Neighbors Unite To Support Hennessy’s Reform Bill In Face Of Strong Opposition

Joel,
I am sorry your work prevented you from participating in the meeting. Personally, I had another meeting to attend that overlapped the first half of the meeting at Harborview so I came late to the session. There was good discussion and I think some serious listening to the swirl of issues involved here.

If community members were pleased with the performance of City Council as representatives of all of the people of Bridgeport we would not be looking at this issue probably. If most communities in the State (acted as we do in our legislative body) ignored the appearances of (or actual) conflict of interest between City employment and City legislative decision making, we would not be looking at it, perhaps because it would be the overwhelming State governance culture. If the monitoring and oversight of budgets, plans and activities, and listening to taxpayers by City employee/legislators were effective, we would have little to improve.
And if Federal, State of CT and City Charter language were not so established to eliminate potential conflict of interest, then Hennessy’s bill would not seem necessary. But it seems a loophole with self-serving legal interpretation by City administrations allowed this co-opting of the City Council by the executive City branch to occur.

However this is not what we deal with in Bridgeport. Power and control mechanisms including favorable legal interpretations of basically corrupt practice is present. Finally enough citizens are getting together for listening, learning and education about issues and alternatives.

During the recent snowstorm, Mother Nature did her thing and people listened for word from the City control structure, looked for the plows on the streets, and slowly began to clear limited areas and talk with their neighbors. Too much time passed. Too little was heard from on high. People took action over larger areas. Hurrah! Bridgeport is alive. Power and control was called to account, and they responded it was the fault of Yahoos!!! It was a historic blizzard!!! Neighboring towns with the same weather reports cleared the streets, let business return to normal, opened schools, etc. Well done, City Hall. What did you learn? Can you humbly tell that to the community? Did you really need the listening session? Or did you view the session as community venting primarily? Shoveling lots of snow in the days before allowed the community to vent emotions. Big Brother was found wanting.

Listening, learning and changing how the community of Bridgeport becomes a real community with a variety of people willing to look at the broad needs of the City, to call forth energy, thinking and good will for the benefit of all, and to renew the sense of ‘public service’ with limits is a long road. But it gets cleared by individuals, issue by issue, finding the leadership wanting with its financial plans to continue increased taxation.

It is not easy. But it is possible. And it will eat away at the machine. One speaker at the “Snow Job” hearing was especially eloquent. One thousand square feet of home spending over $5,000 of property taxes he told us and compared it to the Mayor’s salary of $132,000. As president of a condo association that pays the City $220,000 annually he did not blame the Mayor for failures. Rather he blamed himself for failing in personal due diligence to learn more about candidates at the last election. I do not think he will do that again. He then addressed the public works leadership and told them of his personal experience in the military and in his current professional field of emergency service to non-combatants. He was direct in telling them of their failure to serve the community adequately in this storm.

God Bless America, he hit a home run in his brief statement. That storm raised the awareness of what people can do, what they have not been doing for themselves and how this has led to where we are today. Look for more signs. Time will tell.