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I think we can all agree that no one likes to pay taxes, and I’m certain there are many readers who are choosing between filling up their car and buying groceries this week, and no matter how many times someone tells you how critical municipal taxes are to our day-to-day needs, if you don’t have the money you don’t have the money. I am also certain there are many who are deeply disappointed with the Board of Finance’s cut to the Board of Education budget, thinking it punitive

Without doing much at all, I find myself being talked about in the third person, which I find strange because I am fully capable of talking for myself, as anyone who knows me can attest. All this seems to have very little to do with me (though I imagine these folks do not like me) or the budget (which they’re ostensibly about). Instead, these are bad faith attempts to try win a debate online, thinking this to be an effective strategy at convincing voters who absolutely know

If you’ve been following discussions about school funding in Connecticut, you’ve likely heard that the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula is broken. This phrase often comes up in political debates, but it reflects a real problem affecting towns like North Haven.

This week the state GOP staged a bold protest …either in fierce protection of civil liberties and free speech, or against the rights of Muslim women to exercise those same civil liberties and free speech. It was admittedly a bit confusing. Of course we’re talking about the Republicans here, so their idea of a protest is either storming the Capitol to do open treason or, in this case, displaying tiny yellow flags on their desk. Rep. Yaccarino was captured by Hearst Media wi

If this is the first time you are looking at a DTC communication, welcome! If not, you probably know that it’s budget season. So the CT GOP is looking to take advantage of the fact that towns are struggling by unveiling a state budget plan that includes something called the School/Taxpayers Relief & Affordability, or STRAP (as in the bootstraps they usually demand that we all lift ourselves up by). The bill would award $420 million (nice) of taxpayer relief and generous a

This week was an important one in North Haven’s budget process, with multiple meetings and meaningful community input shaping where things stand today.

On Thursday, March 26, North Haven held a Special Town Meeting to consider three major infrastructure and capital investment proposals.

The session is either winding down or winding up, depending on your perspective. Public hearings are slowing down and bills are advancing out of committee, meaning we’re moving to the dirty work of grinding out lawsuit-proof ready versions of priority legislation for possible floor votes. What have those priorities been for the past few weeks? Well, for Democrats there’s a plethora of substantive things they’ve been considering. Both Governor Lamont and Senate Dems are pu

At the March 18th Board of Finance meeting, we received important updates on how reductions are being applied across the town and the Board of Education.

“THEY’RE COMING” reads an all caps font plastered over an AI Slop graphic. “HIDE YOUR LEAF BLOWERS”. The image behind it is of redheaded person with a leafblower apparently growing out of the back of their shirt as leaves whimsically scatter in the air in the opposite direction of the blower tube. Rep. Dave Yaccarino spammed this across various North Haven community pages, apparently pretty proud of it, declaring himself to against what he called an “egregious proposal”

Budget discussions are underway in North Haven, and an important decision point is approaching for our public schools.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year – budget season! I’ll admit it, before I became a member of the Board of Selectmen, I found the budget process to be confusing and hard to follow. I would hear folks in town say things like “this is a tough budget year,” or “this is a challenging budget cycle,” but I didn’t really understand why. Why is one year more challenging than another? Isn’t it always hard to find enough dollars to support all the needs and wants of our town

DTC member Jenny Graves testifies in favor of Tax Equity Bills The big news this week was that there was a gigantic bill pushed through by Democrats as a piece of “emergency legislation”. You can read more about it here . Of course, Republicans are up in arms about this. But if this sounds like them crying wolf, I’m not entirely sold on that being the case this time around. In the past when legislative Dems have done this, it has been in response to rapidly developing feder

The Governor this week introduced legislation ( HB-5046 ) to incentivize firefighter and police recruitment with mortgage and tuition assistance and our own Sen. Cicarella co-sponsored the bill. Though Cicarella was a co-sponsor of the Governor’s bill, him and his colleagues used the opportunity to trash the six-year-old police accountability bill, launched in the wake of George Floyd and other high-profile police killings (including those in Connecticut like Mubarak Soulem

The North Haven Democratic Town Committee (DTC) adopted a resolution at their February membership meeting reaffirming its commitment to protecting civil liberties, due process, and the dignity of all people in the wake of troubling federal escalations of immigration enforcement operations. The resolution responds to widely reported incidents and policy actions involving federal immigration enforcement both here in Connecticut and throughout other parts of the country. It ci

Budget season is here again in North Haven, and with it come understandable questions.

The legislative session is off to the races, race being the optimal word as we’re in a “short session” this year. Short sessions occur every other year after the year a budget is passed. During these sessions, passing any kind of legislation that requires any additional money is pretty rare, so a lot of times the legislation passed during “short session” years winds up tying up loose ends of bills that just couldn’t make their way to the finish line the previous year. This

Every two years, Democrats across Connecticut gather for one of the most important and least understood events in local politics: the Democratic Caucus.

It’s been a tremendous year and I feel so fortunate and honored to have been able to Chair the North Haven Democratic Town Committee for the vast majority of it. At our holiday party earlier this week, we did a lot of reminiscing. In particular, many were struck by how so many of us started off the year in a dark spot. We were fearful of the direction our country was going in, disappointed at the seeming capitulation of our national Democratic leaders and many of those in

Artificial Intelligence is here and it is reshaping how we learn, work, communicate, and even govern. This is the moment where we determine who gets to decide how it impacts our lives and influences our future.