Selectman Maureen Crick Owen has agreed to be Newtown’s appointed liaison to a statewide COVID-19 Long Term Recovery initiative as state officials began outlining plans to phase reopening state colleges and universities. Read this and more in today's update.
US Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy wrote to the Director of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), Michael Carvajal, demanding that he provide answers regarding the department’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak at the Danbury Federal Corrections facility.
Secretary of the State Denise Merrill has released the Connecticut plan for the August 11 primary and November 3 general elections in 2020 in the face of the COVID-19 crisis.
Governor Ned Lamont may have downplayed it at the top of his May 5 press briefing, but the fact that state COVID-19 hospitalizations increased for the first time in almost two weeks was not surprising to Newtown Health District Director Donna Culbert. Learn why in our May 5 daily update.
Authorization for a significant amount of a costly emergency communication system upgrade may remain in the hands of voters if a proposal to split the project's bonding into two phases is embraced by the Legislative Council on May 6. Read on to learn more.
Governor Ned Lamont today announced that due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, he is ordering in-person classes at all K-12 public school facilities in Connecticut to remain canceled for the rest of the 2019-2020 academic year.
Bruce, welcome to the conversation.
Your recent statement after the storm — admitting that you should have communicated “faster, more completely, and more personally” — was fine as far as it went. But this is not just about one storm. It is about a pattern. You ran on openness, responsiveness, and transparency, even saying that “evasive answers or silence are unacceptable in government.”
The problem is that Newtown residents have been dealing with exactly that silence from you since you were elected.
Newtown’s Emergency Management page says the town, together with the Office of the First Selectman, provides “critical public information and warning” during emergencies. The town also rolled out CodeRED cellphone registration on March 24, 2022 so residents could receive emergency information directly.
So where were you when police were searching for missing 23-year-old Kateri Doty in January? Where were you during the brush fires near the Newtown town line in April? Where were you on April 22, when state police and Newtown police were searching for two people who fled an I-84 crash and a canine search moved into the Church Hill Road area?
Residents should not be hearing about a missing person, wildfire conditions, or police tracking dogs moving through backyards from Facebook, neighbors, or kids in town. They should be hearing from their town government.
This is not really about whether you personally press the CodeRED button. Or how many task forces you have created. It is about leadership. You are the First Selectman. You are responsible for making sure the town communicates clearly, quickly, and visibly when public safety is involved.
So yes, it is nice that you have finally acknowledged the problem. But the public did not need this storm to figure it out. We have been saying it for a long time.
Bruce, you were missing when the town needed to hear from you. The question now is whether this storm finally woke you up, or whether this is just another late apology followed by more silence.
The topic may be the same but the narratives every other week differ and I appreciate the installments. Rebuttals on factual content rather than focusing on form would improve the discourse.
Congrats to all the 275 graduates.
For context...class of 2005 had 360 students, the number of graduating seniors seemed to cap out in the late 2000's in the low 400's.
