Alders Seek Public’s Help On New Legislative Agenda

This is snake-oil and three card monte being sold.The BOA will still rubber stamp.

"The Board of Alders wants your help setting its new legislative agenda."

Spend less.
Embrace limits.
Eliminate excuses.
Demand professionalism
Avoid naked conflicts of interest by serving your citizens' interest ahead of your employer(s).

3/5s: let's challenge them to a test.

NH lacks a good Ethics Ordinance and Commission with enforcement powers.
The Charter Revision Commission ignored the the excellent comments and input directed to this legislative need.
I submit this as a high priority to the Board of Alders.

Let's see what happens.

posted by: Dwightstreeter on September 20, 2016 12:11pm

3/5s: let's challenge them to a test.

"Politicians are the craftiest and most cunning of all con artists and salesmen. They can manipulate even the most cherished beliefs and intellectual arguments to convince you to give them immense coercive power over other people and eventually, even over you. They're so good at it that they can even convince many to become fanatic supporters, and themselves to believe their own B.S.." -- Rick Gaber

This is the glaring definition of two competing narratives. One narrative is to give the appearance of a voter led agenda, and the other one is to hide from the public the "Union led" agenda.

The vast majority of these alders live in wards that have filth strewn throughout its boundaries, dilapidated and abandoned structures erect everywhere, a severe lack of elderly and youth services, drug activity saturated on the streets and you're asking for help to identify the problems that you walk by (no, excuse me) drive by everyday? Are you kidding me? Not to mention high taxes.

"I think in order for the city to be successful, the residents have to decide what their priorities are." No, their priorities must be your priorities. Start with addressing the aforementioned apparent problems and then you'll be able to see success. Also, my advice to Ms. Walker is to remove the word "their" when speaking of your constituents and implement the word "our" instead.

Voters need to do a much better job in holding elected officials accountable for what they say they're going to do while running for office or re-election, and not allow the literature or phone banks to steer their decisions. Voters need to also allow the decay that they see regularly further help to shape their decisions and not the new sidewalks that they paid for in high taxes.

This long lasting Yale bashing by certain Unions, who have also co-opted the BOA, play a major role in elected officials inability to address pressing issues germane to quality of life and social concerns.

When I was an alderman, my colleagues who worked for the BOE, recused themselves from voting on issues pertaining to the school system. Likewise, Alders who work for Yale, should be made to recuse themselves on votes pertaining to Yale. If this were implemented, in my view, we would see better productivity from the board and enhanced services for the taxpayers.

This entire exercise is a sham. We will not be offered the option in their survey to demand that those with material conflicts of interests recuse themselves. We will not be offered the option of making ethics reform and anti-patronage rules a priority. Instead, we will be given a choice between various UNITE 34/35 agenda items in a fake poll that the will use to validate their usurpation of our city government. This is a sick, unethical ploy to justify their depraved agenda. Real democracy has been sacrificed on the Yale Unions' altar.

I think these initiatives are helpful. And it is great to see the NHI report on them.

I find discussion in the comment section helpful at times, but regular commenters here, including myself, can develop an entitled sense of our own opinions and the discussion becomes quite insular. But there is also a heavy over-representation of libertarians in the NHI comment section. (Hats off to those who consistently offer alternative viewpoints here).

Anyways always helpful to broaden the discussion of New Haven's priorities.