Happy New Year, honeybunch. Hope yore plans for the year go according to schedule. It seemed a bit quieter around the homestead this year, with not as much frivolity as in past years. I know one thing, the annual setting off of M80s in the neighborhood didn’t go off. Usually jest after midnight for as long as Cobina could remember, there would be a barrage of the big boomers. This year, not so much. These ole bones didn’t see the New Year come in. We were in the Land of Nod and happy to be so, especially since the neighborhood reenactment of the Third Battle of the Marne didn’t take place.
Oh, and I gotta tell yew about this new acronym Cobina learned over the holiday season. AWFL. We’d been reading a few things online when this acronym would find it’s way across the pages. Well, a lit’le search and we found it: Affluent White Female Liberal. Perty apt, no? Certainly does fit the description of more than a few people in public life.
Here in the Asylum by the Sea things were relatively quiet as politicos and setch were trying to stay on the “Nice” list rather than the “Naughty” one. I don’t know how many lumps some of the local yokels found in their stockings, but we hope a few o’ them did.
Tennyate, a couple of interesting things did happen. Foist off was the nomination of Bill Heffernan for the assembly seat left vacant when Herroner became Herroner. The 115th will have a special election this month to fill the seat and Heffernan was the Demmies’ nominee. That kind o’ altered the perception that was around some parts of the burg that former Mayor Ed O’Brien was gonna git the nod.
Sammy Bluejay sez that the word about the party is that Herroner was the person who came up with Heffernan’s name, and, though she know O’Brien was interested, no endorsement was ever given. That’s the scuttlebutt. Soooo, that don’t mean there won’t be an O’Brien in the race. Sammy sez that whilst fluttering around town, he happened to see lawn signs showing Ed is running. That’s an interesting twist, and given the low turnout for setch ballots, almost anything can happen. So, there it is.
Over on the GOP side, Sylvana Appicella is running with the imprimatur of the Town Committee. She’s a good candidate in a vastly Democratic borough. But, with the Demmies having essentially two candidates, who knows?
Still, one wonders what this latest schism is gonna have on the party, since Democratic unity was the mantra of the last mayoral campaign. I guess time will tell, won’t it?
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Of course, after Sammy left, Nelly Nuthatch showed up, and was beginning to talk about the caucuses that will be coming up in the next little while. After every mayoral year, the town committee selections are set in February. Effen there is consensus on each of the 60member town committees, the endorsed people take their seats. But that ain’t usually the way it happens around here.
There may be some, if not many, primaries which’ll take place in March. In past years we’ve had full-on slates of 60 running against full-on slates of 60. What happens will be an indicator of how things are in the political parties. Effen there is a big primary in the Demmies, that aforementioned unity might be stillborn. It’ll be interesting to see what happens and who comes out as chairmen of the two organizations There was some thought Mike Last might hang up his political hat and retire, but some are saying not so fast.
Whoever gets the chairmanship will be an indication of what should be expected in the next two years. Either way, with Dorinda Borer in total control of party allegiance at the present time, it will be she who determines who sits in the chair. That’s for sure.
Over on the GOP side, one doesn’t expect too much of an overhaul, at least not as far as we can see right now. Dave Riccio is the chairman, and who in their right mind would wanna take it away from him? The party is broke, jest took a trouncing, and whatever good will and new faces might have been coaxed into running last fall, history tells us, they kind of wither away.
Don’t expeck too much from the Republicans. You don’t git disappernted that way.
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With the turn of the calendar, Iva Lootey reminded me that the three-month slog called the “budget” begins this month. Usually, the Board of Finance sits and reviews the requests that should be trickling into the office from the department heads. That is the start of the process. The review takes the bulk of the month, and then the BOF makes its own recommendations. The next phase is the review by the mayoral staff and Finance Director, and then a proposed budget is put together and given to a special session of the City Council in March. Review takes place in April, and by the Foist Thursday in May, all is supposed to be in place by charter.
The BOF has not really played much of a part in many of the budgets the Rossi Administration proposed, something that rankled those who sat on the Board. How it happens under the new administration will be a source of interest. One would think getting that group involved is a good thing. If nothing else it gives some political cover…plausible deniability, ya know.
This is the time the rubber hits the road as far as administrations go. There is nothing so tedious as putting together a budget. It’s made more tedious because the MARB, that panel of overseers, is looking over everyone’s shoulder.
And, despite all the meetings, testimony, questions and bickering, when the final budget comes out it is MARB that has the final say on the document, can make its own changes, and raise the mill rate as it sees fit. That means all the hours put in by so many can be ignored by so few. That, m’dear, makes a tedious job like budget-making all the more brutal.
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Madame Olga came in with a cute story this past week, and it has to do with the new City Treasurer Ron Quagliani. Now, Ron as you remember was an up-and-coming member of the constabulary in his younger days, and worked his way up the food chain to chief, where he sat for a few years. He is now working at the University of New Haven, and has quite the situation.
Tennyrate, Ron said when he was elected that he wasn’t gonna just have stamp made and have checks stamped with his signature, he was gonna sign each and every check other than payroll, and see what is going out on aregular basis. He called it another “check.”
Soooo, the foist couple o’ weeks were interesting: he’d come in on Thursday, roll up his sleees, and begin signing. Cobina knew about this, and that is why she made jokes about sending him a fountain pen for Christmas. The first few weeks we hear-tell the number of checks was well over 400. That stayed true for the first few times, and now it’s down to a more manageable number.
We can jest imagine the hand cramps that could set in whilst trying to sign all those outlays. More power to him It has to be somewhat satisfying, though, seeing the stack of checks go from one side of the desk to t’other. No?
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We wonder effen reality has set in for the new members of the City Council. We have a feelin’ it might have. We see it every changeover. Running for the office is one thing, sitting through those interminable meetings is quite another. That dose of reality is something the new members all hafta go through, and sometimes it’s more than they expeck.
New Chairman Nick Pascale is a veteran, having served in previous administrations in the early to mid 2000s, and now he’s the chairman. Let’s hope he finds a way to make those meetings productive – and brief! The two don’t hafta be mutually exclusive. It jest matters effen people on the council like to hear the sound of their voices. Those people are easy to pick out in very short order.
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One final note, we hear the Beach Street roadbed project won’t be finished until March sometime. That’s the woid of people in the neighborhood. The new condos on the corner of Monahan Place and Beach Street are still being built but some of the first ones are already sold, with people moving in.
Word is weather and some other things are putting off the opening of the main artery, closed since summer. Oh well, the way time flies at our age, it’ll seem like nothing.
With that bit o’ chatter, I’ll close this time till next, mitt luff und kizzez,