The New Britain Common Council convened for its first regular meeting of the 2025-2027 term, celebrating the inauguration of a new administration led by Mayor Sanchez and fourteen council members. Following public participation where community members offered advice and highlighted local needs, the council formally adopted standing rules, established caucus leadership, approved committee assignments, and approved a series of resolutions ranging from holiday proclamations to significant municipal funding grants.
Welcome all to the regular meeting of the common council for November nineteenth, twenty twenty five, start of the new term. I want to welcome our new and returning all the persons to this first meeting. We begin as always with public participation. The time is now seven oh one. I have a uh list here of speakers, and we'll call on anybody else who wishes to speak, or if anybody is calling in remotely. Uh please remember to state your name and address clearly for the record and limit your speaking time to three minutes. Um after such time, uh, we will give all the persons who have uh something to say about what they've heard, uh, a brief opportunity for remarks. Our first speaker is Jim Sanders. Good evening, Jim Sanders Junior, one seventy-two Kensington Avenue. I am honored to be the first public participant of this new administration. I'm a little shocked that uh former Alderman state representative and nephew of the mayor didn't take that opportunity. That being said, I want to congratulate each and every one of you. Um I'm happy to see so many former Alderman in the audience as well. Um they're probably all here to give you a little bit of advice. Um the one thing I can tell you is don't give a crap about what anybody thinks about you, care about that you're doing the right thing. Know that you're doing the right thing in your heart. I don't normally go um off of quotes, but a couple things stuck out to me that I came across recently. And one is don't have an opinion where you're not willing to take responsibility. Um, I think that's important. And the better one that I found out uh that really uh I liked a lot was criticism is easy, responsibility is rare. The moment you take owner ownership of the problem, you become the solution. Before you fault someone else, ask where you can take ownership. Most people criticize leaders. Again, congratulations to each and every one of you. Look forward to our first Latino mayor. Thank you. First off, congratulations to one and all before me. It's hard to believe it was just a week ago we were standing on that stage and taking an oath, not to an individual, not to a political party, but to the citizens of this city. And to represent one and all. Tonight starts the hard work. But I have to believe that we're all here for a common purpose, the betterment of the city. To that end, I'm here to seek your assistance as well as that of Mayor Sanchez and any other state representative in the audience. With regard to, I was at the school building committee meeting yesterday with a couple of your colleagues. One of the things that concerned me was we have a 11 million dollar bill outstanding since reimbursement to the city for the homes project that's been outstanding since the end of September. To amount to file for the same project once we receive the 11 million dollars. So that's almost 20 million dollars that to do the city in reimbursement for that project alone. The other thing that I learned too, um, and thank you to Mr. Selena for bringing it up at that meeting is that um we still have some outstanding issues and concerns about funding level percentage of funding for the Smith project, as well as the especially the pre-K building. So there are certain items that need to be addressed so that we hopefully can get 100% funding for that pre-K building and at least 95% on the reimbursement for the rest of Smith. So I do ask for your assistance at whatever political poll you can bring to bear to make sure that the city gets reimbursed the funding that it needs. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Marino. Third speaker is John Board. Good evening, uh John Board of Seven Highland Terrace. Um thank you, uh Ms. Majority Leader. Uh good evening uh to members of the council and newly elected. Uh tonight the council will consider and adopt the standing rules of the council for the 2025-2027 term. I want to speak not only about principles, but uh not only about procedure, but about principle, because rules aren't just technicalities.