Happy with the latest budget?

I’m still trying to find out details, but at least education doesn’t appear to be suffering as much as I feared.

Bye, Theresa! Taxpayer prez says she’s moving

“I myself am not able to afford to live in this town,” [Theresa] McGrath said. She said her agenda was to cut taxes. “I don’t want to move. I’m going to have to move,” she said.
Maybe I’m crazy, but if West Hartford Taxpayer co-prez Theresa McGrath is moving, why is she setting our community’s agenda? [...]

Now the council needs to stand strong

The town council plans to hold a public comment hearing on how to revise the budget starting at 7:30 p.m.  The council itself will vote on Wednesday night.
“Residents are welcome to come and offer their views,” Mayor Scott Slifka told the Courant. “We want to make sure people know about it and that it will [...]

Seniors (in high school at least) should get a break

The administrators at our high school are entirely no fun.
It seems like every time kids do something relatively harmless, like painting a rock or starting a food fight, the folks in charge go crazy.
Here’s a tidbit from the Courant’s story about Hall’s graduation:
“I don’t even want to shake our principal’s hand,” disgruntled senior Alex Foley, [...]

New York is taking over

The news that New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has dumped the Republican Party to become an independent opens up a fascinating scenario that I haven’t seen discussed yet: the possibility that we could have a serious three-way race for president among three New Yorkers.
Imagine a ballot where we’d have to choose between New York [...]

Why announce DUI checkpoints?

WEST HARTFORD — – The police department will set up a driving-under-the-influence checkpoint Friday evening in the area of New Britain Avenue and Shield Street, department officials said. Police plan to run the checkpoint between 6 p.m. Friday and 2 a.m. Saturday.
This little blurb is in today’s Courant, clearly the result of a press release. [...]

Seeking contributors

It’s increasingly obvious to me that this little blog is serving a badly needed role in West Hartford as a place where issues can be raised, discussed and maybe eventually resolved (though we’ll see about the latter!). It’s really more than I can handle in a few minutes now and again, which is what I [...]

Budget “adjustments” promise pain

The town manager laid out for the council what it will take to reach different tax hike percentages. Here’s a PDF of the information that the council got.
I imagine that once the council picks how much it wants to cut, the town manager and school superintendent will lay out what specific cuts can be made to [...]

Home values rise with test scores

A fascinating story in Sunday’s New York Times provides proof that school test scores make a huge difference in home prices, even within our tiny town.
Based on “new study by seven professors and students at Trinity College,” the story says the data proves that “prices within a town can fluctuate, even by neighborhood, based on the strength [...]

Teens willing to do yard work and such

Though I probably should have them cut my grass or something in return for free advertising, I like these kids’ initiative so I’m posting their message to me: 
My friends and I are trying to earn a little extra cash this summer, so we are doing some lawn work. I was hoping that you could help [...]