The grassroots campaign to upgrade Middlebury's faulty public safety communications system ran up against an attack by sore losers bent on keeping residents from having reliable radios for their first responders. But despite the last-minute smears, our Council 760 members who work for the town came up just 84 votes shy in Tuesday's referendum to provide the long-overdue improvements.
Tuesday's election followed nearly five years of advocacy by Middlebury police officers, who brought heightened public scrutiny to the issue last June when Chapter I32 President Al Cronin
filed a grievance over the matter. By that time, our members' warnings to public officials had begun to be taken seriously, and the Police Commission retained a consultant to evaluate the antiquated system and propose solutions.
For the following eight months, a radio vendor who failed to meet Middlebury's minimum coverage needs waged a self-serving crusade to stall a recommended replacement. At the same time, our Union's members diligently worked to educate town residents of the risks of further delays and kept the pressure on elected officials through
high-profile visibility efforts.
In mid-January, the town's
finance board finally voted to send the upgrade the Police Commission had approved last year to referendum.
Even before the election date was set, members formed a Political Action Committee to educate their neighbors on the benefits of the recommended upgrade. "Middlebury United for Public Safety" hit the ground in mid-February collecting
petition signatures from residents who believed their first responders should have access to the tools needed keep their community safe.
The
Committee placed an ad in last Friday's Bee-Intelligencer to make sure voters realized that the police officers' radios don't work in area schools and local senior centers, putting children and the elderly in danger.
The same edition
featured a front-page article on the referendum that featured the comments of Chapter I33 member and Committee Treasurer Tom Reynolds. As a dispatcher, he offered his unique perspective on the need for improving the system for the sake of residents' public safety.
Then Sunday's Waterbury Republican-American
ran an extensive story on the referendum on the front page of the local section. Chapter I32 members Ron Pruchnicki and Rich Wildman, the Committee's Chairman, were featured making compelling arguments for residents to come to the polls and Vote YES on Tuesday.
The story included a sidebar exposing the 11th-hour attempt by opponents of the system upgrade to derail the vote. A
deceptive mailer full of distortions and fabrications sent by an unknown sender began arriving in Middlebury residents' mailboxes on Friday, and was followed by robo-calls and another mailer on Election Day.
On Tuesday, members of all three Chapters representing Middlebury's municipal workers volunteered their efforts to pass out literature and answer voters' questions at the polls. WTNH-TV Channel 8 dispatched a camera crew to the Shepardson Center where Rich was
interviewed for a segment that aired throughout the day (note that the linked video is from their midday broadcast and the transcript is from the segment aired at 11:00 PM).
Both Rich and Chapter I33 member Tom Bessette also talked live on the air from the scene with Larry Rifkin for his
"Talk of the Town" program on WATR-AM 1320.
A
set at our photo gallery was posted with photos of Union members and supporters "getting out the vote" on Election Day.
When all the ballots were tallied at the end of the day, it was clear that the opposition's scare tactics worked. Press reporting on the vote's outcome over the past four days has identified who was responsible --
Marcus Communications, Inc., the same sore losers who failed to provide an acceptable solution to the town's communications upgrade during the bidding process:
Moving forward, members of our Union who live in town plan to file a complaint with the
State Elections Enforcement Commission over the campaign finance rules it appears Marcus violated. Despite his claims to the contrary in the press, the company's CEO is not "above the law."
More importantly, our members will continue their grassroots outreach efforts to inform Middlebury residents of the urgent need for first responders to have a system that doesn't
fail half the time.
Contact me at (800) 894-9479, ext. 129 to add your voice to the renewed call for a reliable integrated police, fire, EMT, and public works communications system in Middlebury. If we are going to keep corporate greed from denying residents' access to quality public services, we are going to need to mobilize an even stronger front for the next round.
Posted by:
Matt OConnor on 3/6/2010 at 11:13:00 AM