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Showing posts from May, 2024

Town faces lawsuit after DPW worker killed in North Main Street crash

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  North Main Street at Enfield Town Hall As some people noticed, Enfield got behind in its mowing schedule, in part, because of town employee lawn maintenance training. This training follows a crash in Sept. 2025 between a town lawnmower and a car on North Main Street at the town hall. A Department of Public Works employee operating the mower was killed. The town is being sued by the estate of Jamie Nickerson, the town employee. The plaintiff is his wife, Amy Nickerson. The lawsuit, filed in Hartford Superior Court, also names the vehicle driver, Alexander Torres. The lawsuit alleges the town was not following safety policies for regulating traffic around a worksite or meeting safety standards. It seeks unspecified monetary damages. Police have not released the accident report, citing an ongoing investigation. The lawsuit states the mower was being operated on the roadway during grass cutting and clean-up operations when the crash occurred. The lawsuit argues the town failed to fo...

Enfield Town Council to vote on budget without tax increase

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Enfield Town Hall, May 19, 2024 The Town Council is scheduled to adopt a budget tonight without a tax increase. The proposed mill rate will remain at 30.56, the same as this year. Despite this, the meeting is expected to be contentious. The Board of Education members will face off with the council in a final appeal, warning of layoffs, increased class sizes, and other problems if additional funding is not provided. The budget vote is expected to split along party lines, with Republicans supporting no change and Democrats seeking an increase. The budget proposal defers capital improvements, including repairs and new equipment purchases for schools, reducing spending by about $1.5 million. The largest offset are new police vehicles at $750,000.* However, this merely postpones costs into the future and is not something to take credit for. This budget will keep Enfield's per-pupil spending on the low end for the state. Enfield ranks low in Net Current Expenditure Per Pupil (NCEP) s...

Why is Enfield in trouble? Facts with a dose of sarcasm

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Molly at School Rally People are going after spending in Enfield and trying to dissect it to see where they can find gross mismanagement. Since the Republicans have been in control for all but two of the last 16 years, let's assume that the town's spending is pristine and error-free and beyond reproach—except for the two years when the Democrats were in charge. As we all know, the Democrats dumped money out of the windows of Town Hall. The Town Council Republicans are going to try to set a token reduction in the Mill Rate. To reach that point, they may have to do some problematic things, such as deferring spending on things like police cruiser replacements and equipment generally, putting off some maintenance, and not filling vacancies and laying off where they can, and who knows what else. There's a lot they can't touch, namely contractual salary obligations. But they want to be able to say that they reduced taxes. More concerning will be how much of the costs are bein...