Council mtg 8/14
1) Bid waiver for two new police cruisers passed unanimously.
2) Change to the Program Supervisor position for the Youth & Social Services dept had some discussion. I saw pros and cons on both sides and felt they all were fairly equal in weight. There was no cost increase/decrease identified with this change. In the end the motion passed 6-2-1 (Ruocco, Schrumm opposed; Orsini abstained).
3) Year end budget transfers passed unanimously.
4) Acceptance of Honey Road was tabled and a PZC review was requested.
5) Lane Construction Corp was granted a tax abatement. Lane CC is the company that recently announced its move to Cheshire from Meriden.
6) Transparency and Accountability in Local Government... oh wait... this never quite got on the agenda... although we were certainly discussing it. I think what confused me most with this were all the "off camera" straw men that were thrown at this... "budgetary concerns, complexity, time requirements, legal concerns (with regard to meeting minutes)..." or even that by raising this motion, "I would embarrass myself!" But as you can see right here:
Adding Council meetings to the internet can be done. And if these meetings can be added to my blog, I'm sure Town Hall's IT staff could add this to the town website with haste. As for why there is institutional resistance to this measure... I can only speculate.
The Town Manager reported on the geese at Mixville. I tried to be candid in my concern... before we go killing geese... have we really done all that we can? Consider... according to the Park & Rec dept, there are no more geese today than there were 10-15 years ago... yet it's been said that the use of Mixville has decreased over that time. So are the geese leaving more droppings? Or are we just paying less attention to Mixville?
Alright... I'm going to bed. But just a reminder... Marilyn Bartoli's "3 Strikes" rally is tomorrow at Bartlem Park at 7pm. And so you know, tomorrow's capital budget meeting has been delayed until 8pm. Thanks to Mike Ecke for making that change happen.
Tim White
Town Council, 4th District
15 comments:
I've just added the 02-13-07 TC Meeting and the Elderly Tax Relief Study from 01-16-07.
Personal cost to get those publicly available recordings online: $0
Time: For my site, it's about an hours work per meeting (not counting the set-it-and-forget-it 2 hours of encoding/upload time). However, that includes the creation of a time-index for agenda item reference. Once uploaded, it would take me, or anyone else, about ten minutes to simply link to the videos from the town's site.
Complexity: The millions of Google Video and Youtube posters demonstrate daily that it doesn't take a genius to post videos online.
try the video index or jump to
Town Council Special Meeting 06-26-07
Town Council Meeting 06-12-07
Town Council Meeting 05-08-07
Town Council Meeting 02-13-07
Town Council Public Hearing 01-23-07
Elderly Tax Relief Study 01-16-07
I think it's embarrassing that other members aren't rushing to embrace the motion.
-csh
p.s. I honestly do not understand the resistance. Whatever the motivation, it seems rather pointless to oppose this. Even now, newcomers looking for TC meetings will probably start off with a google search:
"cheshire town council meeting video" - 1st item
"cheshire town council meetings" - 5th item
"cheshire town council" - 6th item
Would it not be better if the search returned an official video page instead? Then again, we don't even have a historical listing of meeting minutes. By the way, "cheshire town council meeting minutes" returns the CTP too.
CSH:
This should have been done long ago by the people that are being paid by our taxes.
The town manager and town council just don't give a damn about the public. It's a disgrace that the people of Cheshire do not have easy access to all the key committee minutes. They are purposely keeping the public in the dark. Let's start serving the interests of the people of Cheshire instead of the special interests of the realtors and developers.
Thanks CSH for showing what can be done, now it is time for the people that are suppose to serve the people of Cheshire to do their job.
I wonder what our town manager is thinking.
Oh, why am I here? Better yet, why are they here, who needs them? I could run this town easily without them.
Hi I don't know what the reluctance of Town Hall is to this very good idea..but we should hear their concerns before we mandate it. Thanks to Tim for his persistence! Diane Visconti
Thank you. Thank you. Great job. The ball is at least rolling.
Thanks Diane. I know you're with me on this.
And as you recently said "Democracy can be messy," I agree. But I don't see anything wrong with that... if it means more voices are heard... and with increased voter awareness, I suspect more voice would be heard. And that's a good thing.
Brushed off again?
What's was wrong with having a breif discussion on giving the public decent access to information?
What about P&Z and Inland Wetland meetings that are not put on the webb? You don't have to have to have anything new done except have people do their jobs, including the TM to make sure that information is put on the webb in a timely manner, and not to selectively put what they want and not other things that the special interests don't want. Why is this never brought up as a question in a TC meeting?
Why don't you bring it up Diane? You talk about supporting transparency.
What's the problem?
"there are no more geese today than there were 10-15 years ago... yet it's been said that the use of Mixville has decreased over that time. So are the geese leaving more droppings?"
Today, I went to Mixville at 4:30 PM and found to our surprise that the park was totally empty. We went to see the mess the geese were making. Again, another surprise. We could not find any goose poops on the beach area or the grass behind the beach. There were no geese footprints coming out of the water. I did counted 34 mallards floating far from the beach and counted 21 Canada geese on the far shore.
I admit I am not a trained expert in scat, but I have had enough experience with geese that I can say I know my scat.
There were dog footprints along the edge of the beach, but no dog poop.
Did not see any park attendant or any sign of any goose deterrent parafernalia.
I think it is important for council members to go the park and investigate for themselves. From what I saw, there is no problem. I think it would be a good idea to have an expert from the Quinnipiac Watershed group take a look.
Another observation was that the park is beautifully maintained. It could not be better and I highly recommend people go there for a picnic or whatever. It's a great place.
I agree it's a great place. Let's keep it that way. Let's spread the word . It's Grrrrrreat.
9:03 Thanks for the "poop patrol" report...lol Seriously, though, I agree that the council members should go there themselves and see if there really is a problem or not.
What bothers me is hearing at the council meeting that some of the people who work at Mixville leave earlier than they're supposed to. I guess the town mgr. is going to look into that, or so he says he will.
"use of Mixville has decreased over that time"
It's not a surprise that use at mixville has decreased. Since the pool was put in, lifeguards at Mix were eliminated as a move to increase pool memberships. Families like lifeguards to be present.
And, if the use is now so low, why spend $100,000 to dredge it. It seems that most of any siltration would ocurr in the upper pond which is designed stop the silt before the lower pond. Can't the dredging be postponed for a few more years and if it can, would it cost any more?
"lifeguards at Mix were eliminated as a move to increase pool memberships"
One can spend many millions on a pool without coming close to the experience of wading into mixville as a kid on a hot day with the warm shallows giving way to cooler, darker water where you're always just a little concerned that there might be a snapping turtle the size of a manatee floating down there. I grew up swimming in Mixville, enjoying picnics on the beach, and exploring the streams nearby.
I don't think one can ask for better returns on an investment.
By the way, hasn't the flooding of that grassy field presented far more of a problem than geese could hope to? Sometimes the bases on the ball field are under water and the outfielders need waders.
-csh
It's a great place and people who moved here recently don't even know about it. The field I believe is being worked on. What a beautiful place to play ball. Better than playing next to the prison.
George Bush would say this about the goose problem.
If we don't fight them in Mixville, we will have to fight them at the mall.
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