Bronko, Mezzo win primaries in landslides

Incumbent Republican Mayor Mike Bronko (right) and Democratic candidate Bob Mezzo congratulate one another after their victories in Monday's primaries. Bronko defeated former Mayor Ron San Angelo, and Mezzo beat former state Rep. Kevin Knowles. Bronko and Mezzo will meet in the May 4 general election.

  

By Callum Borchers, Editor, and Paul Singley, Special to Citizen’s News

 

NAUGATUCK — Turns out the borough’s political town committees aren’t very good odds-makers. Republican incumbent Mayor Mike Bronko and Democrat Bob Mezzo — neither of whom was endorsed at his party’s January caucus — won their respective primaries Monday and will meet in the general election May 4.

 

Bronko’s victory was a veritable landslide. He claimed 62 percent of the GOP vote, defeating his predecessor, 633-393. Mezzo’s was almost equally decisive. The former deputy mayor earned 58 percent of his party’s votes for a final count of 1,090-776. Approximately 30 percent of registered voters in both parties cast their ballots.

 

“I’m glad we let the entire Republican party vote, and I’m very happy with the results,” Bronko said.

 

Bronko’s first term in office hasn’t been much of a honeymoon. The mayor presided over a tax increase on the heels of a property revaluation and watched the economic recession slow progress on the borough’s downtown revitalization project, which he supported in the 2007 mayoral election. And for the second time in Bronko’s young political career, unpaid taxes made headlines just weeks before voters went to the polls.

 

Despite these challenges, Bronko became the first Naugatuck mayor in 38 years to lose the town committee’s nomination but rally to win the primary.

San Angelo, who served as mayor from 2003-07 before accepting a job as a research assistant with the state Department of Information Technology, took criticism from Bronko throughout the campaign for “abandoning” the party before the last election. He did enough to patch up any hard feelings among members of the Republican Town Committee, but not enough voters were willing to overlook his departure.

 

“I’m surprised after 20 years of working on behalf of the town,” San Angelo said. “This comes down to me taking a state job. People were upset after I left.”

 

Still a member of the Naugatuck Economic Development Corporation, San Angelo said he will continue to work on behalf of the borough.

 

Mezzo, who has been absent from local politics since he lost to San Angelo in 2003, rode the momentum of solid debate performances to his win in the Democratic primary. At Cross Street Intermediate School and other polling locations, hearty supporters bundled up and waved signs for the 37-year-old local attorney.

 

Later surrounded by more than 100 people — many who donned blue “Team Mezzo” baseball caps — in his campaign headquarters on Church Street, Mezzo thanked his followers and vowed to work hard through the general election on May 4.

 

“I’m so happy and proud to have worked with such fantastic people who made it fun from the day we started the campaign and kept it that way through tonight,” Mezzo said. “I am grateful that the Naugatuck Democratic Party can put on a positive campaign based on the issues. This is one victory in what I hope will lead to a larger victory in May.”

 

He said Bronko will be a formidable opponent, and Mezzo believes he, too, will stick to the issues.

 

Bronko and Mezzo look to lead a community facing uphill battles over issues such as high property taxes, a downtown revitalization project, Renaissance Place, that is quickly losing momentum and six municipal unions whose contracts are set to expire.

 

Mezzo says he wants to reform local government and run it like a business. He wants to conduct a professional analysis of government to find ways to make it more efficient.

 

He also plans to create a “My First Teacher” program to allow parents the opportunity to interact with teachers and administrators, and conduct a seven-year plan to convert the high school football and soccer fields, and the three fields in the Rotary/Breen fields complex, to artificial turf by 2015.

 

Bronko, who never served in political office before being elected mayor in May 2007, believes he has done a good job so far. He discusses his “Mayor’s Home Work” project through which he and volunteers made upgrades at the homes of seniors, and other community-based initiatives, as his major successes.

 

Recently, unions representing the Visiting Nurses Association and administrators agreed to take pay freezes for a year in exchange for Bronko not laying off employees and extending their current contracts for a year. Several department heads, including Bronko, have also agreed to forgo pay increases for a year, and the police union has tentatively agreed to a one-year pay freeze.

 

Bronko, who earns $74,500 as mayor, not including benefits, has been criticized many times by burgesses throughout his tenure. He blames some of his blunders on freshman mistakes and says he’s learned from them.

 

Neither San Angelo nor Knowles plans to petition for a spot on the general election ballot. Knowles said he will take a break before thinking about his political future but did say, “I’ve been in politics since my 20s, and I’ve been in public life for 25 years. I think part of me would die if I didn’t do that.”

 

After the votes were tallied, workers from the Knowles camp made their way to Mezzo’s headquarters and vowed to unite the party.

 

“We were never divided, we just had differences of opinion,” Democratic Town Committee chairman M. Leonard Caine III said. “We had two solid candidates, and we will work together through May.”

Even before new contract, borough teachers highly paid

By Callum Borchers, Editor

 

NAUGATUCK — An arbitration panel was to announce its decision on the proposed Naugatuck teachers’ contract Wednesday, but regardless of the outcome, borough educators are already in elite financial company.

 

A Citizen’s News examination of salary data provided by the state Department of Education reveals during the 2007-08 school year, the average Naugatuck teacher earned $66,774 — slightly more than the average teacher in affluent communities like Cheshire, Farmington, Glastonbury, Simsbury and South Windsor.

 

The Department of Education uses a classification system, known as district reference groups, to categorize public school systems by their students’ socioeconomic statuses. DRGs take into account such factors as family income, parental education and occupation, and poverty rates. The groups range from A (most affluent) to I.

 

Each of the five towns listed above is a member of DRG B, in which the median family income is $97,210, 59.5 percent of parents hold a college degree, and 3.7 percent of children live in poverty. Naugatuck is a member of DRG G, in which the median family income is $53,931, 20.6 percent of parents hold a college degree, and 31 percent of children live in poverty.

 

Does it make sense that the borough pays its teachers as well or better than these wealthier districts?

 

“That’s a tough question,” Naugatuck Mayor Mike Bronko said. “I just have to say that Naugatuck’s teachers are some of the finest in the state.”

 

“I’m a little surprised [by the numbers],” admitted Naugatuck Board of Education Chair Kathleen Donovan. “But those salaries have allowed us to recruit better teachers.”

 

Among neighboring public school districts in the Naugatuck Valley League, the borough’s average salary in 2007-08 was $5,643 more than the second-highest-paid district, Watertown, and $7,258 more than the NVL average. And of the 17 school systems in DRG G, Naugatuck paid more than all but three; its average salary was $4,162 more than the group G average.

 

One reason Naugatuck’s average salary is comparably high is that 57 percent of its teachers are at the maximum step, meaning they are at the top of the pay scale because of their education and experience levels.

 

“You can’t really go by the average salary because Naugatuck has a lot of teachers on the max step,” said attorney Roseann Padula, who was the borough’s chief legal counsel during contract arbitration. “That skews the data.”

 

Donovan echoed Padula’s analysis, adding “I don’t think we generally pay higher than other [nearby] towns.”

 

Education officials in those nearby towns were reluctant to comment on Naugatuck’s teacher spending. Torrington Board of Education Chairman Paul Cavagnero, whose town is a member of both the NVL and DRG G, gave a diplomatic, “You won’t get me on the record throwing mud at another BOE.”

 

Torrington’s average teacher salary was $7,188 less than Naugatuck’s in 2007-08.

 

Wolcott Board of Education business manager Todd Bendtsen, who negotiated that town’s four-year teachers’ contract two years ago, didn’t share an opinion of Naugatuck’s spending either. But he did discuss the numbers on which Wolcott’s salaries are based.

 

“Typically, we look at averages for the area and the state,” Bendtsen said. “We also look at DRG F [of which Wolcott is a member] and use that as a barometer.”

 

Wolcott paid its teachers an average of $57,853 in 2007-08.

 

Bendtsen added there are some numbers that do not factor in to teacher salaries — namely, standardized test scores. Bronko said he agrees it would be unfair to pay teachers according to student performance on the Connecticut Mastery Test and the Connecticut Academic Performance Test.

 

“I can’t say they should be paid on scores, no,” Bronko said.

 

That’s a good thing for borough educators, since the district failed to meet federal No Child Left Behind goals in six straight academic years from 2001-02 to 2006-07. Naugatuck Public Schools did satisfy NCLB requirements in 2007-08, but five of the district’s 11 schools remain on the state Department of Education’s “in need of improvement list.”

 

No matter what other towns pay or how borough students fare on standardized tests, Naugatuck High School Principal Fran Serratore believes teachers’ wages are well-earned.

 

“Let me tell you something, our teachers deserve every penny,” he said.

 

Burgess Robert Neth, who voted against the proposed teachers’ contract in January, says that may be true, but taxpayers can’t afford a penny more.

 

“You’ve got to be out of your mind to want a raise right now,” Neth said. “I’ve been either on the finance board or a burgess for 20 years, and I don’t ever recall teachers taking a zero [increase]….I’m not saying teachers don’t deserve a raise, but now is not the time.”

St. Patty’s Day dinner packs Naugatuck Senior Center

More than 200 people celebrated an early St. Patrick’s Day at the Naugatuck Senior Center’s annual corned beef and cabbage dinner last Thursday. Helping out in the kitchen were, from left: Marge Pierce, Sandra Clark, Carole Mancini and Jim Goggin.

By Callum Borchers, Editor

 

NAUGATUCK — St. Patrick’s Day came early to the Naugatuck Senior Center. More than 200 people — including all four mayoral candidates, newly-elected state Rep. Rosa Rebimbas, state Rep. David Labriola and several burgesses — flocked to 300 Meadow Street last Thursday for the annual corned beef and cabbage dinner. The menu also feature buttered potatoes, boiled carrots, Irish soda bread and appropriately shamrock-colored pudding for dessert.

 

Borough tax collector Jim Goggin assumed the role of executive chef, carving a senior-center-record 300 pounds of his famous corned beef.

 

“He’s done an amazing job,” senior center director Harvey Leon Frydman said. “He’s been here since 8 a.m.”

 

What’s the secret to Goggin’s signature dish?

 

“Twenty-one years at the Old Corner Café,” he explained.

 

This might have been just another corned beef dinner — albeit a very big one — for a man with that much experience. But a missing pair of hands in the kitchen made it sentimental.

 

“This year is special because we’re without Frank Sousa,” Goggin said. “Before Frank died in September, he fixed our meat slicer. When I turned it on this morning, typical Frank didn’t use a lot of electrical tape to cover the wires, and I got lit up like a Christmas tree.”

 

“I told him, ‘That’s Frank saying hi,’” said Carole Mancini, who helped prepare the meal.

 

Frank Sousa was a former senior center men’s club vice president and house chairman of American Legion Post 17. He died of cancer Sept. 1 at age 77.

Local representatives divided on death penalty

 

Dr. William Petit, Jr. speaks at a 2007 memorial for his wife and two daughters, who were murdered during a home invasion in Cheshire. Dr. Petit argued in favor of the death penalty last week before the House Judiciary Committee.

 

 By Callum Borchers, Editor

 

State Rep. David Labriola (R-Oxford) sat through an eight-hour hearing about Connecticut’s death penalty last Wednesday and emerged with the same conclusion he’s drawn for many years.

 

“I’ve always been a strong supporter of the death penalty,” said Labriola, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee. “I believe there are some crimes so heinous, the only justice is the death penalty.”

 

For now, that’s the state’s position too. But new legislation proposed last week could change it.

 

 

 

The judiciary committee discussed two bills last week: One would abolish the death penalty altogether; the other would raise the burden of proof in capital punishment cases from “beyond a reasonable doubt” to “absolute certainty.”

According to Labriola, the second bill, proposed by retired Superior Court Judge Harold Dean, is virtually out of consideration.

 

“I think both sides came to the conclusion that ‘absolute certainty’ was unworkable,’” Labriola said. “There’s no absolute certainty in life. It would basically be an abolishment.”

 

Not that Connecticut is in the habit of executing criminals on a regular basis anyway. When serial killer Michael Ross received a lethal injection four years ago, it marked the state’s first execution in 45 years.

 

Almost two thirds of Constitution state residents favor the death penalty, or at least that’s what a Quinnipiac University poll revealed several months after a triple murder in Cheshire in 2007. Dr. William Petit, Jr.’s wife and two daughters were killed during a home invasion. During last Wednesday’s hearing, Dr. Petit urged legislators to preserve the death penalty, saying “My family got the death penalty, and you want to give life to murderers. That is not justice.”

 

Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, the two men charged with the murders, will likely face the death penalty when their trials begin next year, unless the law is changed.

 

Democratic state Rep. Theresa Conroy, who represents Beacon Falls in the 105^th District, said she is leaning toward supporting the bill that would ban the death penalty.

 

“I try to put my personal feelings aside and listen to my constituents,” she said. “My feeling is we’re not for the death penalty….I am a representative of the people in my district and their views.”

 

Conroy added she will research the bill to a greater extent before taking a firm position and is open to changing her mind, depending on feedback she receives from district voters.

 

Newly-elected state Rep. Rosa Rebimbas (R-Naugatuck), who was sworn in Friday, also said she will have to review the bill in detail but expressed qualms about the death penalty.

 

“The idea is that the death penalty is a deterrent [to crime],” Rebimbas said. “But the statistics don’t back that up.”

 

Another argument against capital punishment is the cost of trials and appeals, which often take many years. The state’s chief public defender, Susan Storey, estimates her office will spend $2.5 million of public money this fiscal year defending people facing the death penalty.

 

Several legislators suggested at the hearing that the state could save money by eliminating the death penalty. Rebimbas, who ran a successful campaign on her reputation as a fiscal conservative, said “I do buy that argument because research backs it up.”

 

Labriola disagrees.

 

“That argument is faulty,” he said. “If the maximum penalty were life in prison with no chance of parole, those cases would be defended just as vigorously and would end up costing just as much money [as death penalty cases].”

 

Labriola said he plans to use the reopened death penalty debate to push for reform of the appeals process — specifically, to speed it up. He cited the fact that among Connecticut’s 10 members of death row, three committed their crimes in the 1980s. One of them is Sedrick “Ricky” Cobb of Naugatuck, who was convicted of the 1989 kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of a 23-year-old Watertown woman.

 

“We can’t have people there for decades,” Labriola said. “We need to streamline the appeals process so that there is a reasonable time that victims’ families can expect to have the case closed. Something like three to five years.”

 

Labriola called Connecticut’s capital defenders some of the best in the country and said he believes the judicial system provides adequate protection to people facing the death penalty. Conroy isn’t so sure.

 

“Even if we put one person to death who’s innocent, it’s not right,” she said.

Region 16 BOE hopes to pass 2009-10 budget on first try

By Jenna Gaillard, Staff Writer

 

 

BEACON FALLS — The Region 16 Board of Education kicked of 2009-10 budget talks last Wednesday at Laurel Ledge Elementary School. Many topics were discussed at the first budget workshop session on the proposed $36.5 million budget, which is up 1.46 percent from the current year’s budget.

 

According to Region 16 Superintendent of Schools James Agostine, the proposed budget is a “collective effort” between himself and business manager William Stowell.

 

School administrators submitted budget requests to Agostine and Stowell between October and December. Agostine said he and Stowell examined the requests, asked questions and “whittled away at things” during January and February.

 

According to Agostine, they “peeled away about $1.2 million worth of budget requests” to get to get the proposed increase down to 1.46 percent. Stowell called the 1.46 percent increase “a good thing to go forward with.”

 

During the budget workshop session, Agostine suggested the board not replace three teachers who are retiring this year (two from Laurel Ledge and one from Community School). Leaving these positions vacant could mean cutting some elective classes. Agostine said the retirement of one of the teachers may result in the elimination of a language arts elective.

 

“Because we’ve taken the $1.2 million and gone to the next tier of cuts, [we] have to go to program eliminations,” Agostine said.

 

According to BOE member Priscilla Cretella, the board doesn’t want this to happen because class sizes will increase, and some English writing classes will have to be eliminated.

 

At the budget workshop session, Beacon Falls Selectman Michael A. Krenesky urged the BOE to “look at today’s budget and begin your cutbacks now.”

 

“There are nickels and dimes in multiple places you can cut…” Krenesky said. “I know how hard it hurts and how difficult it is to make that decision…it is time for bold action, not just sitting back and letting the status quo go on.”

 

At one point, the board considered a zero percent increase for the new budget, but a vote soon removed that possibility. One BOE member said he would like to see a zero percent increase but such a move is not “realistic.”

According to Cretella, the board has only four weeks to finalize the budget.

 

“We need to pass this budget on the first try; we’re under a timeline,” Cretella advised the board.

 

Last year voters in Prospect and Beacon Falls finally passed a $35.94 million school budget on the third referendum.

 

After much discussion at last Wednesday’s budget workshop session, the board decided Agostine will draft a letter to the teachers, administrators and support staff unions to “formally request and seek contractual concessions to assist in reducing the budget.”

 

Cretella said each of the three unions will decide if it is willing to make unspecified concessions to help reduce the proposed budget.

 

“[We’re] actually asking them that we’re looking for some monetary giveback without hurting classrooms or reduce teachers’ class sizes,” Cretella said.

 

Agostine added the motion directed him to “ask for contractual concessions” from union leaders and to meet with them to “fill them in on what the board was thinking when they passed the resolution.” According to Agostine, the requested contractual concessions could be pay freezes or any type of concession that has a monetary impact.

 

Agostine’s letter to the three union leaders was sent out last Thursday.