Last week, the Mayor conceded that he badly bungled the calculations for the City’s Grand List. It is now clear our tax base is not as strong as we all hoped. In spite of the same, the Mayor continues to push for a 7.5% spending increase. In fact, the proposed budget presently before the Finance Board represents a $10.5 million dollar spending increase from last year (FY 2010-’11 = $175,546,458 and proposed FY 2011-2012 = $186,037,500).

Evidently, the Mayor plans to pay for his spending frenzy by increasing taxes and cracking the city’s piggy bank wide-open, appropriating $4 million from the Appropriated Fund Balance (4x the amount recommended by the Finance Director). In addition, over the past 2 years, the Mayor has already placed an additional $40 million in bonding on the city’s credit card.
Plainly put, the Mayor’s spending “strategy” is unsustainable. Milford must quickly adopt measures to stop the titanic tax torpedo heading its way. The Mayor is simply spending too much, borrowing too much and taxing too much.

In his latest budget proposal, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) eliminated collective bargaining rights for public workers and slashed pay and benefits - all without negotiation. Walker has also notified the state’s National Guard to be on alert for actions taken by unsatisfied state, county and municipal employees.

Wisonsin’s War on Unions

[Gov. Huey Long of Louisiana coined the phrase "Government Open for Business." The statement has come to be known as a call to big business to pay kickbacks to government officials. Apparently Scott Walker and the Wisconsin press corps don't know this bit of history.]

Title 1, Head Start, Special Education, Pell Grants are just a few areas that the House GOP propose to cut in the upcoming federal education budget.

House GOP Looks to Slash Education Spending

But it's not just the low income and special education children that will be targeted. The GOP is taking a sledge hammer to education funding.

The Pet Food Bank at the Milford Animal Shelter is very low on cat and dog food. Donations of wet and dry cat and dog food (especially cat food), treats and toys would be greatly appreciated. Donors may drop off items at Milford Animal Control, 664 East Broadway, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. The animal shelter is located in Silver Sands State Park. The entrance is on Meadowside Road. For further information, call 203-783-3279 and press 0.

Letter to the Editor,

Too many people who are not elected to the Planning and Zoning Board of Milford have weighed in on the election of the Chairman of this board.

And, too many people without facts have offered up a host of reasons for the recent walk-out of Milford Republicans on January 4th, just prior to a vote for the Chair.

But facts are stubborn even if they are lost amid the name-calling and finger pointing that have made rules and civility seem transitory and frivolous.

The P&Z board, like other boards and commissions, is an elected board independent of other boards and of the executive branch of local government. This is by state statute, and it follows common-sense; City Hall should not be involved with the affairs of another elected board.

Under Milford’s own ordinance, under past practice—over 30 years—under rules of procedure, and through just plain common-sense, board chairs continue their duties up until there is a new chair elected. The reason for this—and this is true for Milford’s Planning and Zoning Board—is that board work continues even where there is no official meeting: agendas must be set, special hearings (as was called after the Republican walk-out) must be called (and rules say only the Chair can call such a hearing), applications must be moved onto the agenda, the Chair continues to represent Milford at the Southern Connecticut Council of Governments, inquiries from Milford citizens must be addressed and the Chair must sign off on plot line changes submitted by applicants.

To suggest that all business stops at some date prior to an election is to suggest that no Planning and Zoning business could take place between the end of a meeting in December and the election at some future date of the chair; thereby rendering applicants helpless and adding additional delays and costs to projects. Should delays such as weather conditions, illness and other factors, intervene, as happened on both January 4th and again on January 12th, the work of the board is even furthered delayed.

To avoid a crisis, the Chair has continued to set the agenda—insisting that applications move toward a hearing—and has continued to do what no one, except those who have been elected can do—keep the business of Milford moving forward.

Rules of procedure and past practice and common sense must not be scrapped because to some (especially those who are not elected to represent Planning and Zoning) find these established rules and customs to be politically inconvenient due to a 5 to 5 political split on the board. But the real inconvenience is to Milford citizens who simply want the business of the Planning and Zoning board to move forward as it has for decades.

Susan Shaw
Chair (still) Milford, Planning and Zoning Board
39 Point Beach Drive
Milford, CT 06460
203-874-0115

Who has more dignity - the slave or the slave holder? This is a picture of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I find it to be a very dignified image of Dr. King - at least more dignified than his jailers were at the time. He was arrested for participating in a protest supporting the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama in 1956. He was sentenced to over one year in jail, of which he only spent two weeks in jail because of the public outcry.

The boycott had been going on for over a year at this point.

[from Wikipedia] Rosa Parks, a seamstress. On December 1, 1955, Parks was sitting in the front-most row for black people. When a Caucasian man boarded the bus, the bus driver told everyone in her row to move back to create a new row for the whites. While all of the other black people in her row complied, Parks refused, and was arrested for failing to obey the driver's seat assignments, as city ordinances did not explicitly mandate segregation but did give the bus driver authority to assign seats.

The Truth and Consequences of Repeal
Published: January 15, 2011 NYTimes.com

Get ready for more theater on Capitol Hill. House Republicans plan to push through legislation this week to repeal the health care reform law.

In deference to the new vows of civility, the tone of the debate may be a bit more restrained. But Republicans have already said that they will not strip the word “killing” from the bill — which is titled, “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.” Civility apparently goes only so far.

While repeal will certainly pass the House, it has no chance in the Senate. So House Republicans are already planning other ways to undermine the reforms, like denying agencies enough money to hire personnel to carry out the program.

Americans will pay a high price if opponents get their way. Reform means that tens of millions of uninsured people will get a chance at security; and many millions more who have coverage can be sure they can keep or replace it, even if they get sick or lose their jobs.

Repeal would also take away the best chance for reining in rising health care costs — and the government’s relentlessly rising Medicare burden.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that repealing the reform law would drive up the deficit by $230 billion over the first decade and much more in later years.
For all his claims of fiscal rectitude, John Boehner, the House speaker, immediately dismissed the budget experts’ report as “their opinion.” In a particularly cynical move, Mr. Boehner and his new team have exempted the repeal bill from their own rule that any increase in spending be offset by cuts in other programs.

Many individuals and businesses are already benefiting from reform, and they will benefit even more once it goes into full effect in 2014.

Thanks to reform, it is now illegal for insurance companies to deny children coverage because they have pre-existing medical conditions, or to rescind a policy after a person becomes sick, or to cap the amount that insurers will pay for medical care over a lifetime. After 2014, it will be illegal for insurers to set annual limits on the amount they will pay for medical care or deny coverage to adults with pre-existing conditions.

Young people are now allowed to remain on their parents’ policies until age 26. And insurers are now required to cover preventive care in new policies without cost-sharing, and to spend at least 80 percent of their premium income on medical care and quality improvements, not profits or administrative costs. Repeal would eliminate all of these new protections.

Repeal would also eliminate federal tax credits that are helping small businesses provide coverage to employees as well as a reinsurance program that is helping more than 4,700 employers, large and small, provide health coverage to early retirees.

Republicans are getting considerable traction with their claims that the reform law will drive up the price of insurance, and some are blaming the law for recent premium increases primarily caused by medical inflation. Once again, the official analysts and other experts disagree.

In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that repeal would cause premiums for coverage obtained through large employers to rise by a bit in future years, while premiums at small employers, on average, would be little affected. Projected premiums for people who buy their own policies would come down somewhat with repeal, mostly because the policies would provide skimpier coverage than required under reform. Many people in this group would end up paying more out of their own pockets for health insurance, because they would not get the subsidies provided under the reform law.

Until now, the Republicans have dominated this debate with scare tactics and posturing. Democratic political leaders say they are finally ready to mount a vigorous campaign arguing the case for reform. They should be prepared for a long fight.

Letter to the Editor - Wednesday, January 5, 2011 New Haven Register

I was so pleased to read Connie Schultz’s column about the defeat of the DREAM Act by Congress.

Last year, my husband and I, both lifelong Republicans, changed our party affiliation to become Democrats.

I can find no common ground with a party that appears to be utterly devoid of compassion, which is what I see in the present Republican Party.

It is wrong to deny an education to children who have lived in this country for almost their entire lives. It is wrong to deny unemployment benefits to people who have worked for almost their entire lives.

And, it is positively evil to see the growing spread between the percentage of people who are multimillionaires and the percentage of people who are struggling to survive. Soon, we’ll be like one of those countries people are fleeing from, with two classes: the rich and the peasants, with no one in between.

Joan Wolf
Milford

When the new Republican majority took control over the U.S. of Representatives this week, not only did they break some of their Pledge to America, they broke their own rules as to how they would conduct the "people's" business.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow noted Thursday that the party had only been in power for some 33 hours when they had already made, by her count, at least eight serious missteps.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/maddow-gop-declares-war-promises/

Maybe the Republicans were just kidding.