Archive - May 2011
May 6th
#ff @CHCHealthCorps @andreayap @KatSongPR @davelucas @heddahfeddah @HartfordMayor @VargasforMayor @CouncilorCotto @richquigley
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 05/06/2011 - 20:42Okay. A fairly random collection of Follow Friday listings this week… I’ll start off with @CHCHealthCorps. This is a new Twitter account for “a team of 12 AmeriCorps Community HealthCorps members serving at Community Health Center, Inc. in cities throughout Connecticut” They are getting ready for their big trip across Connecticut and it would be great for a bunch of people to follow them.
@andreayap is an old friend from @Ripple100. I ran into him today at a health care conference and we had lunch afterwards.
@KatSongPR – I may have mentioned her recently in a #ff. I did Retweet her quote from Abraham Lincoln about the Internet.
@davelucas – Dave is an old blogging friend who wanted to know about my problems with Amazon Web Services. I still need to write that quote.
@heddahfeddah is an old twitter contact who write a lot about Hartford and recently tweeted about a whale watch on the Dolphin Fleet out of Provincetown.
@HartfordMayor recently sent out a press release about getting his 1000th follower.
@VargasforMayor wants to become the next Hartford Mayor and mentioned me, my wife, @CouncilorCotto and some others in a tweet about a Politico article.
@CouncilorCotto also from Hartford, commented about my tweet about the Woodbridge elections. Apparently, he got the election results from my tweet a day late. Not sure what happened there.
Then there are the Quigley brothers, @richquigley and @RobQuigley. I’ve mentioned them in tweets and #FF posts a bit recently and they have come back with interesting responses.
Finally, I’ll shout out to @lenpeters. He just became the new CIO for @Yale. He doesn’t have a lot of followers yet and doesn’t tweet a lot yet, but hopefully that will change soon enough.
So, that is my Follow Friday post for the first Friday of May.
May 5th
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.)
May 4th
Wordless Wednesday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 05/04/2011 - 07:28
May 3rd
Random Notes
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 20:00Up late for the post-election party last night and then early this morning, it’s been a long day.
Everything seems to have a coat of fine yellow powder, tree pollen. Fortunately, my allergies haven’t been especially bad, but that may also add to running me down today.
Then, there has been the latest car problems; a fuel filter this time.
It was a good day at work, but long and hard. I got a bit of good things done, and there are lots more that I would have liked to have gotten done, if I had time. Oh well. I’ll head off to bed early in hopes of more energy for tomorrow.
Oh, and about all this Osama stuff? More than enough people are already saying more than enough things about it, adding my opinions won’t really further any discussions, so I’ll leave it to others. More later...
May 2nd
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.
