The hits keep on coming for our lovely City Clerk Jean Natale.

It's bad enough that the person more commonly known as the hardest working Justice of the Peace in Danbury wasted taxpayers dollars with an unnecessary 5,000 dollar two full page legal notice. What's even worse is the timing of the notice in this Sunday's paper, which in turn places the ENTIRE charter revision process in jeopardy.

Again, lets take a look at the Connecticut State Statue (Sec. 7-191) that covers municipal charters..take note of the portion in bold.

(a) Charters, charter amendments and home rule ordinance amendments: Hearings; draft and final report; public notice; referendum; effective date; filing of copies with Secretary of the State; file maintained by State Library. (a) The commission shall hold at least two public hearings on the proposed charter, charter amendments or home rule ordinance amendments; one prior to the beginning of any substantive work on such charter, charter amendments or home rule ordinance amendments, and one after the draft report to the appointing authority has been completed, but not submitted, after which hearings the commission may amend such report. The commission may hold such other public hearings as it deems necessary.

(b) The commission shall submit its draft report, including the proposed charter, charter amendments or home rule ordinance amendments, to the clerk of the municipality, who shall transmit such report to the appointing authority. The appointing authority shall hold at least one public hearing on the draft report and shall hold its last hearing not later than forty-five days after the submission of the draft report to such clerk. Not later than fifteen days after its last hearing, the appointing authority shall make recommendations to the commission for such changes in the draft report as it deems desirable.

(c) If the appointing authority makes no recommendations for changes in the draft report to the commission within such fifteen days, the report of the commission shall be final and the appointing authority shall act on such report. If the appointing authority makes recommendations for changes in the draft report to the commission, the commission shall confer with the appointing authority concerning any such recommendations and may amend any provisions of the proposed charter, charter amendments or home rule ordinance amendments, in accordance with such recommendations, or the commission may reject such recommendations. In either case the commission shall make its final report to the appointing authority not later than thirty days after receiving such recommendations.

(d) Not later than fifteen days after receiving the final report, the appointing authority, by a majority vote of its entire membership, shall either approve the proposed charter, charter amendments or home rule ordinance amendments or reject the same or separate provisions thereof. Not later than forty-five days after a vote of the appointing authority to reject such matter, a petition for a referendum thereon, signed by not less than ten per cent of the electors of such municipality, as determined by the last-completed registry list thereof, and filed and certified in accordance with the provisions of section 7-188, may be presented to the appointing authority. Not later than thirty days after approval by the appointing authority or the certification of such a petition (1) the proposed charter shall be published in full at least once in a newspaper having a general circulation in the municipality, or (2) the portion of the charter or home rule ordinance being amended shall be published at least once in a newspaper having a general circulation in the municipality with a notice that a complete copy of the charter or home rule ordinance and amendment is available in the town clerk's office and that a copy shall be mailed to any person who requests a copy. The town clerk shall mail or otherwise provide such copy to any person who requests a copy.

Okay, I'll explain the law in layman's terms...

After the Common Council voted on the changes to the charter, THE CITY CLERK HAD 30 days to publish the AMENDED changes to the charter in the News-Times (the newspaper in the area that has the largest circulation in proportion to the number of residents in Danbury).

Now, I already outlined how Jean screwed the taxpayers to the tune of thousands of dollars by publishing the ENTIRE charter as opposed to just the amended proposed changes...now comes to ugly legal part of her screw-up.

Here's a copy of the Common Council agenda when they voted on the charter...take note of the date of the meeting:

Title
Common Council Special Meeting
Start Time 7:00 PM
Location
Common Council Chambers
Occurs
3/10/2009
Extra Details for entire event

SPECIAL COMMON COUNCIL MEETING –
March 10, 2009

The meeting will be called to order at 7:00 P.M.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE & PRAYER

ROLL CALL

McMahon, Nagarsheth, Halas, Trombetta, Calandrino, Perkins, Visconti, Chianese, Esposito, Saadi, Cavo, Rotello, Diggs, Teicholz, Arconti, Curran, Knapp, Levy, Riley, Seabury, Stanley

________________PRESENT _______________ABSENT

NOTICE OF THE SPECIAL MEETING – There will be a Special Meeting of the Common Council on Tuesday, March 10, 2009 at 7:00 P.M. in the Common Council Chambers in City Hall to act on the item below.

_________________________________________________________________________

PUBLIC SPEAKING

_________________________________________________________________________
1 – REPORT - Board of Education, Teachers Contract
_________________________________________________________________________
2 – REPORT - Charter Revision Commission – Final Report
_________________________________________________________________________
There being no further business to come before the Common Council a motion was made at _________P.M. by __________for the meeting to be adjourned.

Now, since the Common Council voted in favor of the changes to the charter, the CITY CLERK had 30 days (or on or before April 9 2009) to HAVE THE PROPOSED AMENDED CHANGES TO THE CHARTER PUBLISHED IN THE NEWS-TIMES.

With that being said, take a look at the date when the charter appeared in the paper:



Surprise, surprise...Jean Natale SCREWED UP AGAIN and due to her gross incompetence, it's quite possible that the city clerk has placed the city of Danbury into a position where a violation of state law has occurred.

Don't think this is serious...think again. Throughout the entire charter revision process, legal counsel Eric Gottschalk has taken painstaking measures to make sure that the ENTIRE charter revision process was in accordance to the very state statue which I have documented in this post (you can view video answering questions regarding the state statue during the 3/10/09 meeting by clicking here.

In short, the City Clerk's latest in a long list of screw-ups will should become a huge embarrassment to the city as it's only a matter of time until other media outlets pick up on this nonsense...and someone has a great deal of explaining to do.

Where does the city go from here? Is the entire charter revision proposal in jeopardy? Will we have to start everything over again? Who knows...well, let me change that, I'll find out and get back to everyone.

...more to come.

Remember, come November, think before you vote!