Tuesday morning, Mayor Sebastian Giuliano announced that Acting Police Chief Patrick McMahon was his choice to be the new Police Chief in Middletown. He also announced that he had chosen Acting Deputy Chief Greg Sneed for the new Deputy Chief position.
"I'm expecting the confirmation process to be difficult," the mayor said. "Because everything has been difficult with the Common Council."
Giuliano is referring to an ongoing power struggle between the mayor and the Common Council over who has authority over certain budget, financial and personnel issues.
Giuliano amplified the opinions he provided in a press release in which he praised McMahon's qualifications, experience and the work he's done in the thirteen months that he's been acting chief.
"I know the issue of residency, or domicile has been raised by the Council," the mayor said. "But we have a person who's bought a house in town, who votes here, who pays taxes here. He's gotten involved in community activities far more than others who live in town. And because his wife still owns property in Norwich, we're somehow going to make an issue about the hours when he's asleep?"
Giuliano also said that other on-call town directors have summer homes and spend every evening during the summer away from Middletown, but not so far away that it's a problem.
"We had a former police chief (Brymer), for whom the Council passed a special resolution saying that he did not have to honor the residency requirement for chief so he could live up in East Hartford," Giuliano explained.
The candidates for Chief and Deputy Chief will be interviewed by the Personnel Review Committee on September 31, and it will be up to the Common Council to decide whether to consider the appointments at the regular October meeting, or to call a special meeting to consider the confirmations.
5 comments:
It's regretful that the Mayor's response to a difficult approval process for Chief McMahon is to blame the council. Does the Mayor expect (or hope) the council will conform to the status quo and not ask any questions? Isn't that why we have that separation of powers?
Chief Brymer lived in Wethersfield not "Up in East Hartford"
Wethersfield is a lot closer than
Norwich and also the Norwich home is not a "summer home" mentioned by the mayor in his apparent attempt to condone the current applicants status.
Amazing.
Norwich is at least a 40-45 minute ride to Middletown providing McMahon doesn't get into a M/V accident again. That is too far to respond to an emergence in my opinion.
This mayor got elected because people voted for a man that would do right thing and not play games with the Democrats. This selection process was nothing more the a sham to go against the Democrats because they see mcmouth as disingenuous. He lied to the council while Deputy saying he didn't move here yet because of the economy and couldn't sell his house. So the council gave him an extension. The reality was he never had any intention of moving here, was the house ever even put on the market? He shouldn't have applied or excepted the job if he wasn't going to follow the rules. He new better and tried to deceive everyone. How can a person like this be trusted by a community?
Amazing how some dems don't have the balls to leave thier real names...
Post a Comment