Interesting meeting

I go to a lot of meetings in the course of fulfilling my job duties. I sit in the corner, take note of when the meeting is called to order, who makes motions, and seconds them, how the vote goes, abstentions, etc., and take notes.

Some of these meetings are mind-numbingly dull. I used to go to Housing meetings, and they were dull and depressing because we were talking about issues that have been around for 30+ years but no real solutions ever seem to be found.

But I go to one meeting every month that I love, and that is the meeting of Town Managers. These are the unelected people who make things work for a lot of municipalities. They don't have to be schmoozy like elected people, and they tend to be a whole lot smarter, in my experience.

So today we had this meeting, and there was discussion of budgets and sharing services (which the town managers can talk about as shared services, but which they have to find another name for when dealing with elected officials, like "Shared Assets" or some such nonsense), and then one of the TMs checked his little electronic doodad and announced that the CT Conference of Municipalities, after testing out the new voting machines that HAVA required, has asked the Sec. of State to toss out all the vendors and write up a whole new Request for Proposals. That should be an interesting story.

The other interesting thing was from the CT Coalition for Justice in Education Funding, which is having a press conference next Tuesday to announce their lawsuit against the state, currently going under the name CCJEF (pronounced see-Jeff, because you can't do anything in govt. without silly acronyms)...where was I? Ah, CCJEF vs. Rell. They are pushing to shift the way education is currently funded in CT, via property taxes, which results in inequitable and inadequate school funding, particularly in areas with the most high need students. They've got a lot in front of them, as one of their goals is to revamp the way school funding happens. I wish them luck!