Deadline- Act Now!

http://danburynews.blogspot.com/2007/06/money-for-less-fortunate.html

The temporary FEMA disaster recovery center located in Danbury City Hall will be closing on Thursday, July 26th. If you suffered damage to your property during the storm in April, be sure to visit the center before it closes with specific questions and/or call 1-800-621-FEMA by August 13th.

Doing What They Can

After reading the front page story this morning in the News Times I became concerned with the well being of Rayany Santos who is only 17 and has lost her family which is being deported back to Brazil. My first thought was that this is a federal issue and the Mayor can't do anything to help this family, but I was sure his office could help the poor girl who was left behind. I felt horrible for the girl and wanted to help so I called Mayor Boughton. Once I spoke to someone about the issue I felt much better. I was told that the girl does have family living in the area and that she would be staying with them, I was also told that many others had called also wanting to help and that Mayor Boughton had spoken with the girl personally and that he had contacted Congressman Chris Murphy's office to help her and her family. This is a sad story and there are extreme opinions found in the News Times comments and on other blogs but in the end this family did not leave when their visas' expired and they knew that if they stayed and applied for citizenship that their could be a chance that they would not be allowed to stay. Are they to blame for the outcome of this sad story? In a way yes. Is the federal immigration system a complete mess, sending back first those that are actually trying to be good citizens? Yes. Can anything be done at a local level? No, but I do want to thank all the individuals who showed sympathy for this family because the last thing they need right now is to feel persecuted and I do want to thank Mayor Boughton and his staff for doing what they could to help. Our Mayor gets a lot of slack for being anti-illegal and not doing enough, but he is doing what he can and I commend him for it. Good luck Santos family.

Shame on Sal!

Most of the time I am for raises to school budgets and funding, but a recent approval by the Danbury Board of Education to provide additional increases to administrative pay wages is both shocking and enraging. The Superintendent's reason for the pay increases is to, keep staff from leaving the Danbury education system for other school systems, are you kidding me?!! If they want a more money then please do leave! If any staff of the education system deserves a raise its the men and women who are in the classroom teaching our kids day in and day out. Secretaries and administrative assistants can easily be replaced and should be replaced when they become greedy. In addition, if the Superintendent is so concerned then he should give up his 3.8% increase to give to others in his offices. Further more, shouldn't the City have a say in this matter? The city sets the yearly budget and if they want more money then they should request it for the next budget. Speaking of, I'd like to know where the money for these pay increases is coming from? Shouldn't the money be used for more important things, like healthier school lunches or more teachers? Shame on you Board of Education and Superintendent Pascarella!

Vacations Over : (

Well folks the Dbyblogger team is back in action. Unfortunately all vacations fly by so quickly; back to reality. It seems as though a lot has gone on in the past few weeks but we are geared up to tackle all we've missed. My family and I enjoyed the Royal Caribbean cruise line as we traveled aboard the Legend of the Seas ship. It was a relaxing time to say the least... however it's great to be back home and best of all, camp for the kids starts on Monday!

Here's a brief over view of all we will bring to our readers in the next few weeks. Our readers have been accumulating greatly over the past 7 months. We thank them for awesome input and urge you to keep coming back for more.

• July 2007 Common Council Meeting
• Elmers, Elmers, Elmers (well at least the no parking signs have been put in place by the state of CT)
• Board of Ed $$$$$$$$
• DTV ( Danbury Television ) ... looks good so far, hopefully the meetings, ceremonies, events, dedications will be arriving shortly...I can't believe I missed the first live broadcast of the council meeting!
• FINALLY ... I'll be sharing the great scenic photos of the cruise....It was fantastic and I highly recommend the Royal Caribbean cruise line.

Anything else we missed or would like us to research and post on the blog, kindly e-mail us at Dbyblogger@yahoo.com and we will get it up here for you!