May 4 -- A record crowd turned out tonight for Ridgefield's first ever combined Annual Town and Budget meeting. This year's event, combining two traditional town forums which have lately suffered from low attendance, drew over 200 townspeople. Over the last few years, the Board of Selectman have routinely sent final approval of the town's budget to a Saturday town-wide referendum, so tonight's meeting was informational only. In past years, voting on specific budget line items has been allowed buring the Anual Budget meeting. Tonight's attendees, canvassed for their suggestions on improving future meetings, did not seem to want a return to the old system - only 31% of those providing feedback suggested a return to the system of voting at the Budget meeting. Some townspeople had predicted that turnout for the meeting would be low, due to inability to vote on budget items. Instead, the 200+ attendees appeared to a record unmatched in most peoples' recent memories. (Photo above: Ridgefield Controller Jay Wahlberg is in the audience for tonight's meeting)
First Selectman Morelli (Photo, left)delivered Ridgefield's first-ever "State of the Town" address. Morelli described in detail Ridgefield's assets, in terms of population (around 22,000), town-owned buildings (total value almost $90 million), vehicles (156 vehicles, with average age ranging from a young 1.81 years for the Police, to an ancient 9.88 years for the Fire Dept.), land (total 22,439 acres, of which 4,650 is open space and 2,700 is town owned), and employees (299 active town employees, of which 160 are full-time).
Each town official and Board/Commission chairman also spoke to the meeting, describing briefly the state of their organization, their plans for the coming year, and issues with which they were wrestling. The format called for a 5-minute presentation from each speaker, followed by a 10-minute question-and-answer period. Elected Moderator Dave Huntoon rigorously enforced the time limits, leaving some presenters with less time than it appeared the audience would have liked.
Such was the case with Board of Finance Chairman Bernie Dzielinksi (right), who had come prepared with some excellent slides analyzing the budget's income and expenses, the Town's tax situation, and other key financial data. When Moderator Huntoon called "Time!" after Dzielinski had only shown the first of his slides, the audience accommodated by asking questions designed to elicit the next slide in the presentation.
Some presenters, such as Assessor Al Garzi, Fire Chief Richard Nagle, and the Paul Roche, head of Parks and Rec, made their presentations and received vitrually no audience questions. On the other hand, the presentation by Linda Bunyan, Chairman of the Board of Education (Photo, left), was followed by a barrage of hostile questions wanting to rehash last year's debacle about the site for a new school.
Police Chief Rotunda (right) used his time to ardently appeal to parents of Ridgefield teen-agers to control their youngsters, and prevent a recurrance of the juvenile vandalism that marred the recent Spring Vacation break here in town.
Feedback from the meeting indicated many were suprised and pleased with the large turnout, and provided several suggestions for improving next year's event. Write-in suggestions included giving some speakers more time and starting the meeting promptly at the scheduled time (tonight's meeting was delayed 20 minutes while Registrars checked credentials of the unexpectedly large crowd).(Photos: Left - an attendee completes the Voter Feedback form. Over 100 forms were completed and returned. Right - Town Registrars checking credentials of the large crowd resulted in waiting lines of up to 30 people)
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