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Spinning the Budget: How Pomfret Officials Try to Rewrite Reality in Public Meetings (and Minutes)

At the most recent Board of Selectmen meeting, our Board of Finance chair stated that she “never heard anything on the budget.” That statement is difficult to reconcile with the detailed list of budget questions that Martha Emilio and I previously submitted — questions that, to this day, remain unanswered.

You can review the questions and the full letter here in my previous blog:



The email we sent to the Board of Finance Chair with our letter attached outlining some very detailed questions:


Confirmation from the Board of Finance Chair that our letter was received and would be reviewed:


Follow-up email to the Board of Finance Chair:


Response to our follow-up, directing us to the Board of Selectmen with our questions:



Audio from the next Board of Selectmen meeting that fell on Tuesday, April 21st, where Maureen admits she skipped the Budget Discussions at the previous meeting:





Last, but certainly not least, here's our First Selectman and the other Selectman bringing up our letter and stating that the letter was sent to the Board of Finance "one hour before their meeting" (see copy of email above timestamped 9:54 AM on Monday, April 6...the Board of Finance does not meet at 10:54 AM on Monday mornings, Patrick...) and that they discussed it and that it would be "taken up at their next meeting," from what Norine relayed to Patrick:



So why is Norine now attending Board of Selectmen meetings, claiming she “didn’t hear anything on the budget,” while failing to mention this letter at all, when the record clearly shows otherwise?


What's even more troubling than this is the way they are handling the budget transparency. Norine went on the record at the last Board of Selectmen meeting, discussing a recent Facebook Live video that featured Martha Emilio and me discussing current hot topics in town, including the budget. We shared some opinions and some facts about how the budget was workshopped this year (or lack thereof). She took offense to our questioning whether or not the Board of Finance CARES about how the Board of Selectmen frames their "cuts".


You can watch the full live video here:




Here you can listen to the FULL conversation at the Board of Selectmen meeting where they discussed their cuts, which to me, sounded more like advocating for moving money into a "contingency fund," which it sounds like we used to have, but haven't had as of late:




So if you are wondering why we don't feel the budgets were taken as seriously as they should have been, these are our reasons. The Board of Finance Chair should not be making false statements to the public that she hadn't heard anything about the budget when she failed to answer our letter addressed to them. Her own words were "trust, but verify", but she failed to verify what we needed to know to trust their proposed budgets.


Here is my raw, uncensored LIVE reaction to Norine's statements at the latest Board of Selectmen meeting this past week:



 
 
 

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