The more I look at the press releases for the Dishonorable Mayor Eddie Perez's "State of the City Address", the more I wonder what this guy is thinking. The press release was titled "NOW IS THE TIME FOR BOLD ACTION". The only bold action that this City needs right now is for Perez to resign as Mayor, and let someone competent begin to regain control of Hartford city government. And yes, I said someone competent, so I guess we need to go searching beyond the heir apparent to the Mayor's throne, Cal Torres.
In the press release, which is attached below, initiative number one states that in the next 90 days, more than $175 million in construction projects will flow into the City's neighborhoods. I don't mean to shout here, but MAYOR PEREZ, ARE YOU INSANE? First of all, I realize there is a huge disconnect between the Mayor and the City Council, but apparently word hasn't filtered back to Perez that the Council has suspended all capital projects. Every municipality around us with a leader with an ounce of common sense and/or intelligence have suspended essentially all spending. Yet Perez is going to spend $175,000,000 in ninety days and put hundreds of "residents" to work in union jobs. No word if he is talking Hartford residents, but I tend to doubt it. Hopefully those "hundreds" of jobs can be filled by the "hundreds" of city employees laid off due to Perez's incompetence and mismanagement. I know we are all counting on our share of the stimulus money that Eddie thinks will flow into Hartford. A couple of key points to consider though. I don't think President Obama went to the same management style classes that King Eddie attended, and I don't see President Obama as a vindictive, "tyrant" type leader as Mayor Perez is. But I seem to recall that during the Presidential election, Barack Obama made a stop in Hartford, where he filled the XL Center to capacity. Surprisingly, from what I understand, Eddie Perez was still at the learning Corridor with the candidate he was supporting, Hillary Clinton, and both Eddie and Kelvin Roldan were busy trying to get her campaign to pay her bill. Apparently Perez was too busy to return repeated phone calls from the Obama campaign regarding the visit, and in typical Perez style, another bridge was burned. Combine that with a couple of felony arrests, and is it any wonder that Eddie Perez wasn't at the White House recently with 500 other big city mayors? I really don't see any photo-ops involving Perez and President Obama in the near future.
Perez may want to focus on providing core city services to the City of Hartford. Providing money to the Arts is great, when your budget is on track, revenue is flowing in and the future looks good. But how can anyone in good conscience continue to lay-off essential city workers while giving dollars away to non-essential programs?
Also, Eddie Perez is no fool when it comes to payoff's and raising campaign money. Was it any wonder Perez played to the Carpenter's union at Monday nights speech? The rank and file may want to ask their reps about meetings help between them and Perez and City Council "leadership". Ask them about the deals hammered out at those meetings and find out who personally benefitted. What Perez fails to realize is that the unions may dump money into his campaign chest, but they do very little for the city overall. The construction jobs they fill are great, but the "engine" that drives Hartford is small business. The majority of these small businesses are not union shops, yet generate more for the local economy day in and day out than any construction project could.
State of the City Release 09
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Sarah Barr, Perez's spokeswoman, said there is a hiring freeze, but some hiring is necessary. She also said that some of the hires — James Keaney and Charles Crocini in the mayor's capital projects office, Miguel Matos in grants management — are largely paid with federal or state money. As for other hires — such as a new person to oversee the city's energy policy, as well as former state Rep. Evelyn Mantilla, who oversees new software implementation — Barr said they are handled on a case-by-case basis.
Why is Evelyn involved with new software implementation? Isn't this the responsible of IT?
Evelyn wouldn't know what software was if it was dropped on her head.
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