Woodbridge
Local Coverage about events in the Town of Woodbridge, CT
2011 Amity Budget Referendum Results
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 21:43Yesterday was the Annual Amity Budget Referendum. Only 471 people from Woodbridge turned out to vote out of a total of 1412 people across the school district. While this was a disappointing result, it was only 16 less people from Woodbridge than the year before, and only 26 less for all of the three towns.
The individual numbers weren’t really all that different in Woodbridge either. There was a slight movement against the budget in Woodbridge this year with 23 less people voting for the budget and 7 more people voting against it.
Bethany actually saw six more people vote in 2011 than they saw in 2010. Fifteen less people voted for the budget and twenty-one more people voted for it.
Orange saw the biggest changes. Overall they only had sixteen less people voting. However, because of the increase in the number of students from Orange at Amity, they will be hit harder than the other towns in terms of the budget. This resulted in 95 less people voting for the budget and and 79 more people voting against the budget.
As people hung around the Center in Woodbridge waiting for the polls to close some suggested that the issue in Orange is a belief that they could build their way out of a financial problem. The problem with building more houses is that more people live in the houses and it costs more to provide services to these people, such as the cost of educating the children in these new houses.
Another interesting tidbit came up. I did not know that you did not have to be registered to vote in the budget. Besides registered voters, U.S. Citizens who are listed on the property tax rolls as having at least $1000 worth of property in town can vote. One person showed up in Woodbridge who was not registered, was a property holder, but it turns out was not a U.S. citizen and because of this didn’t end up getting to vote.
With that, here are the results for last year and this year:
2010 Results
| Town | Yes | No | Total |
| Bethany | 234 | 113 | 347 |
| Orange | 400 | 204 | 604 |
| Woodbridge | 369 | 118 | 487 |
| Total | 1003 | 435 | 1438 |
2011 Results
| Town | Yes | No | Total |
| Bethany | 219 | 134 | 353 |
| Orange | 305 | 283 | 588 |
| Woodbridge | 346 | 125 | 471 |
| Total | 870 | 542 | 1412 |
(Cross posted at the Woodbridge Citizen.)
Election Day in Woodbridge
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 21:51It was a quiet election day in Woodbridge. Only about 2000 voters turned out. Ed Sheehy, the First Selectman, easily won re-election 1341 to 665.
I wasn’t as involved this time around as I’ve been other years. I had too much to do at work. I got to the polls about seven in the morning. Turnout was light, and I was the 105th voter. I said hello to a lot of old political friends and then, instead of sticking around to help with the Get Out The Vote effort, I headed off to work. I didn’t really think much about the election until I returned home in the evening.
I stopped by the polls about fifteen minutes before they closed. A larger crowd was there. Friends from both parties. More chatting, and then heading in to hear the results.
A lot of people were disappointed at the low voter turnout. I overheard Republicans talking about calling lots of people to try and get the vote out. They talked about having gone door to door in an effort to get the vote out.
Was everyone too distracted by the news about Osama bin Laden? Had the gray day kept everyone away from the polls? Was it simply that there were no compelling issues and everyone was happy with the status quo?
While it was disappointing that more people did show their civic duty, it was great that those who did, on both sides were civil and very involved.
And So, It Begins A New
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 04/03/2011 - 16:54Saturday morning, I sat up front at the Beecher Road School South Auditorium to see a production of The Wizard of Oz. Fiona, my youngest daughter, was a narrator in the rainbow chorus. The floor was mostly filled with young kids with the parents in seats behind us. A few other parents joined me on the floor so they could take better pictures of their young stars and sitting next to me was Mairead, my eldest daughter.
Mairead commented about how it seemed strange to be on this side of the fourth wall as she watched her youngest sister perform. She compared the experience to her childhood performances. It was a good production, with more effort put into scenery and props than many children productions have.
Afterward, we talked about going down to Virginia, where Miranda, my middle daughter is finishing up her senior year of college. Her senior exhibition in painting was last month. Opening on Tuesday will be her senior exhibition in ceramics and next Sunday will be her senior piano recital.
What role will arts and performances take in the life of Fiona? Will it lead her in a direction similar to her sister Miranda? Will Fiona find other paths? As I reflect on the day, the words of William Carlos Williams comes to mind. About a red wheel barrow he once said, “So much depends...”
Perhaps the prop of a cow carried across the stage during the cyclone is a lot like that red wheel barrow. And so, it begins a new...
Writing for the Bethwood Patch
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 11/23/2010 - 09:43Yesterday, I started freelance writing for the Bethwood Patch. I have a column that I will attempt to update twice a day with articles about what is happening around Bethany and Woodbridge. I will need to see how this fits with my other work, writing at this blog and the future of The Woodbridge Citizen.
Especially important to me is how it affects the quality of my writing. Will I be able to pump out two articles a day of writing I can be proud of, of writing that properly honors the towns of Woodbridge and Bethany, or writing that inspires people to become more involved in their local communities? We’ll see.
What will it do to my writing here? The stuff I write about Woodbridge and Bethany is likely to appear only in the Bethwood Patch, so I’ll probably be focusing a little less on local issues and more on other topics here.
Patch is an interesting venture. Can AOL revive itself and local journalism through The Patch? What will Patch do for journalists coming out of J School? Will there be more jobs, or will some of these jobs go to people who haven’t been to J School? Will reporters for Patch cover the local news stories that haven’t gotten enough coverage in recent years, such as board of education meetings, with a local touch in a way that makes them more engaging to local readers and frees up well trained investigative reporters to pursue more challenging stories? We’ll see.
Meanwhile, be sure to check out my column About The Towns at the Bethwood Patch. Share your comments about the columns there and any meta discussion here. And, if you have any tips about things in Bethany and Woodbridge that I should cover, let me know.
Clearing the Cache - Education
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 11/15/2010 - 14:57Last Thursday, started writing a blog post to clear the cache of many different emails that needed responding to. I posted the first half and planned on posting the second a little later. Then my computer crashed and I lost my draft. So, I’m redoing it with a little additional information.
First, I should note that Tony Mena, whom I mentioned in that post and did a Music Monday review of last week has won an award for the poem I highlighted. Please, go check it out. We had to reschedule his appearance on Fiona’s Radio Show. We are talking about rescheduling the show for mid-December.
Education
The big education news out of last week was the New Haven Promise, a plan to make college tuition available to all high performing New Haven Residents. This raises an interesting question. How do we make sure that students succeed? When I wrote about this, I mentioned the Citywide Youth Coalition. They will be getting together with people from Our New Haven at The Grove on Wednesday at 6 PM to talk about how people can work together in New Haven to help the schools and students be more successful.
Meanwhile, there is plenty to talk about in terms of education in Woodbridge. Last week, the Beecher Road School PTO and the Woodbridge Board of Education both had meetings in which James Crawford spoke about improvements to the school’s website. At the PTO meeting Penny Zamkov also spoke about the PTO website.
I have been a long time critic of how technology is used at Beecher Road. Back in 2008, I served on a committee to draft a three-year technology plan for the school. The committee did good work, with a key area of concern being around the use of the school website to improve communications. Mr. Crawford has been doing a good job with this, and I look forward to some of the additional improvements expected later in the school year.
However, the Board of Education meeting provided a good insight into some of the difficulties that the technology team faces. These difficulties are school policies and the views of some of the members of the board.
The most striking was when a board member spoke about not wanting the school to be an early adopter of education technology. This was during the discussion where plans to start introducing Web 2.0 tools to students was being explained.
