Memorial Day 2010 > my small town at its best & why I love it so

Parade Grand Marshal: Doris Ventres, the letter lady, is in the spotlight

Written by Macklin Reid, Ridgefield Press Staff
Monday, 31 May 2010 05:52

After four decades of quietly writing letters and sending clipping and photos to service personnel from her hometown, Doris Ventres is making a splash.

She’ll not only be the grand marshal of Ridgefield’s Memorial Day Parade today, but to do it she turned down an invitation to lead a parade in New York — an honor that came her way now that her television and Web profiles have been growing.

“It’s an honor. I’m glad that I can do it,” she said of leading Ridgefield’s parade.

“I’d rather do it here than New York City” she said. “New York City wanted me down there. They wanted to send a limo and pick me up. It told them they could find someone down there, I’m sure.

“Being on Fox News, that’s what started everything rolling,” she said Monday, May 24. “Last week, I guess it was Sunday, I was on all day, on and off, and that started the ball rolling.”

She gave in to the Ridgefield American Legion’s request that she lead their parade after trying to talk them into making someone else grand marshal.

But she’s happy to do it.

"I’m very proud to be here, and with all my family here for many many years, I’m glad I can be in the parade,” she said.

As grand marshal she’ll be riding in a convertible — probably Fred Whipple’s Mustang — right after the police vehicle at the front of the parade.

“I wanted to walk, but they don’t want me to walk,” she said.

She still seems a little awkward about going from behind-the-scenes worker to so public a role. “I said ‘This gray-haired lady?’ But I’ll still sit there and wave, anyway, I guess.”

Ms. Ventres earned the honor because she has been regularly writing letters to men and women from Ridgefield who are in military service — all of them, to the degree she can get their names and addresses — for as long as many people work in their careers.

“Forty-two years — and I’m not about to give it up,” she said.

“The pen hasn’t run out of ink yet.”

How many letters does she write?

"Fifty-three this month,” she said. “I put a lot time in this month.”

She sent along clippings and pictures of the town hall display honoring service people which the Military Pride Committee put together, and the crowd that turned out for the display’s May 2 opening ceremony.

She says it doesn’t feel the letter writing is a burden.

“When you enjoy it, it just doesn’t seem like work,” she said.

“I’ve got a very understanding husband,” she added.

That would be George Ventres, who is active in veterans work in Ridgefield.

“Of course, he was in the service,” she said. “He’s just come in from selling poppies now.”

The couple has two grown sons, Tad, who’s in Ridgefield, and Dale, now in Montana.

How much time does Ms. Ventres put into the letters in a typical week?

“Maybe about 30 hours. Because I do both sides of an 8-by-10 sheet, usually,” she said. “And I like to send pictures from home — they enjoy that. Articles. I cut articles that I see in the paper...

“And I take a lot of pictures around town — the fairs going on in the summertime, and the pumpkin patch in the fall in front of the church, anything that’s going on. Tell them about going to the ‘Oklahoma’ play that the high school put on, the kids.

“They just like to hear news from home, really, when they’re away like that,” she said. “And if someone else from the unit doesn’t have any mail, I tell them to pass it on.”

Soldiers don’t need to be deployed overseas to get letters from Ms. Ventres.

“The stateside mail, I feel, is just as important as the deployed. They’re away from home, and they’re training.”

Ms. Ventres is one of the dozen or so Ridgefielders who worked on the Military Pride Committee’s town hall display, featuring photos and memorabilia of some 50-odd Ridgefielders in military service — most of them names garnered from Ms. Ventres’ address list.

Working with the other committee volunteers was something she really enjoyed, “That committee was fantastic,” she said.

As with the letter-writing, she couldn’t say how much time she put into it.

“I don’t know. When you’re having a good time, you just don’t count the hours,” she said. “You just don’t seem to, when it’s something you enjoy.”

How many service people does Ms. Ventres figure she’s corresponded with over 42 years she’s been writing letters?
 
“Oh, my, a lot,” she said.

“They’ve served, retired, and one of them I’m still writing. They want to write back, and the children want to write to me. They become like a family after a while.”

She recalled one service woman who went to high school in Ridgefield and ended up with a long military career that took her to American bases all over globe.

“She lost her parents during that time,” Ms. Ventres said. “She wrote and said, ‘No matter where I was, you never forgot me.’ So, the mail did mean a lot.”

Reactions like that keep Ms. Ventres at her desk.

“I always say, ‘Write, just take the time. Write. You can take time to pray, you can take time to write. Just write,’ ” she said.

“When you go to bed, you can figure, I made somebody happy today.”

Politico.com > More charter schools.

The UFT be damned. NY, CO, DE & TN have come to their educational senses.  How long will it take for our little CT to follow suit?

In a huge legislative coup for Mayor Bloomberg at the statewide level (where has has not generally enjoyed great success over his first two terms), New York's two houses of the legislature have passed bills approving a hike in the number of charter schools permitted statewide.

The bills also called for other reforms, including teacher evaluations tied to student performance - similar to measures that have passed in Colorado, Delaware and Tennessee (the latter two were Race to the Top fund winners in Round One) - concepts that were not exactly favored by the teachers' union in New York.

Read the rest of the article: click here

Letter to the Editor > Ridgefield Press

The 2010 budget vote demonstrated an increased focus on real world economics. 

While those who supported the full day kindergarten initiative  could post: "Woo, hoo, it passed" on the Ridgefield Press Forum like some silly first grader, others of us who opposed the school budget could take solace in the fact that more of us actually considered the real fundamental issues and came out to vote our conscience. 

This is no small matter. Thirty-one percent of the voting population, or about five thousand residents, participated in the highest voter turnout in recent history. 

The result? In what was clearly NOT a mandate, the school budget passed by a mere 200 or so votes while the town budget passed by a three to one margin. 

A win is a win, but for those of you who sometimes feel "What's the use, nothing changes", take notice, change IS possible, clearly tied to your interest and active participation. So keep it up; ask the hard questions, go to meetings. Don't be embarrassed to speak out. 

The last time the budgets were rejected, an elected official was heard to say: "Clearly the wrong people voted" and this year an e-mail blast titled 'Vote Update Urgent' went out with the following message "... Based on the people entering the polls this afternoon things are getting worse. The majority of people voting do not appear to be 'parents'". 

Both ignorant statements by any standard, it demonstrates a mindset that clamors for change. This is not 'their' town. This is 'our' town. Does one have to be a certain 'type' to care about Ridgefield's future including education? I think not. 

Because of this year's decisions, next year the Boards of Selectmen and Finance will face even tougher decisions or be held politically responsible for Ridgefield's diminution.        

Ridgefield Press > Flagger ordinance fails at town meeting; Police Commission will explore regulation

Many construction or utility companies already hire police as flaggers, but they are not required to use officers.

Voters overwhelmingly opposed two versions of a flagger ordinance Wednesday night, requiring companies and private citizens to hire police for traffic control in specified work zones.

An amended and expanded ordinance failed in a 60 to 23 vote. Then, the Board of Selectmen’s more limited proposed ordinance, requiring citizens and companies to hire off-duty police during excavation, construction, or repair of any highway road or street that impedes the flow of traffic on 24 town roads, failed by a larger margin, in a 71 to 11 vote.Though the ordinances failed, the town may still have a flagger regulation passed by the Police Commission, if it so chooses, Chairman Tom Reynolds said.Written by Kate Czaplinski, Press Staff  > Wednesday, 26 May 2010 23:27For the rest of the story click here.

New York Time's article written by Steven Brill > UFT vs Education

MICHAEL MULGREW is an affable former Brooklyn vocational-high-school teacher who took over last year as head of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers when his predecessor, Randi Weingarten, moved to Washington to run the national American Federation of Teachers. Over breakfast in March, we talked about a movement spreading across the country to hold public-school teachers accountable by compensating, promoting or even removing them according to the results they produce in class, as measured in part by student test scores. Mulgrew’s 165-page union contract takes the opposite approach. It not only specifies everything that teachers will do and will not do during a six-hour-57 ½-minute workday but also requires that teachers be paid based on how long they have been on the job. Once they’ve been teaching for three years and judged satisfactory in a process that invariably judges all but a few of them satisfactory, they are ensured lifetime tenure. For the rest of the article click here.

Vote 'No' at the May 26 Town Meeting > My take on the proposed flagman ordinance

"Police Chief John Roche and other commissioners agreed that though the ordinance was brought forward for economic reasons, it is a safety measure that would benefit the town."

Well, now it's too late to change the sense of the ordinance.

If the police union and the First Selectman could not come to a wage agreement across the negotiation table, then it should have gone to arbitration. End of story.

The problem is that Mr. Marconi agreed to the proposed ordinance as part of the town's contract negotiations with the police union. Therefore, for the police union, it is rightfully an economic issue. No matter what anyone else wants to call it, it is built in overtime for police officers & the town has to proceed to present the ordinance for a vote at a town meeting. This will happen Wednesday, May 26th.

Never should a proposed vote by the public be part of a labor contract. It becomes a hidden tax rather than the town's cost of doing business which is budgeted annually.

If it was purely a safety issue -- which I believe it is -- it could be handled by the Police Commission as part of their charge. The Police Chief can shut down any job that he considers a traffic or safety hazard and, by his own admission, he currently has the right to determine if an assignment is a 'special duty' assignment (i.e. offered to any off duty officer) or as part of the regular work day or if a non-police flagman is sufficient to handle the work.

A 'special duty' assignment requires a four hour minimum assignment at time and a half or -- on special occasions -- double time. Except for rare exceptions like a private party or something along those lines, I believe all this could be handled within a normal work day. If it became too much for the current force to handle as indicated by a rise in the crime rate, an outrageous increase in overtime, overworked police officers or something along those lines, the Police Commission could recommend the hiring of an additional officer to take up the extra load in the future. 

In my opinion, this is just another example of why Ridgefield should hire a town centric labor relations firm to negotiate ALL town contracts in the future. Had that been the case, this entire matter would probably not have arisen because it would have been foreseen by a professional negotiator. 

In this case, I don't think the town was well served by our First Selectman.

May 26, 7:30pm @ Veteran's Park Elementary School Auditorium > Special Town Meeting on Flagger Ordinance vote followed by BoS Meeting

Policy: Board of Selectmen meetings will be conducted under Roberts Rules of Order with comment invited only on agenda items that are action items not subject to formal public hearing.  Individuals will be recognized for three minutes after Board of Selectmen discussion but before Board of Selectmen vote. 

Agenda (immediately following Special Town Meeting)

1.   Vendor Permit Application:  Redding Creamery

2.   Ridgefield Prevention Council Intv: Margaret Stamatis

3.   Appoint of Dir of Social Services: Carole Konner

4.   Workers Comp & Liability Broker Recommendation from IRMC

5.   Potential Leash Ordinance Discussion

6.   Children’s Corner Lease

7.   Electronic Waste Recycling Contract

8.   Paul Roche Lease

9.   Selectman’s Report

10. Approval of Meeting Minutes:  4/28/10, 5/12/10

Note:  Anyone requiring special accommodations due to disability is asked to contact the First Selectman’s office at 431-2774.

Daily Beast > Teachers are professionals & should be evaluated based on their work, not their seniority

This is the basic problem for any school system, including Ridgefield. There is a place for unions. There is a place for guilds, but there is NO place for protecting mediocrity; meritocracy is what is needed.

When the principal at P.S. 40 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, talks about the impact on students of one of her best teachers, Malvola Lewis, her eyes fill with tears.

After growing up in homeless shelters, Lewis earned an education degree from Brooklyn College and returned to her old neighborhood to teach at P.S. 40, a historically hard-to-staff school. Now she’s one of the school’s strongest teachers; her students are making more progress than almost any other class in the school. And they love her.

Lewis is a terrific teacher. Despite her exceptional work, though, she (and thousands of teachers like her) may be laid off shortly because of antiquated seniority rules in New York City. The real losers will be children.  

Read the entire article here

Board of Selectmen Special Meeing

May 24, 2010  1:00 p.m.

Town Hall Annex P&Z Conference Room

400 Main Street, Ridgefield, Connecticut

Policy: Board of Selectmen’s meetings will be conducted under Roberts Rules of Order with comment invited only on agenda items that are action items not subject to formal public hearing.  Individuals will be recognized for three minutes after Board of Selectmen discussion but before Board of Selectmen vote. 

Agenda

Joint Meeting with Board of Police Commissioners—Discussion of Proposed Traffic Control Ordinance 


Note: Anyone requiring special accommodations due to disability is asked to contact the First Selectman’s office at 431-2774.

NYT > wage freeze in teachers' contracts in 44 of 69 CT districts but not Ridgefield

In New York’s Suburbs, Teachers Feel Budget Ax

By WINNIE HU
Published: May 11, 2010

Teachers are giving up raises in at least five Long Island districts, including Brentwood, where the 1,400 teachers will also take individual pay cuts of $900 that will be repaid to them without interest when they leave or retire.

Teachers are facing a wage freeze in 44 of the 69 Connecticut districts that reached new teacher contracts this year, something virtually unheard of in a state where the average raise has been about 2.5 percent.

And in Pelham and Scarsdale, two places in Westchester County that have long been synonymous with well-paid teachers, they voted to reopen their contracts and shave off a portion of their scheduled raises.

Such concessions come amid threats of widespread layoffs, state and local government budget cuts and insistent public calls that teachers make sacrifices in a tough economy.

“Nobody wants to give up money,” said Joe Hogan, president of the Brentwood teachers’ union, whose members unanimously agreed to give up their raises to prevent hundreds of layoffs and save music, art and sports programs. “Did everybody do this happily? I don’t think so. But did they do this because of the times we’re in? Yes.”

In the past year, cost-saving measures like wage freezes, pay cuts, furlough days and higher insurance premiums have spread from cash-poor metropolises like Detroit and Los Angeles to upscale suburban communities that pride themselves on their schools.

In the New York region, at least 121 school districts — 67 in New York, 34 in New Jersey and 20 in Connecticut — have reported concessions from teachers, according to state education departments, school board associations and advocacy groups.

Nowhere has the call for teacher givebacks been louder than in New Jersey, where Gov.Christopher J. Christie, a Republican, has demanded that every teacher accept a wage freeze and urged voters last month to reject budgets in districts where they refused. A record 58 percent were defeated.

In New York State, where school budget elections will be held next week, Long Islanders for Educational Reform, a citizens’ group, has started Operation Rollback to oppose budgets in districts that did not freeze either teachers’ wages or school taxes.

“We deserve a tax break and the kids deserve to keep their programs more than the teachers need a raise,” said Fred Gorman, one of the group’s founders.

School superintendents and board members say they have been caught in the middle, left with no choice but to reduce teacher payrolls — either through salary concessions or layoffs — to offset sharp revenue drops from state aid cuts, declining property values and resistance to higher taxes. “At a certain point, there’s nowhere else to go” to achieve savings, said Michael V. McGill, the superintendent in Scarsdale, whose 460 teachers are among the best paid in the nation, earning $54,442 to $135,000. Faced with the prospect of 20 layoffs, a majority of Scarsdale’s teachers voted to reopen their contract to shave one percentage point off an expected raise of 3.25 percent in each of the next two years. That would save $1.9 million.

Agreeing to such concessions is not the same as being happy about them.

John Yrchik, executive director of the Connecticut Education Association, which represents 37,000 teachers and has spent $300,000 since January on statewide television advertisements and billboards in Hartford, said: “Whenever there have been shortfalls in revenue, teachers have been asked to make up the difference. The climate has not been one of collaboration or respect for teachers.”

Schools across New York State could lay off more than 15,000 teachers this summer, according to projections by union leaders and education officials; that includes 6,400 in New York City, where teachers have not agreed to salary concessions (but they also have not received any raises this year, because their contact expired in October). New Jersey is facing more than 9,000 layoffs, and Connecticut, more than 1,000.

Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonpartisan advocacy group in Washington, said “it seems like a no-brainer” that teachers’ unions were better off accepting salary concessions than risking widespread layoffs. The council tracks teacher contracts in the nation’s 100 largest school systems, and it found that 38 had wage freezes in place for this year and 10 others had pay cuts.

But Robert J. Rader, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, noted “a lot of concern, and a lot of anger” over teachers’ unions that have steadfastly refused to make concessions even as practically every other school group has.

In Waterford, Conn., the teachers’ union rejected a proposal to replace two professional-development days with unpaid furloughs next year but reversed itself after the district agreed to provide some training at other times, said Randy Collins, the superintendent. In Pelham, N.Y., where schools are the center of town life, some residents began speaking up at school board meetings last year to ask why teachers were not doing more to help.

“I have never heard such accusations against teachers,” said Frank Orfei, a social studies teacher for 32 years. “Many teachers feel like we’ve been made scapegoats of an economic crisis that we didn’t have anything to do with.”

In response, Pelham teachers voted 205 to 26 in favor of taking smaller raises of 2.9 percent and 2.7 percent over the next two years, instead of the 3.5 percent and 3.8 percent in their contract — a savings to the district of more than $850,000. Mr. Orfei, president of the Pelham teachers’ union, said he was gratified when Pelham’s PTA leaders recently wrote a letter to a local newspaper commending the teachers for their sacrifice.

Essay > Personal thoughts about leaving Ridgefield

Eleven years ago Carol & I moved to Ridgefield CT after seventeen years in beautiful Pound Ridge to live in a quaint New England town. This was going to be our last stop. While Ridgefield remains a wonderful town, it's beginning to remind me of what happened to us in New York City.

Many, many years ago we bought into an historic brownstone on an historic street on NYC's upper west side. It was in the 80's between Central Park West & Columbus Avenue. We had a neighborhood watch. People cleaned up after their dogs (before there was a law). Mr. Tiffany had once owned the brownstone across the street & you could see his study, complete with a back lit Tiffany glass ceiling; it was that kind of neighborhood. And it had a mix of all kinds: from folks who had moved there 30-40 years prior to newcomers, renters as well as owners. The Rolling Stones' Keith Richards was a neighbor. So was a well known heart surgeon.

Columbus Avenue was replete with tiny mom & pop shops: dry cleaning, fruit & veggie stands, cheese & hardware stores & the corner newspaper shop where Morris (who owned it) was the only person who cashed personal checks, knew everyone and had everyone's preferred paper ready for them in the morning. There were old styled soda shops with stools and counters, ordinary coffee and lots of mirrors, chrome & vinyl. Richard Ruskay of Ruskay's served reasonably priced, delicious meals to couples in old fashioned booths.

Then the neighborhood got gentrified. Fancy coffee houses, those kitschy little shops sprung up like so many weeds, Morris had to move out to make way for Putamayo and the rest is history. The sidewalks became so crowded with strangers that stepping into the gutter was sometimes necessary just to get by.

The neighborhood had been devoured and so we moved away, having lost the very quality we had bought into, worked hard to preserve and loved so much.

BoS wording for flag man ordinance > Click image to Enlarge

POLICE wording for flag man ordinance > Click image to enlarge

OpEd > Ridgefield needs this guy's cojones

N.J. gov. sets tone for US

By A.B. Stoddard - 05/12/10 05:45 PM ET

In a movie version of this important story of our time, the bold, undaunted officeholder would look much like the boyish, handsome David Cameron — Great Britain’s new Conservative prime minister — who called on his countrymen Tuesday to embrace an “age of austerity.”

But this is America. So the fearless leader willing to be honest with voters, to part with what cannot be paid for, is actually not dashing, nor is he eloquent. He is an overweight Bruce Springsteen devotee, a former prosecutor with a remaining trace of a Turnpike accent who is intent on rescuing New Jersey. If he succeeds, Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) could become a major political force in the years to come, whether he likes it or not. 

As the United States watches a debt crisis in Greece like a fiscal oil spill, waiting to see where it will spread first and when it will make landfall on our shores, Christie is tackling the nation’s worst state deficit — $10.7 billion of a $29.3 billion budget. In doing so, Christie has become the politician so many Americans crave, one willing to lose his job. Indeed, Christie is doing something unheard of: governing as a Republican in a blue state, just as he campaigned, making good on promises, acting like his last election is behind him.

Upon taking office Christie declared a state of emergency, signing an executive order that froze spending, and then, in eight weeks, cutting $13 billion in spending. In March he presented to the Legislature his first budget, which cuts 9 percent of spending, including more than $800 million in education funding; seeks to privatize numerous government functions; projects 1,300 layoffs; and caps tax increases. 

Teachers unions are incensed, fighting Christie’s proposal that — in order to avoid cuts to education — teachers accept a one-year wage freeze and contribute 1.5 percent to the generous-by-every-standard healthcare plans they now enjoy for free. New Jersey, which has the highest unemployment in the region and highest taxes in the country, lost 121,000 jobs in the private sector in 2009 while adding 11,300 new education jobs. During the last eight years, K-12 enrollment rose just 3 percent while education jobs increased more than 16 percent. According to the Newark Star-Ledger, during the recession that has cost many residents their homes and jobs and scaled back hours and pay for the employed, teachers’ salaries rose by nearly 5 percent, double the rate of inflation.

Christie is adamant about lowering taxes. After taxes were raised 115 times in the last eight years, he said the wealthy are tapped out. Property taxes rose nearly 70 percent in the last decade, and studies show top earners — the 1 percent of taxpayers paying 40 percent of income tax — are fleeing the Garden State. 

The goal is not just to crawl out of crisis but ultimately to lead, said Christie in his budget address. “If we make the tough decisions now, we will be one year ahead of 80 percent of the states in the race to economic growth. If we fail to act, we will fall even further behind ... by going first, we can become first.”

Can Christie succeed? We will find out on June 30, when the Legislature must pass a budget . But no matter the political price, Christie is determined. “You just have to stand and grit your teeth and know your poll numbers are going to go down — and mine have — but you gotta grit through it because the alternative is unacceptable,” he told The Wall Street Journal. 

The alternative is unacceptable — words a growing majority of Americans desperately want to hear from their elected officials.