Dear Felicia

It look as if we’re gonna have a bit o’ the white stuff on the ground by the time yew git this missive, honey bunch. Whilst we’ve had two big days o’ rain – someone said about two inches were expected – it looks like it’s gonna git cold quick and about 3 inches o’ snow are expected. That’s a good thing, Cobina likes snow at this time o’ the year.

Here in the berg, things are settling into the pre-Christmas lull. It’s always been my suspicion that the politicos try to get on the “good” list just before the holidays, whilst making the “naughty” list the rest o’ the year. I guess nobody wants the Jolly Ole Elf to put coal in their stocking. Soooo, each year things slow down jest a tad.

Last week the Bored of Ed and the City Council had their chairman elections, and it looks like a famous political name is back in the news. This time, the chairman of the BOE is a Tallamelli. Over the years, the name, going back to old Will Tallamelli, has been a political force in the area, mostly in the second districk from whence it hailed. They were part o’ the Johnson strain of the party in the old days – Freddie Johnson. Of course, Wayne was chairman of the party for a looooong stretch.

I guess, according to Sammy Bluejay, with the sweep o’ the Rossi wing o’ the party into party – like I said, we can’t call it the Picard faction anymore – they wanted one o’ the ir own in the chairmanship, and Rosemary Russo isn’t one o’ their team. Everyone knew going in what was gonna happen, and the usual posturing came about.

We’ve seen these things before. The people making the biggest bellyache about Russo losing the chairmanship and what a great job she did (which she did) would have thrown over a supporter of any other faction effen the show was on the other foot, make no mistake about it. So the feigned outrage was jest a bit hard to take.

Meanwhile, over in the City Council, Sammy sez that things went on perty much as expected. Ron Quagliani was re-elected chairman of the council. He attempts to stay outta the factionalism, and seems to keep things on the straight and narrow. The last council session, though it had one or two hiccups, was probably the least contentious two years we’ve seen in some time.

That ain’t to say the next two years are gonna be a piece of cake. This berg has a way of making simple things hard, and hard things unbearable, politically speaking. The Haven projeck is gonna be coming up for scrutiny in the next little while, and it should be interesting to see how that progresses through what legislative hurdles are left. Stay tuned.

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Nelly Nuthatch was by t’other afternoon, and said that whilst Ed Granfield has been chomping at the bit waiting for something to happen with the Charter Revision and its going before the voters, something, in fact, did happen. Nelly sez that a question was put together by the barristers that work for the city, and that, though it is filled with the legal-ese that one would expeck in setch a thing, the thing feared most ain’t gonna transpire.

The chairman and John Carrano, his Democratic counterpart, were worried that the barristers were gonna do damage when the question came out, and maybe even succumb to the politicos attempts to make it a multiple-question ballot. Whilst the barrister were against that, yew know how politics plays around here.

Tennyrate, the question that will go to the voters will be single and it will be an up or down vote. That is a good thing. Just reminding yew, the big fear was that pulling it out and making three or four questions, could spell the end of it all. All the voters had to do was reject one of the questions and the entire thing would be deep-sixed. The committee wove together a charter that is so interdependent on itself that ripping out one section would do damage to the entire document.

Well, that seems to be something that is not going to happen.

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Iva Lootey had another part o’ the charter revision story. It seems the City Council will cobble together a “charter revision education effort” it was called by Iva. This will be some type of town hall, q and a session that will give John and Jane Q. the updates they might want concerning the draft document. There have been some people on the council who’re somewhat concerned that the public don’t know enuff about the draft.

This effort will allay some o’ those fears, Iyam told, and it will give some of the members of the council the assurance that the due diligence was handled correckly.

When Iva told me this, I must say that Cobina was blunt. Effen I were the members of the revision panel, I would stay alert, this berg has a history of mucking things up, and this caper is primed to be mucked up by the politicos. We shall see.

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Madame Olga rang up Cobina t’other day, and we got to talking about things that might happen after the foist of the year. With the election of candidates in the odd year, the new town committees are elected the next even year. Well, that’s what we talked about, and Olga said her crystal ball wasn’t givin’ any secrets thus far.

On the Demmie side, the election gave the Rossi faction full control of the wheel of state, if yew will, and it’s thought that it will perty much lock up the Democratic Town Committee when those selections are done in February. The caucus is held, and effen there are contested seats in the various districks they go to primary. Over the last few years, we’ve had a citywide primary virtually every two years since the 1990s. That’s how segmented the Demmies are.

Come that caucus, we wonder effen there will be a primary come March. Who knows? With things the way they are and people still not talking to each other, it’s always a possibility. However, this time it’s with Rossi and her people fully in control of the throttle.

~~~

Olga had some things to say about the Republican Town Committee, though. She’s fully seeing that there will be some intramural high jinx between those supporting Pat Libero, the current chairman, and those who were supportive of Michele Gregorio, the defeated GOP mayoral candidate.

As yew remember, there was a close vote in the July caucus betwixt Gregorio and Steven Mullins. It perty much split the 60-member panel, and led to the foist GOP primary for mayor in memory. Gregorio took the vote, but that didn’t mean that everyone made nice afterwards. There are still some perty ticked off individuals.

How this plays out after the New Year is anyone’s guess. Olga seems to think things ain’t gonna smooth over jest yet, and that, probably, there will be something that might lead to a primary in March. Won’t that be interesting? Our reporter Josh LaBella uncovered some real distrust betwixt the sides, so it’ll be interesting to see effen that distrust lasts. We shall see.

~~~

With that bit o’ chatter, I’ll close this time till next, mitt luff und kizzez,