Lincoln's Log

First, the bad news.

It took me two times to get it right – the online registration system offered by the town for renewal of our mooring permits. Click here for Greenwich Time article

The online mooring site was slowed to a crawl when I attempted to use it. And there was some confusion as to which buttons to hit. I’m not sure whether it was a DNS (domain name system) problem on my end or a problem with the site. But a nice man named Brad Hurley at FandOTech, the Manchester vendor for onlinemooring.com, got the problems resolved after I called the company.

In the end, it was a rush to be able to do everything online, and I believe this is where the town needs to go for everything – from beach cards to golf and tennis permits – but more on that later.

One precaution: Get your paperwork in order before sitting down in front of the computer. You will need copies of your registration and insurance detail page. You also will be asked for information such as length, beam, displacement, draft – information that I had to dig up from my files. Also, if you have no ability to scan your registration and insurance pages into images to be uploaded, you will not be able to complete this online. Luckily, I have a scanner and was able to upload the images.

The first time I registered, the application was completed but without a payment option. Brad told me that I had filled out an application for a new permit and not a renewal. He erased my first attempt, and I had to do it a second time. The good news though was that the system had saved all my entries so I didn’t have to start from the beginning.

I was charged a fee of $3.55 to pay by credit card online. The total renewal fee was $103.55. I’m still not happy about the increase in mooring fees from $35 two years ago to $100, and I am still not clear how all this extra cash is being used.

But the online registration did work and I prefer it to the old system. I believe the town should consider using the same technology platform for all our permit registrations – the concept of a “single sign-on” for all things Greenwich – from our beach permit, to library cards, to dump permits, to golf and tennis permits.

Brad Hurley at FandOTech said the company is providing exactly such a service for eight New England towns, including Jamestown, R.I. and Waterford, CT.

Imagine being able to scan your utility bills into this system and be able to claim your residency once a year to be used for multiple departments. And I would charge for this service so that the town does not have to pay it through public coffers. Would you pay for this convenience? I know I would.

Not content with her criticism of First Selectman Peter Tesei at last week’s BET meeting, finance board member Nancy Barton lobbed a blistering letter to the editor of the Greenwich Time on Sunday.

Click here for letters

Tesei is not one who takes criticism well. He called DTC Chair Frank Farricker’s calls to determine if the town cheaped it out on storm coverage “despicable.”

I’m not looking to add myself to Tesei’s long enemies list, but it’s clear that no single authority – except maybe police and fire – acquitted itself particularly well. Like many residents, I have lingering questions and concerns about how and why we received little or no response on Sunday March 14 and why it took so long to get basic services back.

My questions:

- Could Gov. Jodi Rell have dispatched state resources, such as the Connecticut National Guard and Public Safety personnel? Or have the state resources been so depleted by our conflicts overseas? There was no doubt that CL&P dropped the ball early and often, but before we let Rell conveniently make the utilities the only scapegoats, what was her role? Was she trying to stave off overtime just like CL&P? Rell may be a lameduck, but unless we get answers, this scenario is likely to repeat.

- Virtually every chief executive and state legislator in Greenwich and Lower Fairfield County are Republicans. What pressure did they put on the Republican governor during the height of the storm for protection to safeguard the interest of the citizenry?

- Have the BET and selectmen cut back the town’s tree department, pubic works department and parks and rec resources to the point of robbing us of critical emergency support that a town like Greenwich deserves? After all, Greenwich is the second largest town in Connecticut in acreage. We have a lot of trees. And let’s face it, we actually got off lucky. What if there had been a foot of snow on the ground?

- Is there a plan in place to use volunteers in a more effective and creative way?

The next storm could be worse. And it could happen sooner than later. The questions I posed above are only a reflection of the hundreds of comments I heard expressed by residents in Greenwich the past 10 days.

What’s really behind the very unusual and very public spat over the funding of the town’s emergency coordinator position?

See article from the Greenwich Time

Greenwich insiders say the rift had nothing to do with the money and everything to do with the man who holds the position, Dan Warzoha. The insiders say several members of the BET simply detest Warzoha. They include some of the most influential and outspoken members of the board whose personal animus for Warzoha goes back years.

The board’s recent actions to cut the funding brought an unusually public rebuke from First Selectman Peter Tesei who heretofore has been joined at the hip with the BET on all matters financial.

But a closer look will reveal that Tesei’s campaign manager in his successful re-election bid last fall was none other than Steve Warzoha, son of said emergency coordinator. The insiders point out that Steve Warzoha is a close friend – if not best friend – of said First Selectman.

Isn’t it comforting to know that while Greenwich suffers from the worst natural calamity to hit the town in almost 20 years – with one fatality and millions in lost property – our elected officials are engaged in such trivial pursuits?

In Greenwich, politics isn’t just local, it’s personal.

Greenwich Point finally opened to public access today. At least six sailboats were blown off their stands.

While the Greenwich legislative delegation – also known as the Feckless Foursome – were at yet another self-promoting PR event on Friday, there was actually some good news coming out of Hartford.

A move to wrest control away from the state siting council – which has complete authority to approve cell tower locations – got an important committee endorsement at the state legislature. Click here for article

Connecticut is one of only three states with such siting councils. Citizens in Greenwich have recently protested loudly various efforts to locate these towers, especially one which would violate the deeded trust of the Greenwich Pinetum, one of the most precious and beautiful open spaces in town.

I have no idea whether this bill has any chance of passage, but it seems to me our local legislators ought to be supporting it instead of grandstanding behind yet another one of their bills that was nothing more than a publicity stunt – the proposal to keep cell towers 750 feet away from any school (who came up with that arbitrary distance?)

More and more, the Greenwich legislators have made themselves irrelevant in Hartford with their outspoken ideology. They have isolated themselves in a way that doesn’t serve any of our interests. As Hartford takes more and more of my personal income, makes my commute to Manhattan a hellish experience and treats Greenwich like the idiot cousin with a trust fund, the Feckless Foursome can only bark back with meaningless rhetoric instead of going to work in the Capital hallways to cut deals, smooth relationships and get us the best outcomes.

There was a time when fiscally conservative Republican legislators were extremely effective in Fairfield County. Today, we get only preachy, political haiku from the likes of Rep. Lile Gibbon, whose only purpose, it seems, is to get re-elected. (Dear Rep. Gibbon, please take me off your mailing list and save the first class stamp … I need to hear real solutions and not more right wing moralistic pronouncements such as your condescending “Common Sense” commandments.)

An of course, there was fumbling Fred Camillo, who had to withdraw his own domestic violence legislation because he didn’t understand the issues. Click here for article in the Greenwich Time

Can it get any worse?