Closer, But New Budget Still A Work In Progress

From Brian Lockhart, CT Post

An effort to amend Mayor Joe Ganim’s budget to provide an extra $500,000 to the schools and fund aides for the City Council failed to pass that legislative body Monday night.

A super majority of members–14 out of 20–was needed to support the effort to alter the mayor’s 2022-23 fiscal plan, which became Bridgeport’s de facto budget last Tuesday after the council missed that day’s deadline to vote on their budget committee’s recommended proposal.

Whether the situation will be revisited and the amendments revived and enacted before the new fiscal year begins July 1 was uncertain.

Ganim, who presides over council meetings, quickly issued a statement afterward reiterating his commitment to “ensure that funding gets to the Board of Education.”

But only 13 members on Monday night backed the amendments to Ganim’s budget–key among them the added education dollars and around $300,000 to hire a legislative staff–with five voting “no” and two absent.

Full story here.

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5 comments

  1. Playground Learning: Bridgeport Legacy
    Status quo is a reference to the way things exist today, what folks expect to happen, or a current operating system that can be commonly observed. Sometimes the status quo models the statutes, ordinances, and laws of a community and other times the current structure and elected representatives indicate a variance.
    When Joe Ganim entered his first sand box, he brought his own shovel and sand bucket as a privileged youngster. Did he learn to share with friends? When there were fights, was he a mediating voice for peace or was he found at the root of the dispute? Did he encourage diversity of playmates, or limit participants to those who can be managed? Are compensation and benefit rewards paid by taxes meant to purchase loyalty?
    When Ganim left the sand box learning experience, he considered the seesaw and observed that if you load enough weight on one seat of the teeter totter, you could eliminate the weight of others by keeping them in the air and their feet off solid ground. No motion. One person in control . It was good. Can you see how the lesson of unbalancing this beam and keeping it unbalanced has served him well? The Council is called to speak up for the interests of all the people, without supporting cast. Mayor unchecked. Unbalanced.
    But shockingly, authorities saw the corrupt behavior of Ganim1 and awarded him a profoundly serious time out. Time to think about life? Consider course changes? Members of the bar did not renew the right to practice. Instead, some folks of faith who trust in second chances as part of life offered mercy. Likely, they looked to him for different behavior that provides equal and open governance, accountable and regular oversight, transparency of fact and structure so that people can see the honest values, rather than suspect a conspiracy against fairness. (Why does the City web site continue to show that the City offers a FAIR RENT and FAIR HOUSING board when each of them expired for want of timely appointments by a series of mayors? What is FAIR about these eliminations of good governance?)
    Why does the Mayor not encourage all employees, unionized and political appointees to be purposeful in their daily efforts for which they receive pay and large benefits? What theory of municipal management leave oversight of priorities and personnel to the winds? That which Tom McCarthy took away at one time from City Council use, permanent competent staffing, why is it so threatening to Ganim2? Will the TV cameras be on next Monday when the City Council next meets archiving the ongoing drama? Time will tell

    Comments to City Council last night. And the pre-COVID videographer has returned doing his archival work for those who have trouble getting out to the meeting. Collaboration? Working together? Cooperatively, not in hierarchical formation? Possible? Who failed to show up last night leaving everyone with a lesson that every opportunity to vote is not only important but may be critical. Peace.

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  2. Joel,
    Is that right? Perhaps I did not realize that you asked me a question that you expected me to answer? As a matter of fact, you asked Lennie. Look it up.
    So you read what I prepared and delivered at public speaking last evening and get two stars for your response towards my effort. I hope you address her directly when you want something so that she knows that you are “wanting and not getting”.
    All OIB readers: Think of all the citizens of this place, who keep repeating that we live in the largest City, but things are not right. Is it because of Ganim habits learned as youth, practiced as an adult that become illegal acts known as felonies, when they self-serve the actor and not those supposedly served? FAIR Rent commission? FAIR Housing Commission? What have been the instructions BY EACH MAYOR with the legal expertise AND EXPERIENCE in each successive City Attorney Office?
    If FOI process is slow compared to flowing molasses or when Police Department process of paperwork is inaccurate and delayed, what is one to do in trying to exercise your civil rights? What does a renter with problems do in Bridgeport and what happens when you live to a retirement age, have disabling health issues and find yourself with no one to hear you or direct a problem to resolution? FAIR Rent or FAIR Housing likely……but they were allowed to die, and stay dead, because of the way term expiries are written in the City appointments? Or because too many folks in politics own rental property? Or other? Time will tell.

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    1. Anyone is free to answer any question I ask. I Know you addressed the council and was present at the meeting. Ever care to share what the atmosphere at cc meeting was like. I heard Maria Pereira spoke just to hear herself addressing herself, followed by her neighbor and constituent who complained about noise. Why didn’t she simply complain to Maria Pereira about the noise? Do you hear that sound? Speedy is going to ride his Harley down Bradley Street at 3 a.m.

      3+

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