Barbara DeGennaro was elected the new president of the Board of Aldermen Dec. 27.
The motion to nominate DeGennaro, a Democrat, passed by a 5 – 4 vote. The Aldermen were split along party lines.
The Republicans nominated and supported Joe DiMartino, but didn’t get a majority vote. Click the video to watch the vote.
The motion to actually name DeGennaro president was unanimously accepted.
DeGennaro is an attorney in Derby, a Derby High School graduate, and a former Derby Fire Commissioner.
She has a long history of public service in Derby. She has been on the Board of Aldermen since 2009. She is serving her second consecutive term as a First Ward Alderman.
DeGennaro’s election as board president happened during a meeting that was packed with political disputes.
Just before just was elected, outgoing president Ron Sill, a Democrat, complained that Mayor Anthony Staffieri, a Republican, overstepped his authority by removing discussion items Sill had placed on the agenda for the Dec. 27 meeting.
Specifically, Sill complained that Staffieri had taken the election of a new board president off the meeting agenda.
Staffieri said he was simply trying to follow charter rules regarding the election of a new president of the board.
Sill said he was relying on outdated information and that the board president puts together the agenda, not the mayor.
The issue started a brief debate, which can be seen in the video below.
Later in the Dec. 27 meeting, the Democratic majority voted against granting a waiver to former Alderman Joseph Bomba so that he could volunteer on the city’s police commission.
DeGennaro pointed out that Bomba had already been on the police commission for a year and had also been working for the city as a library custodian, yet had never been granted a waiver to do both by the Aldermen, as per city charter.
Bomba, a Republican, will have to either quit his job or quit the police commission, Staffieri said.
At an Aldermen meeting in October, Bomba — responding to previous disparaging comments about Staffieri from former Mayor Marc Garofalo — asked if one of the members of the Derby Board of Aldermen had been dishonorably discharged from the military.
Prior to denying Bomba a waiver Dec. 27, Democrat Carmen DiCenso asked whether the Board of Aldermen had the right to sue a member of the public for slander. Corporation Counsel Joseph Coppola said the public has the right to speak and a slander lawsuit would have to be handled outside the authority of the Board of Aldermen.
DiCenso then asked if the Aldermen could ask if the elected officials could ask the chief of police ​“to do a private investigation” on a person.
The video below shows a portion of his comments.
Coppola deferred to Derby Police Chief Gerald Narowski.
“We investigate criminal complaints. We have no such criminal complaint,” Narowski said.
“I just want to know of a person from the public comes in and attacks us, are we protected?” DiCenso said.
“No. The Constitution allows those people out there to say what they want, within reason,” Coppola said.