July 17, 2008

Petition drive claims more than 3,000 signatures gathered so far

Note sent a few minutes ago by former Republican mayoral contender Ken Johnson to backers of the petition drive to force a referendum on the chief operating officer positition:

Dear Friends:
First, I wish to congratulate you all for an unbelievable effort!
With our petition blitz this past weekend, we have passed the 3000 signature mark!
So what do we do now? WE GO OUT AND GET MORE!! The nay-sayers said they’ll believe 3000 when they see it. Well, they’re seeing it. I expect each of you as volunteers saw the same thing I saw – an overwhelmingly positive response! I noted at times we were collecting as many as 50 signatures per hour last Saturday.
So, “Why continue?” you ask. The most fundamental reason is this:
· We need 10% on the registered voters in town to sign (approximately 3000 signers). When we turn in the signatures (the deadline is the 25th), the City Clerk’s office must certify that each signature is from a bona fide registered voter in the City of Bristol. To give ourselves plenty of breathing room (because believe it our not, there are people who DON’T want the voters to have a say in their form of City government!) we are going to factor in a 20% margin for error. Let me illustrate: If we collect 4000 signatures, even if 20% (800) are disallowed, we will still have 3200 signatures – enough to force the ballot question. So…

The petition drive continues this weekend at the Bristol and Forestville Stop & Shops. Note the change in schedule from last weekend: We are looking to cover Friday afternoon/evening to pick up a block of voters we haven’t spoken to yet. Plus, we a starting at 8:00am on Saturday and Sunday at both Stop & Shops to pick up the early morning shoppers. Henry Raymond tested this last week and found it very successful.
We are looking for volunteers for this final push. Please e-mail me at
abuyersmarket@comcast.net or call me at 796-6635 if you can lend a hand.
For those of you who have petitions to turn in, please bring them to me or Ken Cockayne at the Bristol Stop & Shop or to Henry Raymond at the Forestville Stop & Shop this weekend. If you have suggestions for other locations where you know people will be gathering this weekend, let me know that as well.
Thank you to all! With your help we will blow the lid off this thing this weekend and sent a strong message to City Hall.
Best,
Ken


*******
Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does Ken Johnson have a paying contract for this effort also???

Anonymous said...

Don't mess with Art Ward.

Anonymous said...

$380,000 for a $10,000 investment by the city. I say that is a pretty good return on our money.

Anonymous said...

9:45
We ain' got it yet, and Johnson would get a part of whatever we get.

Who is calculating and paying for our expenses: staff, legal fees etc?

Anonymous said...

You are right that Municipal Energy gets a percentage, however, it appears that the contract and money was well spent. The initial offer by CL&P was very low, and Bristol now has facts to back up their claim.

Anonymous said...

Are the facts andinformation any different than 3 years ago?

Anonymous said...

Obviously they are. There is at least a total to start negotiating from. The city was right when it did not accept CL&P's offer.

This is laughable that people are attacking Johnson or the city council on this. A contract was signed and it is being honored. The city stands to get a large sum of money for the work that was done. Isn't that a good thing?

It appears Johnson or Municipal Energy was slow in coming up with numbers, but to imply that they were unethical or nt honoring their obligation seems baseless.

All of the public naysayers had something to gain from smearing Johnson. Stortz can't stand Johnson. b/c he announced his intentions of running for mayor while Stortz was still in office and has publicly tried to undercut him every chance he can. Rimcoski was Stortz' right hand man. Ward was his opponent and might be again.

Maybe this information wasn't slow in coming out, but was delayed b/c it "clears" Municipal Energy.

I would really love more information on this. I think we need some hard hitting investigatvie reporting here.

Anonymous said...

Has anyone seen or reviewed the monthly reports that were supposedly part of the agreement?

They might answer some questions.

Of course, Johnson was not on the project for 4-5 months when he left the company.

Anonymous said...

10:06

Johnson could blow the lid off the whole issue by just producing the monthly reports that were part of the agreement.

)If they were ever produced and submitted)

Anonymous said...

10:06

Johnson announced for mayor even though he did not make Water Board meetings and was removed by virtue of the charter.

Illness in the family was his response, but that did not keep him from announcing for mayor

You figure.