New Haven Independent

Because they were roundly “offended” by an article in the Independent. (Click here to see which one.) They felt the article suggested that no one was coming to work in City Hall or getting things done.

So they asked for a photo to be taken Tuesday at the weekly 3 p.m. mayor’s staff meeting in the conference room in the mayor’s second-floor office.

“The coordinators are still here who run the show,” declared Community Services Administrator Sheila Allen Bell (pictured). “We are still here at the head of the table!”

The mayor himself even stopped by for a minute in between his gubernatorial campaign appearances. He was in a good mood. He pointed to his chair. “Hey, I used to sit there!” he said, to good-natured chuckles all around the table.

Items on the agenda Tuesday included “New Business: a. Issue Review b. Youth Protection Ordinance c. 2006 Library Voter Registration Week.” The other items were less specific, merely titled “Review Schedules,” “Aldermanic,” “State Delegation,” “Media,” and “Miscellaneous.”

The article in question described a series of e-mails inquiring into what the City Hall staff is up to these days. The e-mails traveled up a chain of automatic reply messages from departed aides. They ended up with Deputy Chief of Staff Pierrette Silverman, shown at right her next to her current boss, Chief Of Staff Karen DuBois-Walton. The e-mail to Silverman had gone unanswered for five days. But Silverman wanted to point out Tuesday that she did respond after the article appeared. The original e-mail landed in her spam folder, she explained.