Volume 17, Number 50
Berlin’s Only Hometown Newspaper
www.berlincitizen.com
Thursday, December 12, 2013
At one year, a look back:
After Sandy Hook towns checked security, sought normalcy By Daniel Jackson The Berlin Citizen
(In this story, reporter Daniel Jackson looks back at what unfolded in local towns in the days following the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Jackson obtained and reviewed internal documents from school and police officials — in North Haven, Cheshire, Southington, Plainville and Berlin — and interviewed them in regards to how their communities responded .) In North Haven, the police department was gathered for a send-off ceremony for a retiring sergeant, Dec. 14, 2012, when they heard the news of the Sandy Hook shooting through news broadcasts “just like everyone else.” Over that difficult weekend of Dec. 15 and 16, a superintendent in Cheshire planned the school’s response. A tragedy had happened, but come Monday morning, yellow school buses would drive up to the front of Cheshire’s schools, just like every school morning across the nation. To prepare for that first Monday morning, back to school, Cheshire’s Superintendent of Schools Greg Florio wrote to the Cheshire Public
ward. This is the story of what a group of schools and police departments, located just 45 minutes from Newtown did after the shooting, how they responded and how the indelible events of that terrible day had changed their communities. After the shooting in Sandy Hook, local school districts went through their security plans again, double-checking the locks on their doors. Police departments provided extra police presence in the days following the shooting, helped analyze school security plans and looked at increasing the police presence at the schools in the long-term. The weekend after the shooting was a busy one for the police departments and school administrators. School districts met with parents, and representatives from the police departments attended these meetings as well. One of the tens of thousands of tributes that came to Newtown and which Sunday, Dec 17, 2012, about 300 parwere on display in the town last Christmas. | (Olivia L. Lawrence| Weeklies news editor.) ents in Southington attended a safety forum where three members of the Schools Administration Council on the acknowledgment of the horrific Southington Police Department, inSunday at about 11 a.m. “I am torn events of Friday that are so fresh in cluding Southington Police Chief Jack Daly, “calmed a very, very nerat this time between the importance our minds.” of creating a sense of normalcy for That struggle was a common theme our schools tomorrow morning and as communities sought to move forSee Look / Page 10
Ahead of state’s decision, council votes to join CRCOG By Daniel Jackson The Berlin Citizen
In the town council meeting Dec. 3, elected officials wrestled with questions not normally discussed during town council meetings, questions like: how can Berlin keep its status in the state? And what is the best way to keep federal funding flowing to various projects in the town? The questions arose out of one simple question: should the town join the larger, Hartford area council of gov-
ernments, or should it join with the smaller COG that served municipalities around Waterbury? In the end, the Town Council voted to support Tow n M a n a ge r D e n i s e McNa i r ’s re co m m e n d a tion that the town join the Capitol Region Council of Governments in a 5-2 decision, with council members Dave Evans and Charles Paonessa opposing the decision. Berlin’s decision has implications for many services in town because these regional
associations of governments help the towns with such services as elderly busing programs, emergency services, regional projects, providing federal funding -- even something as minor as providing road salt during winter storms. Berlin needed to join a council of governments because the state is dissolving the regional organization to which Berlin currently belongs, the Central Connecticut Regional Planning Agency. To understand the situation, rewind to October 1960
when Connecticut’s legislature voted to abolish its county form of government. The counties were replaced with regional planning organizations and councils of governments. They are the mechanism with which the federal government doles out money to individual towns. They also create regional development plans, generally assisting, supporting and coordinating towns. In O c t o b e r, the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management released a
report proposing a consolidation of the various COGs and RPOs. In the report, the state lumped CCRPA with the Capitol Region Council of Governments (CRCOG). However, the Central Connecticut Regional Planning Organization, a collection of seven towns, voted to associate as a group to the council of governments in the southwest, the Council of Governments of Central Naugatuck Valley (COGCNV). See Council / Page 14