Press release from Democratic mayoral nominee Ellen Zoppo:
It is very clear that Art Ward is not interested in issues. He has avoided both debate and discussion of the issues, instead concentrating on character assassination and dredging up old news and anonymous sources, and always claiming no knowledge of the sources. I wish Mr. Ward had the courage to confront me personally in a debate instead of resorting to anonymous leaks. I take responsibility for everything that happens in my campaign. He owes it to the voters to do the same.
I stand behind the insight and intensity that I bring to the job in my role as City Council liaison to my departments. That is my job. I am being criticized for doing my job and doing it well.
We both knew what was required of us when we ran for office. I have almost a dozen committees and have nearly perfect attendance over the last six years, in addition to having a husband, three young children and two jobs.
Mr. Ward, on the other hand, has only 4 committees and his attendance averages far less than mine, and in some cases, he only makes half the meetings he is required to attend. As chair of the City Council Veterans Committee, he has not even called a meeting of that committee in the last two years. [1]
I believe in constituent service and follow up. I do not skirt controversial issues. I believe that citizens should get the most out of the city’s employees and department services. If employees or customers of a department have problems, it is my job to address them and report such issues to the Mayor. The people of Bristol deserve nothing less.
If we really want to explore people’s motivations for running for office, Mr. Ward, if he were to be elected, stands to expand his state pension benefits substantially. CGS 5-181b allows a state employee who is elected to municipal office to apply his mayor’s salary to his state pension. The average of an employee’s three highest years is used as a factor in calculating the employee’s retirement benefit. The higher the final average, the higher the retirement benefit. By serving as mayor for a term, Mr. Ward not only will more than double his take-home pay, but he also stands to increase his overall state retirement by almost 50% and receive medical benefits for life. No wonder he will stop at nothing to get elected. [2]
This election should be about the quality of life for the people of Bristol, not about the quality of life for Art Ward.
[1] Attendance records, City Clerk’s office and Personnel office
[2] CT General Assembly Office of Legislative Research, Opinion 2006-R-0463 entitled “Ability to Earn State Retirement Credit while in Town Elected Office.” Copy available from Ellen Zoppo-Sassu.
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Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com
19 comments:
The lady doth protest too much.
If this election is about the quality of life in Bristol why is The Ellen (last name optional) so obsessed with Art? These are such petty issues. If that is all she has to say, then she has nothing to say.
If what the lady says is true about Art and his attendance record (which appears true)then the lady has a great point. Does he plan to be an absent Mayor? Art can't phone this job in. Fourteen years in a council seat is not a free pass to the position. If Art wins (and chances are good he won't) it will be interesting to see how many "special assistant" to the Mayor positions he tries to push through. Just how many AWards will he give out to his cronies?
Ellen, get over yourself. You aren't the kind of person we want running this city. You will just run everyone out of town.
Ellen you don't get it. You don't want to listen to the community, don't want to hear what they want in this town, and you disrespect anyone who disagrees with you on anything.
So what if Art contributes to his State pension through his Mayoral salary. Most smart people would. It would be stupid for him not to.
How much of a salary increase would you receive it you get elected? You AND Peter would get City pensions and I'm sure you would use some of your salary to contribute to any retirement investments you have. That's no different than Art contributing to his State pension - it's a retirement investment.
Art's about doing what is popular among the members of this community, not what's popular to just you.
The City Veterans council never needed to be called because all events related to the veterans were handled through the other community veterans committees. It's a committee that gets called on an "as needed" basis. You know that.
Why do you think that Art had anything to do with this email getting to Steve? You have angered enough people over the years that Art doesn't have to send things like this in. Other people will do it on their own. Art didn't even have this email about Francine.
Don't you find it interesting that both annonymous letters Steve received were Personnel issues?
There are quite a few people out there that will do anything to make sure you don't get elected. Art doesn't need to resort to these tactics --- because you have seen to it that enough people dislike you that they will do it on their own.
ELLEN, Tell everyone where you work OKAY? Tell them they are two PART TIME jobs. Tell every one that you can name your hours.Tell them the whole story ELLEN.Well at least you attempted to put the knife into Mr. Wards chest this time. Beats the back stab method that your becoming famous for.
You mis-read Ellen's press release. She said 'City Council Veterans Committee', not 'Veterans' Council'. The committee, which Ward has chaired for many years, has only met two or three times in the past four years and yet Ward frequently makes "Veteran's Committee" reports at the City Council meetings during "committee reports".
Have you noticed that the Ward supporters on this Blog are so incapable of intelligent, issue based discussion that all they can do is rant and rave about Ellen's personality and management style. Not one of them tells us about Art's record or all of the great things he supposedly has done for Bristol. I realize it's because they have nothing to talk about but you'd think they would at least try. But no, just more Ellen bashing and personal attacks. Unfortunately when they lose on Tuesday this won't end. They will just keep on attacking since Art believes that he's entitled to the Mayor's seat and is running his issue-less, meaningless independent campaign.
Seems like there's a long line of people who'd be more than happy to "dredge up" some bad press, and gee...it sure seems like there's PLENTY of it! Maybe Ellen needs a little bit more of that insight and a little bit less of that intensity.
CRAIG, COME ON! your grasping for something that is fading away. Your puppet master is finally getting her just exposure.It`s time that all of Bristol finds out what Ellen is really about.
What else is she going to do. She talks about unions, ask her about her association with her Co-Campaign Manager, the Union President Bentivengo (Fire Dept's union). She talks about afiliation with Unions. What has she promised him if she becomes Mayor.
I believe she set her own salary from the Historical Society. Is that true?
Yes, we poor Ward supporters are just walking around with our knuckles scraping the pavement, a poor unintelligent group with nothing to do but accuse Ellen of stealing signs...oops, wait, that was Ellen ranting and raving. Yep, there's a pretty important issue alright, stolen signs!!!
It bothers me that Ellen can't even admit when she did something wrong or inappropriate. She's quick to blame everyone else instead of taking responsibility for her actions.
Craig - first off the "city veteran committee" is a joke. The best representation for the city is Veteran Council which is group with of all veterans from all veterans org. They are the ones who put the Memorial Day event on, conduct the Veterans Day ceremony, and take up other issues with regards to veterans, as they should! Only and only did Stortz form a committee to deal with awarding the Ct Wartime medal because he did not want Ward in charge of it on the "City council Veterans committee. Its not about Stortz, its not about you or anyone elses ego (Bills' or McCauleys) its about the veterans.
Ward had nothing to do with these emails - Steve Collins got copies of all emails for the city council by FOI - so wake up, stop your name calling and stand up on your own two feet!
I stand behind the insight and intensity that I bring to the job in my role as City Council liaison to my departments. That is my job. I am being criticized for doing my job and doing it well.
Hello Zoppo? Being mean, threating and rude is doing our job well? Your job as liaison is not the day to day operations, not oversteppping the dept. heads. You let power get to your head. Stand behind your job?? Get real!! You are not a leader. You are not a communicator. You do not work well with people. You do not know how to manage. The books you read tell you one thing, its another to apply in everyday life and work.
Sorry Ellen but your days of being rude, nasty, condscending and vidictive to good people is coming to an end. It has NOTHING to do with hormones either.
Now Zoppo is grabbing at meetings Ward missed!? C'mon Ellen let people know the real reason he missed them. They were at 9:00am, 19 of those meetings were in the morning and Ward works fulltime..Besides those meetings were with the dept heads, engineers...etc. Ward knew they were very capable of handling these meetings. You only work part time, can name your hours at work. In the real work force - when one works fulltime with an important job, you can't take off that many hours. But then you don't know that. You don't care about that information to tell poeple, you rather do what you do best and tell 1/2 the truth about why he had to miss 9:00am meetings!!
DESPERATE, DESPERATE, DESPERATE, ARE YOU!
I just received in the mail a card from the Ellen Campaign which is quoting an article that Steve Collins wrote on February 24, 2005.
The article written by Steve states:
When Deputy Mayor Art Ward announces his intentions to seek a seventh term on the City Council, he'll be missing his 19th consecutive session of the city's Project Committee that's planning the downtown revitalization project.
"I'll plan to make the next one", Ward said.
HELLO FOLKS.....these meetings were NOT 9am meeting that interfered with his full time work schedule.
19 consecutive meetings?!?!?!?
That is just unexcusable, especially in light of the fact that Art Ward most recently has been quoted as stating that the Bristol Downtown Dev. Corp should wait till after the November elections to do anything.
That is just not right, and not excusable because of working hours.
The Downtown revitalization committee did meet 9am. He missed quite a few of those because he works full time in Hartford. They met in the morning because of the number of department heads that were part of that committee.
The other downtown committee met at night.
There were two committees during the Couture administration.
Mr Collins' article states that Art Ward was missing the 19th consecutive meeting in a row because he was going to a political fundraiser.
Since it seems you are SO knowledgable about Mr. Ward's attendance, could you tell us, how many meetings he missed that were at 9 am OR during regular work hours and how many he missed after his normal working hours?
I can not believe that 18 of these 19 "consecutive meetings" that Mr Ward was absent from were ALL at 9 am or in conflict to his work schedule.
If the redevelopment of our downtown area is SO important, why did Mr Ward miss any of the meetings that were held in the evening?
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