MY TAKE - Letter to the editor - A few facts

Current Town Councilor Rosemary Rascati sent a letter to the editor of the Record Journal and it was published on Saturday October 8. The full letter is available on my Wallingford Politico blog.

Political letters to the editor after Labor Day are supposed to be limited to 100 words or less. By the paper’s own admission, an error was made allowing Rosemary’s piece to run at the 300 word standard limit.

I wrote a full reply to this submission that the paper will not publish; they admit the error and take full responsibility but they are going to continue to re-enforce the standard of 100 words or less for political letters and letters from candidates.

While I think an equal response is fair and warranted given the fact that an error was made on one side of the argument, I understand the paper’s position on trying to maintain the original intent of the directive of limiting political letters to 100 words or less.

I am going to work on my 100 word response but in the meantime my full response to this is posted below and an expanded version will be online at The Post-Chronicle as they allow for 500 word submission.

 

There have been numerous letters to the editor regarding the Simpson Court public parking situation downtown.

Over 3,000 people lent their signatures to the petition to force the referendum.

In order to make the referendum binding, yes or no, 20 percent of the registered voters need to vote. That would be 5,000 plus registered voters.

While it may be a minority it is not small; in the last local election only 37 percent of the registered voters showed up to vote.

Recently one writer to the paper indicated that the petitioners and subsequently the voters “forced a referendum on the Wooding/Caplan property” and, “Now they advocate that Wooding/Caplan be used for parking. Isn’t this a bit short-sighted since we may need it for a new police station? Or perhaps they will then suggest that the Town buy another lot.”
The voters “stopped” only the proposed plan at the time; the Council could have revisited and come up with another option that the public might have liked better but they chose instead to take no action.

If we are talking about “short-sighted since we may need it for a new police station” – the Council voted to sell it – if the referendum failed where would we be? The Council’s decision would have been done and Wallingford would be buying another lot.

Other comments were “In its present condition, should someone fall and be hurt (behind Simpson Court), the Town of Wallingford could be held liable” – this can also be applied to the Wooding-Caplan property where the town is the sole owner.

Get the facts; make up your own mind and then vote.

Vote for your representation on Tuesday November 8^th and then vote your option on the parking matter on Monday November 14^th

It’s your town – get informed, get involved and vote.