By Donovan Wilson
The City Council filled a temporary opening with the Board of Education (BoE) at its meeting Tuesday night but not before hearing from concerned citizens about the nominating process and the elephant in the room, a prospective candidate for the Republicans in the upcoming municipal elections this November, who had been considered for the opening.
The comments were not directed at Lori Osenkowski who will fill the position left vacant when Todd Sturgeon resigned, but rather toward Jennifer Van Gorder, who along with Osenkowski was endorsed by the Republican Town Committee earlier this summer to run for the Bristol Board of Education.
At this week’s meeting, the public had quite a lot to say about the process leading up to Van Gorder’s endorsement, but there was a special guest to be introduced before the floor turned to public participation.
Antonio Chatfield, a student who had expressed interest in sitting on a City Council meeting, sat on the dais alongside Mayor Jeffrey Caggiano throughout the meeting.
Chatfield even used the announcements section of the meeting to tell the council that he hopes they do more for environmental protection, including taking steps to regulate change.
Once the floor opened to public participation, the first speaker about the nominating process was Shelby Pons, who sits on the current Board of Education.
She first mentioned how she had reached out to the mayor a while ago to have him meet with a Democratic caucus to discuss the opening and that his secretary had responded but he had not.
She expressed a great amount of concern with the council deviating from the established process for appointing a BoE member and requested again that the mayor meet with the Democratic caucus.
Pons questioned how it was that the RTC endorsed the “lowest rated candidate in the vetting process.”
Caggiano replied after Pons finished that he would be more than happy to meet personally with Pons but that he did not feel it appropriate for him to meet with the Democratic caucus.
Jennifer Dube, Board of Education chair, was next up to speak. She addressed the mayor and mentioned how he knows firsthand how important collaboration is and how quickly things can fall apart if collaboration is not had. Gears then shifted to how many phone calls, texts and emails she recalls receiving, sharing feelings of what she said were concern and disgust.
Among the emails she referenced was one that recounted a story of how Van Gorder attacked her child for wearing a mask in the elevator of the Board of Education building while she was there to accept an award. It was also mentioned that Van Gorder had been removed from Facebook groups for inappropriate posts and comments.
Logan Williams, until recently an active member of the RTC, spoke about how he had just switched from being a Republican and a large factor of that was the endorsement of Van Gorder. He is a large advocate for mental health in students and believes that appointing Van Gorder would make improving that mental health harder or not a priority, rather than being emphasized as he believes it should be.
Williams cited many statistics to back up his claims about mental health, one of which being a report from the University of Los Angeles, California (UCLA) on how 20 percent of high school students already have a plan for how they would commit suicide.
Later on in the meeting, the vote for the Board of Education position came up, it was seconded and then subsequently approved with Osenkowski, not Van Gorder. Osenkowski will fill the position until the November election.
This year’s Board of Education election is an unusual one, since many of the current Board of Education members have been appointed by the mayor and approved by the City Council. In addition, recent changes to the City Charter, introducing four-year terms for board members and term limits, have to be accounted for.
This November, taking into account the changes to the charter and the appointments, two candidates, one from each party, will run uncontested. Who the RTC will select to run for the uncontested Republican seat has to be determined, and Van Gorder, having been endorsed by the RTC, may be that candidate. consideration.
There was also public participation not referring to the RTC’s endorsement of Van Gorder.
Peter Kelley, a former City Council member, spoke about how he feels that the current administration is taking credit for all of the downtown development even though most of, if not all of it, was set into place in 2018, under the former administration, of which Kelly was part of.
After he spoke, Caggiano said that there are plans to include members who started things rolling that once the new town hall building opens, September or October that a plaque there will include the former administration.
In other business, the council heard a presentation from the Bristol Police Dept. about a program that is being considered that involves placing cameras around the city to reduce crime associated with stolen vehicles by alerting police if one is identified.
The Flock Safety program has been used in cities around the state, including West Hartford, where it has been highly successful, according to the presentation.
Correction: The original story had Lisa rather than Lori Osenkowski.
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