Geake for Norwalk Common Council

Due to a multitude of problems with my old hosting company, I've had to move the website — a process that is continuing. Please be patient while I reconfigure literally the whole site.

At its September monthly meeting at the Silver Star Diner, the Fairfield County Chapter of Democracy for America (DFA) endorsed my at large run for Norwalk’s Common Council. Mary and I were two of the four original members who met at the Silver Star in March, 2003, to found the Fairfield County chapter of what was then Dean for America.

When Howard Dean abandoned his bid for the presidency, I stepped aside as MeetUp coordinator in favor of John Hartwell, and Dean for America evolved into Democracy for America. Democracy for America is now a political action committee dedicated to supporting fiscally responsible, socially progressive candidates at all levels of government—from school board to the presidency. DFA fights against the influence of the far right-wing and their radical, divisive policies and the selfish special interests that for too long have dominated our politics. DFA has a long-term goal to rebuild the Democratic Party from the bottom up.

The Fairfield County chapter meets at the Silver Star Diner on the first Wednesday of every month.

See "Interesting Links" at left to access the websites of these organizations.

The Second Taxing District owns two water sources: our main one in Wilton and an secondary one in New Canaan (only used when additional water is needed – once every five or six years). Because these are public watersheds, their use for recreational purposes are severely limited and requires a special permit from the state.

Since 2003, the taxing district has allowed the Town of Wilton to conduct a special deer hunt to thin the herd. This is completely under the town’s control, and they even pay for the state permit. This year, the Town of New Canaan has asked to run the same sort of hunt, for the same reason and under the same conditions as we impose on Wilton.

These hunts are now being opposed by animal rights activists who object to the killing of innocent animals and have proposed that the town’s use a form of contraception to control the deer population. The problem with that proposal is that this contraceptive will not even by approved until next year at the earliest, according to a protester who spoke at the meeting at which the agreement with New Canaan was approved.

As I have said (probably too many times), I’m a country boy from Vermont. Years ago, when I was a Boy Scout, my troop helped the state Fish & Game Department with its annual deer census. Basically, what this entailed was searching the areas of the woods where the deer were known to winter and counting those that starved to death. This is not something a feeling person can do and then believe that we don’t have to control that population.

Admittedly, Connecticut winters are nowhere as severe as Vermont’s, but the stark reality is that man has encroached on wildlife’s habitat to such a degree that many of the deer’s natural predators have gone elsewhere, so old age, starvation, and the occasional run-in with a car or a truck are the only ways the herd is thinned.

In the same Sunday paper insert, Scott Merrell proposed a "homestead exemption" for people who [1] have lived in their homes for ten years or longer, [2] are registered voters, and [3] are United States citizens. Ignoring for the moment that if you are a registered voter, you are, by definition, a United States citizen, a homestead exemption could be a good idea.

One of the problems of all the redevelopment going on here in Norwalk is that property values are going up and up. This is a problem because it is driving some people out of their homes through no fault of their own — low-income homeowners who struggled to buy in the first place, and senior citizens who have been in their homes for decades but now they are on a fixed income, should not be forced out just because some developer wants to build luxury condos down the street.

But back to Mr. Merrell's proposal. I'm reasonably certain that it would not be legal to tie a financial benefit to voting (or even registering to do so); and if somebody has owned a home for ten or more years, they have serious ties to the community, regardless of their citizenship status.

One other change I'd make is to limit the benefit to homes worth $750,000 or less. My intent is to keep people from losing their homes, not to just enrich people who could afford to pay their taxes anyway.

Scott Merrell, Independent Party candidate for mayor, had an insert into today's paper calling eminent domain the equivalent of stealing. I thought I had already written my views on the subject here — I've aired them many times, and in many forums. But they are not in this blog, so here goes:

I support eminent domain when there is a government purpose (new school, road, ...) involved. I could also support the taking of an unoccupied property as part of a redevelopment project. But I cannot and will not support the taking of an occupied house or an active business for redevelopment. Many times, the owners of these properties receive far less than what it costs for them to relocate, and the receive absolutely nothing for the cost of relocating. This is simply not right.

The state's answer to this is laughable: this past session, they outlawed the taking of property for the purpose of increasing the tax base. The way around this, for any project, is to give another reason, like "blight".

The Common Council did a little better. They passed an ordinance requiring a 2/3 vote to approve a taking. I agree with the 2/3 majority requirement; it's the ordinance I find silly — a simple majority could vote to overturn the ordinance, leaving that same majority free to approve a taking. What I propose is revising the City Charter to require the 2/3 majority, since this would not be so easily overturned.

This is something that truly scares me.

I have been in data processing for 28 years, as both a software developer. I have never met another technical person who didn't fear for the integrity of our electoral process given the latest generation of voting machines. Any system that doesn't leave an unalterable audit trail is open to manipulation, so machines that do not also produce a human readable paper trail are especially vulnerable. Machines whose manufacturers do not provide state voting officials with copies of their source code for examination — hiding behind "trade secret" claims — are vulnerable.

My favorite example is the Diebold machines. I could alter the results reported by these machines in fifteen seconds, and YOU COULD NOT DETECT THE CHANGE!

Congressman Rush Holt of New Jersey has been pushing for a federal ban of voting machines that are not verifiable. This is important legislation that must be passed to protect the foundation of our form of government, trust in the results of an election.

There are many ways you can express your support for Congressman Holt's efforts. One of the easiest is to sign an online petition like the one you can access by clicking here.

I wish this was an April Fools joke, but it's true.

For some time, I've been hearing rumors that there will be a fight this summer to deny some incubent Democratic Common Council members nomination to run for re-election. An easily expected outcome of this would be a primary, as those incumbents take their candidacy to the voters. At least one of those threatened is in an at-large seat, but I have been assured that I will not be targeted.

The problem with that assurance is that it is simply not true. I have confirmed with Town Clerk Andy Garfunkel that all at-large candidates run as a block, regardless of the Democratic Town Committee's long-standing practice of allowing each of the five districts nominate for one of the seats, If there is a fight over one of those district nominations that causes a primary, all six (or more) candidates will be in that primary, with the top five vote getters having to do it all over again in November.

Isn't it about time to end this family feud???

I attended the BET Public Meeting this past Wednesday and heard story after story about houses that flood whenever it rains. All these people want is for the city to fix the problem. They think that theirs should be a priority need, and they are right. The city says "they will do what they can"; this is just plain wrong.

I presnted a way by which the city could start funding repairs and upgrades to its long neglected infrastructure in a reasonably short time. Given the short time alotted speakers, I could only hit the highlights. Click below for the full proposal:

NPA Proposal

Last year, when the Second Taxing District had to raise its electric rates by 20%, I proposed that we create an Energy Assistance Program, funded by a 1 mill surcharge on electric bills, for people who were just unable to cope with the increase. That proposal was met with deafening silence.

Last night, we effectively raised our rates another 12%. As we debated increasing our “Purchased Power Adjustment” charge to compensate for the fact that increases in our costs has had us selling electricity for less than we’ve been paying for it, I added Energy Assistance to the motion. After a lengthy debate, it was finally passed with the following differences from my original proposal:

• Only assistance with electric bills was provided, not water bills.
   
• Instead of a 1 mill addition to customers’ bills, we added an expense line item to the budget. This simplified our implementation and minimized how much our staff would have to do.
   
• Instead of our processing individual disbursements in-house, NEON will be give a check for the entire amount, from which they will process individual disbursements (which is what their program already does). This was to minimize our overhead in administering this program.
   
• The commissioners will receive quarterly reports on the program so that we can monitor its effectiveness and the appropriateness of its disbursements.

Every time we’ve raised our rates, I’ve thought of my mother living on a fixed income in Vermont and the impact increases in her electric bills have had on her. We can’t lower the cost of the power we must purchase (until our power plant is finally rebuilt), but at least we can help those customers who will be “pushed over the edge” by yet another rate increase.

There were articles in both the local papers detailing the highest paid municipal employees. Eleven of the top twenty were police officers — the highest of those earning more than $100,000 of overtime from duties such as directing traffic around construction sites. I have two problems with this:

1. Working all those extra hours eliminates badly needed time away from work. These officers are called upon to use deadly force when the situation requires it; I want them well-rested and focused, not over-tired, in that instance when they decide to fire their weapon.
    
2. The city budgets both construction and police staffing well in advance, so to plan to pay overtime for these duties makes absolutely no sense.

I do not want to impact anyone's livelihood, but common snse says that you staff the police force at a level adequate to perform all of its duties. This makes sense from both a budgetary and a public safety standpoint.