6-6-09
While attempting to attend a special meeting of the New Britain Common Council set for 8:30 PM Friday evening, I surprisingly found the front and rear doors locked so I ventured up to the third floor level of the City Hall Parking garage and also found the entrance door from the garage was locked. I was ready to leave because there was no way to get inside to attend the council meeting, but just then someone was leaving the building and let me inside the building. As soon as I arrived at the council chambers, I was encountered by John Melechinsky, the Council clerk, who asked me how I got into the building. This told me that the council was intentionally holding this meeting behind locked doors. Present were the council members, a member from the finance department, a city attorney, a member from the press, Mr. Steel and Mrs. Carver from the mayor’s office, and Mr. Paul Carver a member of the Board of Education.
During this special meeting many amendments were proposed by the Majority leader and passed and then Mayor Timothy Stewart was called into the meeting whereby a motion to set the mill rate was proposed and passed with a stipulation of revisiting the Mattabassett District’s 60% increase in charges to the city—a subject that many of the Aldermen have expressed concern regarding the impact to the taxpayers.
All of these actions occurred behind the locked doors of city hall, resulting in the general public being barred from attendance. This is in direct violation of the current State of Connecticut FOI statutes and possibly could result in every action taken by the council last night being nullified by the FOI Commission. (Sec. 1-225. … Meetings of government agencies to be public. Recording of votes. Schedule and agenda of meetings to be filed and posted on web sites. Notice of special meetings. Executive sessions. (a) The meetings of all public agencies, except executive sessions, as defined in subdivision (6) of section 1-200, shall be open to the public….)
Apparently the socialist tactics running our federal government have arrived in New Britain with the establishment of “secret meetings!”
Sincerely,
Frank Smith
10 comments:
What an outrage!!! The results of this locked door "public meeting" should be null and void, and re-schedule it as open to the public. What happened to Phil Sherwood's stance on Freedom of Information???
Thanks to Frank Smith for bringing this to our attention. His article should be printed in the Herald, verbatim.
Mr. Sherwood, the public is now on to what a phony you really are. How could such a champion of Freedom of Information go along with passing a budget behind closed (locked) doors where the public is excluded.
You, Mr. Sherwood are only in favor of Freedom of Information when it proves to be politically expedient to one of your left wing socialist causes.
This recent meeting just exemplifies to the rest of the public what a phony you really are to have gone along with such a conspiracy.
Mr. Smith, you must be mistaken about a meeting having been held last night at city hall.
I just checked the city web site, and the last meeting agenda posted on the web site (as required by law) is for May 27th, so how could they have passed the budget (or anything else for that matter) last night?
If there is no meeting posted, did it really happen?????
From the article in the Herald today, it would appear that Alderman Lou Salvio is the only one who had the sense to know that this meeting was illegal and therefore didn't participate in this abuse of office that was committed by the rest of the Aldermen.
sounds like they are trying to hide something????????
SHAME
SHAME
SHAME
Where is the council planning to get the money to fund the 5% pay raise for the city employees and the 8% raise for the teachers without raising taxes?
Are they planning to borrow one of Obama's printing presses?
Is this the "transparency" that the Democratic party promised us?
Voting on budgets behind locked doors?
Change we can believe in my butt. Just the same old crooked politics.
Mayor stewart is the one that legally called the meeting by sending our warrents. Mayor Stewart is the one that supervises the individual responsible for making sure doors are unlocked.
Seems to me that blame should not be on someone else.
None of this will convince the the 10 readers of this blog and members of the Republican Town Committee but felt obligated to set the record straight.
Anonymous said...
Seems to me that blame should not be on someone else.
None of this will convince the the 10 readers of this blog and members of the Republican Town Committee but felt obligated to set the record straight.
IF THE BLAME IS ON THE MAYOR, THEN WHY WAS THE COUNCIL CLERK (A DEMOCRAT) CHALLENGING PEOPLE FOR BEING IN THE BUILDING DURING THE SECRET MEETING?
THIS IS THE EVIDENCE THAT THE COUNCIL INTENDED TO BREAK THE LAW. IF YOU DOUBT IT, LET'S ALL BRING THIS BEFORE THE STATE FOI COMMISSION TO DETERMINE IF THIS BUDGET IS LEGAL, AND YOU MAY FIND THAT SIX MONTHS FROM NOW, THEY ISSUE AN ORDER INVALIDATING YOUR BUDGET, NOT TO MENTION THE POTENTIAL FOR THE POSSIBILITY FOR CIVIL PENALTIES LEVIED AGAINST ALL THOSE RESPONSIBLE.
I haven't logged in to FSSNB for awhile and just read this information on a "secret public budget meeting". This is un-believable! It reminds me of the
communist trial of two american journalist being sadly reported on
TV this morning. The current not-so-common council has over-extended
their stay and need to be removed.
I am equally disgusted that our mayor would participate in a locked
door public meeting with them.
Thank you Frank for putting this information out.
Post a Comment