Yes it is true. The pensions would not be such a burden if the City had matched employee contributions each year. When you hear the City claim a number as a cost for pensions, they "forget" to break out what part of that number is employee contribution and what part is City. That gives the misleading impression that the total is a cost borne by a current operating budget. Even if they went to a 401k plan,it would still require regular contributions from both sides. With the City history, the unions would probably require somebody other than the City manage those funds. I don't see agreement on a big change very likely, but anything is possible. If I wanted to use my given name here, I might share the real numbers in my case and you would not believe them. Our pensions are fixed the day we retire and look pretty good that day, but don't look like much years later. The contract I retired under also promised medical benefits that the City changed unilaterally a few years ago and I now pay premiums that were not part of that contract. Between taxes and those premiums, I only get about half of my City pension and I would be in real trouble without benefits from other jobs my wife and I worked in the private sector. By the way, I think you may be misinformed about Westport, unless there has been a recent change for new employees only, in some departments... Detailed budgets, by department, seem to have been taken down, but here are some numbers that puzzle me. I understand that the various pension plans require a City contribution and an employee contribution totalling close to 15% of payroll. Out of a budget of $ 296,842,367, there is only $7,129,662 listed as pensions. That seems short(only 2.4%), even if all that is reported is the City's half. That budget number is not all payroll, but most of it is. What am I missing ? View Comment

Mr Longo deserves credit for what he has done. Some audits review accounting practices and check arithmetic. Others assume the arithmetic is OK and review management practices and verify expenses are only being paid to REAL employees and REAL vendors. It is the second kind of audit I believe is called for in this case. With a budget this size, the opportunity for systemic corruption is mind boggling. There is nobody now able to verify that is not the problem. Until such an audit is completed, any effort to calm this down enables more corruption. I would be delighted to be proven wrong, but it can't happen without an independent fprensic audit. If the City doesn't do it, we may have to deal with some other agency doing it for, and to, us. View Comment

As much as I have criticised both Moccia and Chiaramonte for their parts in this fiasco, it is possible, they have FINALLY decided to take a serious look at that budget and trim away all the fat they can find. Without some independent verification of all the names on the payroll and all the vendors, it is still an exercise in futility. That number of 400 employees added in three years is probably not a real number, but it is troubling. A nose count, school by school, should be step one. That is not all that complicated before school lets out. After that it gets more complicated. View Comment

Looking at the approved BOE budget for this year 2011-12, there are a few line items that seem curious. For example, why is there a line for gasoline ($257, 837) ? Why a line for utilities service(?) ($124,000), another for electricity ($2,141,125), another for electric service ($25,000), another for natural gas ($ 716,102) another for propane ($7,200), another for oil ($592,000) ? Is there overlap in these ? View Comment

Struggles ? Why do I find it hard to believe you even put any effort at all into finding something nice to say about a Democratic state senator ? You and I make no effort to hide what team we support, it is too late now to suggest any different. If you ask moccia, a live-long republican, he will tell you good things about Senator Duff. That battle to get the formula for state aid to school systems changed has been going on for a very long time. Chiaramonte meant well to go to Hartford and speak in favor of more money for Norwalk, but, I expect his diplomancy offended more than were persuaded. Senator Duff's style is less bombast and a great deal more effective. He reaches across the aisle very effectively and teams up with Larry Cafero in Norwalk's interest. Just because he didn't jump on Chiaramonte's bandwagon when Chiaramonte thought he should does not mean they weren't supporting the same cause. When, and if, if happens and the formula is changed, bet on Duff and Cafero getting it done. View Comment

Some poor clerk called staff ("Unfortunately, for some reason, our staff entered $25.6 million.") will be blamed, but probably not named, there will be an effort to divert our attention elsewhere and avoid a thorough INDEPENDENT audit, and those who should be held accountable will hope we don't notice. Before school is out for the summer, somebody not connected with the school system (ranking police officer ?), should be assigned to go to each school and do a nose count with each principal and then count noses on the 3rd floor. That would be an essential first step in any honest effort to determine what is really going on, and could result in some surprises. View Comment

Tim T Just to show us that you have some idea what you are talking about, why don't you post a list of the qualifications you would look for in a candidate for the next police chief ? You would be suprised how carefully our posts are studied, and your list could provide some useful insights for the people who will be making the appointment. I am dead serious. Input from people like you and I and others could make a real difference in who gets the job. There are some skills they will be looking for and some unavoidable political considerations, but, if you have a real interest in improving the police dept, your honest input, without all the complaints about what you see now, could be helpful. Please don't limit yourself to qualities you already associate with a particular likely candidate, but try to list all you want in an ideal perfect candidate. We all know they are not going to find the perfect candidate at the price they can pay, but we should encourage them to try for the best they can get. This is a real challenge and will not be as simple as it sounds. View Comment

You and a lot of others assume the only solution is cutting costs and that may be true. Some of us think none of us will know if the real problem is costs that need to be cut, or a systemic problem with extra checks being issued to non-existent people and cashed by insiders who belong in jail. Until we have the results of an independent audit that verifies every payment, employee or vendor, as legitimate over a period of several years, none of us will have reliable answers and all we are doing here is speculating on a very limited amount of data. View Comment

I sound like somebody who knows the history and really hates to hear the wrong people getting blamed by people who don't know what they are talking about. The pensions and "defined benefit" plans were negotiated by politicians who crunched the numbers and figured that was cheaper than giving the salaries we, and they, thought, at the time, were reasonable. Both sides hired actuaries and allowed for considerable inflation when figuring plan costs. Nobody is claiming the agreements were perfect, but they were, and are, a lot better than some people now try to make them sound. If both sides had fulfilled all their obligations as they came due, we would not be now hearing all the complaints about the terrible costs. We would, instead, be looking at surpluses in pension funds. The city has managed to avoid paying for a lot of the defined benefits they contracted for and passed a lot of the expense off to retirees. Everybody underestimated the increase in cost of medical benefits and retirees are now paying unanticipated premiums for medical insurance. View Comment

She says; "our contractual obligations and resources set aside to fund them have been out of sync" I have said many times here: contracts were made and the promises in them were ignored. Different ways of making the same statement. Unions agreed to a percentage of wages deducted by the city to be invested in a pension fund with a matching contribution from the city. The deductions were taken, but the investment into pension funds was not made for years, long before this administration, and now we are dealing with the results. Talk about finger-pointing, too many people are quick to blame the employees unions and ignore the cheating done by the city. For years, union attorneys told union leadership there was no cause for action as long as the benefit obligations were met. The problem was not limited to Norwalk or a specific union, and a law was finally passed forcing the cities to contribute to pensions finds. It is being done now, but it will take a long time to make the fund capable of meeting all it's obligations. While that is happening, creative bookkeeping has managed slush funds to hide the problem from the public. Now we are dealing with what happens when slush funds (probably illegal) are mismanaged. Only the mayor knows how much he knew, when he knew, and how much he failed to do to prevent this fiasco. It is hard to believe he wasn't well aware for years. His response suggests a stronger interest in putting this all behind us, than in fixing what looks like a systemic problem over a long period. Until somebody does a complete, independent audit we will never know. It would be good if we got our own answers and solved our own problem before some federal agency comes snooping around. View Comment

Ms Thomson decries finger-pointing and suggests other causes for a ten million dollar shortfall in the school system budget. She seems to think nobody should be accountable. Budgets were prepared and approved by people getting paid a lot of money to accept accountability and the taxpayers paying the bill cannot give them all a pass. We are either dealing with systemic corruption or monumental incompetence, or some combination where we have been getting ripped off for years and the people responsible for protecting us failed miserably. Until we know for sure, and people are held accountable, not another dime of taxpayer money should be dumped into this bottomless pit. View Comment

If we completely buy into Mr McCarthy's premise, how often would we be asking for proposals from private contractors to provide police,fire,and teaching services ? If we follow his union-busting proposal to it's logical conclusion ALL tax supported government services would be turned over to private contractors, much the same as private contractors were given no-bid contracts overseas under the Bush-Cheny administration and we even used large numbers of highly paid mercenaries in battle. We will probably never get honest numbers on how much tax money went to Halliburton or the mercenaries contractor with the ever-changing names. View Comment

Anyone who pays attention knows the phrase "I will tell you quite honestly" usually means the speaker intends to lie. Don't ever buy a used car from a salesman who uses that phrase and goes on to tell you his version of the car's history. Before the BOE gets another dime, somebody must answer that question about 400 new employees, who they are, and what they do, if, in fact, they do exist and really work for the school system. If not, we have a major corruption problem. View Comment

It is a clear demonstration of the mayor's math skills, just in case the four million dollar hole in the BOE budget, presented under his leadership, doesn't convince. Either he can't count, or he assumes we can't, or maybe he has forgotten how to tell the truth. View Comment

Only if I believed him and that is not likely. View Comment

Tim T I never said Harry was the perfect police chief or Norwalk has the perfect police dept. I said Harry will be hard to replace. I know him personally and I know. A little about police departments. We can all agree there are things we would like to see done differently. We each believe our version of how a police department is managed would be an improvement. Only somebody who has run a police dept. has any real understanding how difficult a task that can be. I, for example, have suggested here there should be more officers and certain technical services should be handled in-house, like some laboratory work, including DNA matching, but I know that would cost money and getting more in the police budget has been impossible for years. You have criticized how much some officers are paid for overtime work and how poorly some of that work is performed. Do you think, if you were appointed chief(not impossible), that you could snap your fingers and change long established practices ? A police chief is an appointed position and serves at the pleasure of whoever appoints. That is true in Norwalk and most other places. That gives the mayor enormous control over any chief who wants to stay in that position. Keeping the mayor, the people, and the officers working for you all reasonably happy while keeping within a budget is an incredible balancing act that Chief Harry has done well and he will be a tough act to follow. In my opinion a Norwalk native with years of police experience and the right education should have a real advantage in the selection process, but I guarantee nobody is going to ask me to help make the selection. I would not rule out anybody, but expect the job will go to a Norwalk officer, either working now or recently retired. View Comment

The mayor and his cohorts are never opposed to anything where somebody else, the state, in this case, is willing to pay for a large part of the expense, without regard for the merits of the project, or the effect on the neighborhood. From a strictly engineering point of view, this project may have some merit, but most of the folks who live in Rowayton and pay Norwalk taxes based on high assessments because it is a waterfront community, live there because of the small village charm of the area and elected people they believed would protect the character of their neighborhood. They have now seen that an unelected retired army colonel(Alvord), living in Danbury, has more power in this administration than he should, and pretty much always gets his way, even when some of us question his credibility. Rowayton voters need to keep this in mind the next time they vote for local candidates, including a mayor. Just because some projects may look like good ideas on some engineer's drawing board up in Hartford does not always make them good ideas in Norwalk. Boondogle is way too polite a name for this project that we are being forced to pay for. State money does come out of our pockets. View Comment

The heroes who were honored deserved more than we can ever do for them. Honoring them each year is a nice custom. With all the criticism Chief Harry takes, he will be hard to replace. He has worked hard to come up through the ranks, get himself a couple of degrees, and do an excellent job managing a police department he loves. Some of us believe he should now have more officers. The city would do well to get the process started now to find the next chief. Moccia has spoken in favor of appointing from within the department, others have spoken in favor of a nationwide search. That decision will be made by the police commission (moccia appointees) and should not be put off until the last minute, forcing a hasty decision. Finding a candidate as well qualified as Harry was when he was appointed, will take a while. View Comment

If the city was really interested in saving taxpayer money and not just diverting more to a certain favored contractor, there are many ways to make collection much more efficient. Other communities have gotten away from our current labor intensive process without even talking about outsourcing. The successful bidder wil probably move to a much more efficient and profitable way of collection as son as the city comits to a long term contract, but they will not reduce the price we will be paying. View Comment

You are correct about the BOE having total control of it's budget after the city has approved a total for the year. If you or I were mayor or members of the board of estimate and taxation we would insist on a detailed plan on how that money was going to be used before we voted to approve an amount. It seems that has not been done for years and now they have run out of slush fund money. There is no excuse for the mayor and a lot of others not knowing there was a slush fund. That alone is reason for heads to roll. Some us suspect a real forensic audit, covering several years, might even find criminal diversion of public funds, also known as larceny. If moccia has nothing to hide he should order a real forensic audit before any more money is poured into this bottomless pit. That is the only way to restore public confidence. For this large a shortfall to be suddenly discovered this late in the fiscal year, a lot us believe there must have been some deception in the proposed BOE budget each year for quite some time and now is the time to put a stop to it. If he dosn't take action now, you know a lot of us will be convinced he was in on the deceptions and benefited from them. View Comment