Click here to watch "Town Affairs Update" meeting on YouTube
LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF WESTON "TOWN AFFAIRS UPDATE"
Weston Town Hall Meeting Room
November 10, 2012

INTRODUCTION:

Promptly at 10:30am, the speakers and audience assembled on this Saturday-after-Election Day...ready, get set, go! 



First things first, our moderator explains the way the morning will go, including how the speakers will be timed.  The crowd that turned out was really impressed and felt they learned a lot!  We counted a baker's dozen of questions after the original half hour to 40 minutes worth of presentations.

What does the League of Women Voters of Weston do when the town has been through more than a week of powerlessness?  How did the town react to this disastrous power outage?  Well, if you attended the LWV "Town Affairs Update" you could answer that!  But wait!  It will run on Channel 79 at 2pm everyday starting Sunday, Nov. 11.  Below, observations from elsewhere on CL&P maps. 




PRESENTATIONS:

Starting off with a ten minute presentation, First Selectman Gayle Weinstein gave us new information we had not known about - some technical details of the recent outages.  In addition, she was incredibly focussed on the fact that Weston cares most for the most vulnerable among us, and was proud to say that this time, the volunteers needed showed up in droves - never too many to have, because later in the program some of the details of suffering were exposed, and it was remarked that the police in particular followed up on requests for help in investigating problems beyond what anyone might otherwise have expected!


First  Selectman Gayle Weinstein

What did the schools do this time?  Hesitant to spend too much time on matters from the past, Superintendent of Schools Colleen Palmer spoke of future coordination with the Town of Weston, and later in q&a, addressed the school enrollment drop coming in a year or so...


Colleen Palmer, PhD, Superintendent of Schools.

Maybe the most informative, since I do not know much about these things, was Finance Board Chair. Gerald Sargent, III expaining where Weston's finances are now.  During q&a, he considered the trade off of budgeting as we do in Weston - which may make arbitrators figure that we are in the pink - but then, do we really want to go over our own little fiscal cliff (my words here) just to look poorer?  No one mentioned it, but the reval coming up may have its own impacts on the way forward...


Gerald Sargent, III, Chairman of the Board of Finance

And finally, Ken Edgar, wearing two hats, presented.  He explained the major changes in the new Charter that passed on Election Day (the previous Tuesday).  He was pleased that it passed 3039 to 996 - a significant vote total as well as a 3-1 margin.  While many ballots were "spoiled" because people went back to read about the question - thus requiring them to go through the voting lines again, it was impressive that more than 4000 people voted for the last item on the ballot, considering that the first row, President/Vice President, only got @5500 voters interested!  No one said so, but considering the hoopla and billions spent on the national election, Weston charter voters must have been paying attention all along!



Ken Edgar, former Co-Chair. of the Charter Revision Commission;  Weston Community Service Coalition.

WESTON FORUM REPORT COMING.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR: 

A dozen helpful observations of the storm experience and how they dealt with it - but some speakers stuck to the original notion about asking about the budget, charter, financial situation in town and one (no picture) about possible revisiting of new energy technologies.  NOW PLAYING on Town TV Chanel 79 at 2pm every day!   A NEW FEATURE the League is using this time (for our meetings in Town Hall and on Channel 79) ...on YouTube here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_ll9opqF4k&feature=youtu.be

LEAGUE LUNCHEON - MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION HERE.

And then there was lunch in the Daugherty Commission Room!