Each and every one of these precincts is functional and utilitarian. They are not pretty. They don’t need to be. I couldn’t tell you when they were built, but it sure wasn’t recently.

Couple the cost of our new police palace with the list of police officers in this town making more than $100,000/year plus benefits (does this include their $50/hour overtime for watching CL&P backhoes as required by law?) as detailed in Greenwich Time is almost enough to make you throw a tea party.

We certainly don’t need to do a similar project for the fire department.

Aren’t we lucky to have known him, even if the time was too short. His life was of high quality.

Requiescat in pace, Dave.

Greenwich employs far more police per 1,000 population than just about any other town in Connecticut, except for our crime-ridden big cities. We spend tens of millions on a sparkling new police HQ. Yet we can’t be bothered to build a second high school that is badly needed (Greenwich High School is the second biggest in the entire state, only slightly smaller that the public high school in economically depressed New Britain). We can’t even construct a new auditorium for that school, even though the one that’s there was too small decades ago when it was first built.

And what is this focus on arresting young people in this town? Why are scores of kids getting arrested for smoking pot, an offense that warrants no more than a ticket in neighboring Massachusetts? Why can we find all the money we need to employ police officers to arrest kids for pot, but we are scrimping on employing teachers, going over the top range for students per class at some schools?

Something is very wrong with our priorities in Greenwich.

I am certainly glad you appreciate the new building. It is, after all, the community’s not the police department’s. As the police department’s liaison to the building project, I’ve spent the better part of the last four years endeavoring to ensure the building was worth the Town’s investment.

I am sorry you were left with certain misconceptions. For the record, please allow me to put forth the following:

1) All six countertops integral to the building are plastic laminate over wood (like traditional Formica.) All other countertops, work surfaces and desktops (even the Chief’s) are of similar construction (plastic laminate over wood.) All of the furniture in the building is the mid-grade modular Steelcase office furniture that has been established as the Town’s municipal standard. This is the same grade, type and manufacture of office furniture found in other municipal buildings like Town Hall.

There is not a single piece of marble anything in the new facility – to include countertops. The only thing close are the walls in the public lobby and some areas of the exterior facade that are polished granite to a height of about four feet. This material was selected to render the building’s appearance consistent with the existing 1938 Fire/Police building and for its durability, ease of maintenance and low cost. So was the polished cinderblock used in every hallway, elevator lobby and all the rooms and offices that do not have traditional sheetrock walls. Unfinished block and painted drywall hardly seems lavish.

2) The dormitory space is vital to our operations, especially during emergencies and weather events. When we are required to order officers to stay for double shifts with only eight hours off between sixteen hour work periods, we need to be able to provide them somewhere to rest. Many officers live 45 minutes to over an hour away and eight hours is just not enough time to commute both ways, perhaps grab a meal and get adequate sleep. Especially during emergencies, we need our personnel to be well rested to maximize safety and efficiency.

The dormitory is three connecting rooms that provide sleeping accommodations for 14 employees (a typical patrol shift) and totals about 1,080 square feet – around the size of a typical two-bedroom apartment. You might “certainly like to live” in a two-bedroom apartment with 13 other people. I can’t say I relish the thought.

3) The new building is outfitted with 13 adult detention cells – the exact same number of adult cells as were in the 1938 Fire/Police building. The four additional cells are two youth cells (we had no youth holding facilities in the former building), a handicapped-accessible cell (required in a new public building by the ADA) and a single, large communal temporary holding cell in our prisoner processing area. We have had access to the same number of adult detention cells for over 70 years. I am not aware of it being an issue to date.

4) Relative to your observation the building is outfitted with “very well accomplished wood finishes including trimwork that I could easily say is the best of the best,” thanks for the compliment. You certainly can’t consider wood to be an exotic building material. That the municipality hired skilled workers who were required to meet an exacting standard of craftsmanship can’t be a bad thing for taxpayers, can it?

5) The building is far from too large. It was constructed to meet our needs for fifty years. In fact, at 53,000 square feet, it is 10,000 square feet smaller than was recommended when the initial studies were conducted at the start of the project in the early 1990′s.

6) The Town did not own all of the land involved. If you recall, the Town was required to purchase and raze the former “Judy’s Nails” building on Mason Street to make adequate space available. You can’t really be surprised that it cost more per square foot to construct a large building with an attached 167-vehicle parking structure in the heart of downtown Greenwich than it did to build a similar one with surface parking on a vacant lot in an industrual section of South Norwalk. The fact of the matter is that the building project was finished on budget and ahead of schedule. I can’t imagine the Town wanting more than that.

I any event, I am glad you enjoyed your tour. Feel free to stop by again anytime. Usually we have to drag our guests down here kicking and screaming … literally.

Respectfully,

Lt. Mark Kordick
Administrative Lieutenant
Greenwich Police Department

As for your comments about building. What I don;t understand is the acceptance of high costs. Certainly, in a Town where one can find $20 million dollar personal homes, we can get a bit desensitized to the dollars. Additionally, if there can be a splashy addition to the High School, or the Fire Station, or Witherall, or any other edifice – without a tax increase – many citizens just focus on the results and not the means to get there. Literally every project we have undertaken over the past few decades has been overbudget, and corners still cut (see Ham Av). The whole perceived problem with the High School auditorium started with a cutback in the 1969 construction.

If we were demonstrably unsafe, certainly we should consider a fire station. But absent that proof, and I’ve seen no person make that argument, we need to marshall our dwindling resources for capital projects in the unsexy realm of drainage, flooding, schools, roads etc, IMHO.

As far as Jim Lash, I always admired his ability to achieve things by force of will and conviction. But he was attacked in quite a bipartisan fashion at the time for the projects, and not just by me.

I agree with you Frank. 12 reps. who could vote yes sounds much better than a bunch of no-shows who would only vote no.

So many improvements would be made!

I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that you and Francesa virtually invented the sports talk radio genre, and that your partnership lasted 19 years. I should further remind you that the “insight” you bemoan made you far wealthier than you might have been if you remained a restaurant manager. And why? Because you didn’t care whether anyone made inane comments on air hiding behind fake names, you stood tall and said what you believed, and took ownership, 100%. That took real cojones, like rooting for the San Francisco Giants for all that time in a two team town.

But I thank you for caring about what I said. Clearly it touched a nerve, and I hope you will share any specific and trenchant comments on the RTM that you might have going forward, even if you do live in New Canaan.

Franny, you are as insightful about government as I was about sports. But I applaud you for realizing that you can actually get people to read your dumb comments by making things up and creating straw men that you can then tear down and really get under their skin. But I think you owe me for violation of my trademark of dumb_ss comments.

The BoS, BET, BoE and many of the official committee members are very involved and often put in a lot of time. If, say, the RTM were reduced to 12 people do you think we have 12 really good people who would want to do all the work necessary? The budget still would need to be scrutinized closely, all the mid-year expenditures would have to be reviewed, the ordinances would have to be studied. If nothing else, the RTM’s size spreads the work. Granted it is spread to a fairly core group but on some issues, the non-regulars get involved and really pitch in. As it is now, RTM is three meetings a month most months. A smaller board would mean a much heavier work load. Forget the merits of broader involvements, do you think there are enough people around who would want to do all that work? Enough to actually have multiple candidates running for each spot? I’m really asking because I’m not sure. I know I may run for RTM again, I also know I wouldn’t run to be the sole candidate, or even one of three candidates, from Byram.

Your argument feels more like a vote for the status quo in all things, political and structural. What I see is a government that is non-responsive to citizens needs populated by hundreds of citizens with no authority to do much of anything at all. While the RTM deliberates for eons, department heads make decisions with no insight or oversight because decisions have to be made in government contemporaneously. While the BET carries on indefinitely, the Budget Committee makes all the decisions behind closed doors. The Board of Selectmen is designed so that we empower a Chief Executive then rely on him getting at least one vote from two part time employees to get an agenda accomplished. These bodies talk about a lot of things, but to me it is unconscionable the amount of years that pass on critical issues before something, anything is accomplished, and much of what happens is in a negative context. Just look at the Beach issues as example #1 for how leadership gets laid low when decisions need to me made. Average, non-connected citizens don’t understand how and why things happen, and much falls through the cracks. Example #2 might be how we got such a large unfunded pension mandate and how it will be dealt with. Who is responsible for that?

We need change to where citizens know who is in charge, and very importantly, where accountability lies. We do not have this now, and saying that lots and lots of people participate is sufficient does not work for me. Strangely, we have 260 candidates on the ballot every 2 years and this year we have three competitive races. This does not seem particularly healthy

Just as an aside, we have to scrap that silly rule where the parties pick the candidates for the BET and the BOE. That was done because Republicans bankrupted the Town in 1930 and Democrats demanded oversight. That isn’t necessary anymore

Now please formulate an argument or suggestion that scraps the RTM (in it’s existing form), the BET and BOS and tell us what would be better. I’m pretty sure we’ve found government nirvana with these three boards, combined with the broad input the BOS gets from our Committees. Not sure what’s really wrong, but I’m sure glad you raised this topic. I think people complaining about RTM are complaining about a problem that doesn’t exist, but you’re not by any means the only one, so this is a helpful debate.

- John

But the most disturbing part of your vapid post is the false information you try to pawn off as support for your opinion. Can you please cite the dates that New Canaan ever had a Representative Town Meeting? I know they have not had one since 1980 when I moved to Fairfield County. This site:
http://www.newcanaan-home.com/content/article.html/7856
states that they had the old “Town Meeting” form of government (I assume you know the difference between a Town Meeting and an RTM)until 1969, when they changed to their current Town Council form of government. So just where did you come up with this fiction of New Canaan “jettisoning its RTM for a Town Council” four years ago?
Liar, liar, pants on fire!

How does not showing up affect the work of the 40 most committed RTM members?

The fact is some people simply don’t like it that the average citizen has a voice. They want the chamber of commerce to control everything.

It isn’t “bad” to have people involved at all, in fact it is quite good. The problem is more with the functioning of the institution. You know as well as anyone that people join the RTM because they believe they can make a real difference – pass laws, enact ordinances, have a chance to have their say. What they find out is that the powers of the RTM are limited to negative ones by charter, and that for the most part they can’t really accomplish anything. They can have a front row seat in discussing Town policy, and maybe once a year there is a really important issue that gets discussed quite heavily but, at the end of the day, what is accomplished on a personal basis?
If the RTM were shrunk, the remaining people could, and should, have much more important powers and input than the current ones. The other people create a bigger and more potent pool of volunteers for our more formidable boards and commissions.
If the argument is that the RTM serves a good purpose as a place for Greenwich people to “get involved and learn about Town Government”, then why does it have powers at all? And if the answer is that its bar for entry and participation is low, and that is good, I disagree. If people have any control at all over my life, whether it is cutting school appropriations, approving commissioners on boards that make decisions that affect my family, or anything else, I want them engaged. Clearly many, many of them are not -starting with the 20% that don;t show up, the 20% that don’t go to committee meetings. I’ve also heard too much grumbling that they aren;t really “relevant”.

My answer to you would then be have a symbolic, powerless RTM to debate policy, or a streamlined, active RTM with real powers. And also please tell me why only Greenwich feels the need to carry this kind of body, and why? 168 other towns go another way, many like Greenwich.

Since it is not a matter of “if” affordable housing is to be created, we should be taking charge of “how” we want it to be created. We should as citizens be very concerned about how the State imposes anything on our town.

~ Elise Hingson

I also agree that fear and concern for status play a part in the long-held resistance toward creating affordable housing in certain parts of town.

But as I see it, there is another problem as well, and I don’t know what the answer is to solving it. Those areas that you mention are some of the most expensive real estate in the country. My question is, what has to happen to make building affordable housing on land that is so expensive possible? Do we need an uncommonly philanthropic developer to come along? An infusion of town dollars to subsidize it? Some kind of public/private deal?

It’s a hurdle the town must work on clearing at the same time that leaders of good will fight to counter the fear of the ‘other’ that has conspired to keep affordable housing out of certain communities for so long.

Another possibility is to work to build higher-density housing in central Greenwich and have a larger part of that deemed affordable. But high-density would counter the philosophy that has guided this town for ages.

In any case, thanks for spurring this discussion. It’s one of the most important ones the town needs to have.

FYI, I do not live in Byram but in Riverside.

So, if there’s proof of this kind of inappropraite political intereference in the schools, let’s confront them and get it fixed. I’m all for it. But it’s hard to do that unless there is evidence we can actually show.

Dr. Freund’s waffling, then caving in to right-wing crazies stands in stark contrast to the courage shown by Congressman Jim Himes, who just days before stood up before howling ugly mobs opposing health care and didn’t step back one step. Yet Dr. Freund, having received just ten emails protesting the broadcast and five supporting its showing decided that he would join that tiny minority of school superintendents in this country who apparently believe that President Obama really was attempting to indoctrinate our youth with his “socialistic agenda”.

It was a very poor introduction, indeed, and a serious embarrassment to the town of Greenwich.

- John

Someone tell me why we had to spend millions for Pomerance open space and nothing for that in Byram and I’ll support McKinney Terrace development.

Again, great to see you blogging and I’m sure you’ll bring more readers to all of us.

Cheers,
John