Last Friday, I wrote a blog post about encouraging civic involvement. In the blog post, I wrote about a request for a guardrail on a local road. I noted an article which noted that Seymour’s First Selectman “Koskelowski said he has never received a request from anyone other than the Rumbolds to put up a guardrail, but he said he understands their motivation.”

I sent an email to the First Selectman’s office in which I asked, “How many requests do you typically require before you put up a guardrail where there has been a fatal car accident? How many requests do you typically receive safety improvements in Seymour?“ I also wrote “I'm interested in any thoughts you might have on how to improve civic involvement on the local level and help First Selectman's offices around the state become more responsive to the requests of its residents.”

Today, I received a response from First Selectman Assistant Deirdre Caruso. It said, “Your email has been forwarded to the Town of Seymour Safety Director, which is the Chief of Police. This matter is currently under review.”

This may explain why First Selectman Koskelowski never received any requests. Perhaps they have all been intercepted by his assistant and sent to the Town of Seymour Safety Director. However, I must admit, I’m curious about why the Safety Director needs to review the First Selectman’s opinions about how to improve civic involvement.

For more coverage of this, I would encourage you to read an article in the New Haven Register about the guard rail request.

In other local civic involvement news, the Beecher Road School Parent Teacher Organization is scheduled to have its January meeting this evening at 7:15 at Beecher Road School. There will be a vote on amending the bylaws to require members be notified 48 hours in advance of any PTO meeting and that an agenda will be placed on the brspto.org website within 48 hours of any PTO meeting. These are some good ideas for promoting civic involvement.

This coming Thursday, the Woodbridge Democratic Town Committee will be meeting. As part of the new business for the meeting is a “Democratic Caucus to endorse Democratic candidates for Town offices to be elected on May 4, 2009, and to transact other business as may be proper to come before said Caucus”.

I’m going to guess that it will be the same people that always show up at Town Committee meetings and there will be some friendly discussion about whom they can convince to run for one office or another. I’ve told members of the committee that I’m willing to run for any local office, according to the needs of the Town Committee. Though, given my interest in education, as noted on this blog, if I’m asked to run for any office, running for Board of Education would probably make the most sense.

So far this year, I’ve made it to every Board of Education meeting. The next one had been scheduled for Jan 20th, but has been pushed back until the 21st.

So, what’s going on in your town? Who is running for what office? Who is attending what meetings? Perhaps most importantly, who is writing about it so others can know what is going on.
Update: BRSPTO meeting has been canceled due to a scheduling conflict. Check the website for updates.