DERBY — Members of the city’s Board of Aldermen & Alderwomen voted last week to instruct Mayor Rich Dziekan’s administration to share department head reports with them.
The Alders also asked the administration to return to the practice of putting the department head reports on the city website for public consumption.
The debate over department reports is the latest turf battle between the administration and various factions of the board. Such scuffles are now routine in Derby.
Click here, here, here, here and here for previous stories on the power struggle.
The Aldermen and Alderwomen used to receive written reports from the various departments of the city. The reports were included as part of an agenda packet given to city legislators just prior to each monthly meeting.
The reports are public documents, meaning anyone can see them.
The reports relayed routine information such as how many building permits were issued in the previous 30 days, a list of blighted properties, and general summaries of what departments, such as public works, the fire marshal, the police department, even the senior center, were up to.
In December 2021, the Aldermen/Alderwomen unanimously voted to require department head reports to be submitted to the town/city clerk eight days before a legislative meeting. The same resolution required department heads to appear at meetings to answer questions.
However, things changed after the November election, including the hiring of Walter Mayhew as the mayor’s chief of staff.
Mayhew and the mayor, after conferring with and getting advice from corporation counsel Vin Marino, instituted a series of changes they said were not changes — but were, in fact, the way the city government was supposed to be functioning.
The Dziekan administration had said Democrats had been blocking the mayor from putting things on the meeting agenda, and that city boards and commissions needed to operate by the book. He later dissolved all subcommittees of the board, saying the Democrats were using the subcommittees to kill his initiatives.
The new policies included allowing only the mayor’s office to create the agenda for the monthly meeting of the Derby Board of Aldermen and Alderwomen; stating in public the limited powers of the board’s president, and; eliminating department head reports from monthly meetings.
The mayor’s office had said they were working on a better way to present the monthly reports to elected officials and the public.
In April, meeting minutes show Alderwomen Sarah Widomski asked whether department reports were being received by the mayor’s office, to which Mayhew replied yes. However, none had been provided to the Alders.
The Aldermen/Alderwomen voted unanimously in April to have the reports forwarded to the board, and to post the reports to the city website.
The mayor’s office failed to do so.
The issue came up again at a meeting Oct. 13, when Alderwoman Widomski put forth a motion to “direct the chief of staff to send the BOA/A all department head reports when received and (to) send all department head reports from January 2022 to October 2022 to the full board of Aldermen & Alderwomen, and to have all reports posted to the City of Derby website.”
Her motion was approved, with Alderman Charles Sampson abstaining.
Before the vote, there was a brief debate, which included input from the corporation counsel.
“When they were first taken off the agenda, both the mayor and the chief of staff said we would still be getting them, and that has not happened. Is there a reason why, Mr. Mayor?” Alderwoman Widomski asked.
“We get the reports. If there’s a question, let us know and we’ll let you know what’s going on,” Mayor Dziekan replied.
“I would love to ask a question. I have not received any (reports),” Widomski said.
The mayor then suggested reports were being passed along from his office.
“We’re trying to get these meetings to go forward,” Mayor Dziekan said. “.… we pass it on. If there is a question, let us know and we’ll do it.”
Marino, the corporation counsel, referenced a Derby government email from February that he said explained why reports weren’t being shared.
Marino said a concern was that city department leaders were being told by members of the Board of Aldermen/Alderwomen what to do, which isn’t a function of the board. The department heads report to the mayor, Marino said.
Widomski pointed out Marino’s comments weren’t answering the question she asked.
“All I’m asking is — where are the department head reports?” Widomski said.
Marino indicated the question and Widomski’s motion were out of order, because the issue had been previously addressed in an email.
Alderman Gino DiGiovanni asked whether the reports had information that should be kept private. However, the reports belong to the public, under state and federal law.
Dziekan is a Republican. There are nine members of the Board of Aldermen & Alderwomen: six Democrats, two Republicans, and one unaffiliated.
The unaffiliated member, Alderman Rob Hyder, who ran on the Republican ticket, complained at last week’s meeting that the administration is blocking city officials from talking to the board.
Hyder was referring to Derby Public Schools Superintendent Matthew Conway, who had requested that a potential borrowing package involving school security be added to a Derby agenda in September.
Mayhew declined to add the measure to the agenda, saying it was too late to get it on the ballot and that having too many borrowing requests would cause voters to say no (the city is already asking voters next month to approve or reject $3 million in road repairs).
Hyder said Mayhew’s move blocked Conway from talking to the board.
Dziekan said Conway wasn’t blocked, and that the superintendent could speak to the board whenever he wanted.
Hyder said that any public official denied access to the city’s Board of Aldermen and Alderwomen should reach out to individual members of the board.
“It’s not right these people are being told no they can’t be on an agenda. They need to have access,” Hyder said.
Alderman Sampson noted the issue with Conway and a request for money wasn’t as black-and-white as Hyder indicated. He noted Conway appeared before the city’s capital planning commission to discuss the requests.
However, that commission could not act on any of the requests because not enough members attended.
