? Well, some Commissioners just care more about themselves and would rather the public NOT attend.Word on the street is also that the  secret audit ( which by law the tax payers have a right to see since they paid for it!) will be the topic of discussion and with any luck there will be answers to what has been going so wrong in Water & Sewer. Articles for background information referenced above: http://www.middletownpress.com/articles/2011/10/05/news/doc4e8d17df04a0b162206729.txt http://www.middletownpress.com/articles/2009/09/11/news/doc4aab058e09876715608832.txt?viewmode=fullstory http://articles.courant.com/2012-03-12/community/hc-middletown-wpca-investigation-0307-20120312_1_water-and-sewer-director-guy-russo-investigation http://articles.courant.com/2011-10-04/community/hc-middletown-wpca-investigation-1005-20111004_1_sewer-bills-water-and-sewer-investigation