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Vote ‘No’

The political antics of this little one-party town were on full display at the town meeting on April 2. First Selectman Matt Hoey and his cabal of accomplices managed, once again, to railroad the town and education budgets using rules contained nowhere in the Town Charter. Hoey called on Selectman Louis Federici, who nominated Bill Bloss for moderator. He refused to allow any other nominations, saying that “we do sequential nominations.”

Bloss is already infamous. In 2021, he engineered a plot to destroy the long-standing minority representation rule by colluding with Independents to exclude Republicans from any voice on the Board of Education. They were the tactics more representative of a dictatorial regime that has disallowed opposition candidates to run for president.

Bloss also took the lead in filling out and electronically pre-signing thousands of absentee ballot applications, each a violation of state election laws and bearing a $2,000 fine. His claim that he followed guidance from the Secretary of the State’s (SOS) office rings hollow, particularly since the signatures must be in “wet ink,” which was part of the SOS’s instructions. The SOS’s office later attributed it to “miscommunication.” How convenient.

But Bloss’ malfeasance displayed itself in other significant ways. As part of what I thought appeared to be a pre-planned tactic, he allowed motions to “call the question” to take precedence over any debate. When Judith Andrews was prepared to speak first for the education motion, Board of Finance member Robert Hartmann jumped in front of her to “call the question,” and was recognized by Bloss, an act that I have never before witnessed at a town meeting. But that’s the level to which Guilford has devolved under one-party rule.

Vote “No” on the proposed budgets on April 16.

Kendall Svengalis

Guilford