Ho boy, it’s an amazing thing about politics in this berg, honey, things git telegraphed before they happen and last week was a perfeck example of it. The city was jest getting settled into the new reality concerning Nancy Rossi’s win over incumbent Mayor Edward M. O’Brien when the rumor got started that hizzoner and his entourage were going to pull a play outta John Picard’s playbook and go for a write-in vote on Election Day.
Lo and behold, come last Thursday afternoon word came that an “invitation” had been sent to various parties in the local senior housing centers and that “transportation” would be provided to those who wanted to see hizzoner make a major announcement.
Lissen, I ain’t Sherlock Holmes, and I don’t look good in a deer-stalker cap, but I didn’t need to be or wear either. The rumors, evidently at that pernt, were turning out to be true. And, surer than the sun rises in the East, hizzoner gave an impassioned speech about how the city cannot afford two years with either Nancy Rossi or Dave Riccio.
Seems to me that was said about himself four years ago, when John Picard pulled the same tactic. But roles were reversed. Rossi played the beleaguered and betrayed Edward O’Brien of four years ago. In fack, the statements might’ve been recycled from statements made four years ago. It was really like living a nightmare all over again.
Hizzoner insists the only way the city can avoid disaster and continue to “move forward” (I’m beginning to hate that phrase) is by giving him another two-year term. Effen that don’t happen, the seas will cover us, the world will be a darker place, and history as we know it will cease to be. No, he didn’t say that, but he might as well have. That’s what they all say.
Rossi was like the betrayed spouse who was told all the bills had been paid, but then has a repo man at her door. She said the mayor lied, and all that talk about being a son of the Democratic Party was fertilizer.
She’s upset that she was lied to, but not because she’s been betrayed. She knows this puts a new face on the election come Nov. 7. A three-way race is not something any candidate wants to face. There are too many things that can happen in a two-way race and they are doubled in a three-way ballot.
Of course, the wag came in t’other afternoon and had no good thing to say about either of them, but said effen there is anyone who can’t complain it’s Rossi. She has been all over the Democratic Party map over the last decade or so, and is the only person I know that has angered all three factions of the party with one exception – and her name has two r’s and two l’s in it.
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Sammy Bluejay is convinced the big winner in this new scenario is David Riccio…and he might be right. It was jest a day or two ago someone who shall remain nameless but we both know very well said that this race is getting to look like 1989 all over again. That was a race that Demmies would rather not remember effen they have half a chance.
The party was kind of in disarray. The Sal Guerra administration had ticked off Allingtown with its talk of selling lotsa land on Front Avenue, including Quigley Stadium. There was a big protest at the Stadium and hundreds showed up.
From that pernt on, Guerra, who had hoped the revamped Ken Strong Stadium complex was gonna git him elected was in trouble. It led the way for Clem Evangeliste, the Republican candidate, to win the election and have one term that decimated the city, and put a big black mark on the party that it’s still trying to erase. That was the administration that put us really in the hole. Guerra passed a budget with about $100,000 in the contingency fund – a paltry sum even by standards back then – and two years later, Evangeliste passed a budget that put us $17 million in the hole.
Today, O’Brien hoped the Atwood and Haven would put him in the good graces of the voters, as well as passing a bond issue to pay off the longstanding debt. Well, to my knowledge those bonds haven’t been sold and people are worried about a new tax increase and the city getting shafted by the state if and when it finally comes up with a budget.
Riccio has a chance, but he has to come up with a plan and program that will put the taxpayers in a comfort zone they haven’t been in a long time. It’s going to be an interesting six weeks.
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Nelly Nuthatch sez that whilst everyone is convinced the city will come out alright when the state finally passes a budget, they still have their eyes focused up in Hartford. Y’see even though the GOP budget was passed in the dead of night last week, His Excellency Dannel Malloy has promised to veto it as too cut-filled. He sez he likes some things in it.
Meanwhile, the state is going onto the fourth month of the fiscal year and no budget is in place. There are some deadlines, but who is to say the boys and girls up in the capitol have any chance of passing a budget soon. There is more sanctimonious talk of paying for services, and more pious expressions of helping the little guy, but it’s the little guy who’s gonna end up paying – one way or t’other.
Our editor, who thinks the state needs some hard medicine like the GOP budget, told me that he was riding with a state worker in a car this weekend and the budget came up. Effen the state worker was expecting sympathy he didn’t get it. The pension was mentioned, and our editor said something to the effect, “You never should have had it.” That ended the conversation toot sweet.
How this is gonna end up is anyone’s guess, but the cities are starting to feel the squeeze elsewhere. You can imagine how tight the squeeze is here.
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I haven’t mentioned it in a while, but is anything gonna happen over on Beach Street? I told yew about three weeks ago a canvas had been put around the former Captain’s Galley, probably in prep of it being demolished so a new construction can go up. The other two places, however, the former Chicks and the former Debonair Motel have been languishing throughout.
It don’t look as if the properties are ever gonna git sold or renovated or replaced. It might be time to put the squeeze on the owners at least in the matter of the Debonair. They said they canvassed the neighborhood four years ago to find out what can go in there, and the only thing that’s happened is the place was boarded up.
With that bit o’ chatter, I’ll close this time till next, mitt luff und kizzez,