Wanted: Weigh Station Watchdogs
The Connecticut Transportation Lobby needs your help:
Last year, the legislature passed a significant bill requiring all of Connecticut's truck inspection stations to keep records about their operations. CT-CTL is proud to tell you we were largely responsible for this bill because at that time, the stations seemed to be operating infrequently, if ever.
We became aware that although the state police staffed the stations, those officers were not always inspecting trucks and the "OPEN" sign was rarely illuminated. So, although the stations were staffed, inspections were not taking place.
After studying the first required reports (released in January covering the previous 6 months), and continuing to hear from citizens who were concerned about lack of truck inspections, we have decided to formalize our observations of when the OPEN signs are illuminated and trucks are being inspected.
We have made out a form for you (and your family or friends) to record your observations. We hope you will return the completed form to us by May 15th. We plan to inform the Department of Public Safety of the results of our citizen watchdog group and discuss these findings with them.
Whether you can give us one — or many — sightings, it will all help.
Thanks, Jill and Carol.
Please return completed forms to:
Carol Leighton
132 Sturges Road
Fairfield, CT 06824
The form is available for download from the Chamber web site: weigh-station-form.pdf.
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Battle of the Banks: Let the Bloodshed Begin!
Monday, Apr. 7 — Call it the "Rumble in Trumbull." The Chamber's 2008 membership drive, the Battle of the Banks, gets underway tomorrow at Sacred Heart University's Trumbull campus.
Forces commanded by Steve Stevens of Fairfield County Bank will fire the first shot at 8:30 in the morning, with Andrea Barron of Patriot National Bank leading the countercharge at 1 pm.
It is a good day to do a membership drive.
The massed armies of People's United Bank, Commerce Bank and HSBC will arrive at the battlefield over the following two days. The bank that manages to crater the others' market share will be crowned the winner. (Joking, joking...)
And rest assured that the ChamberWorks staff will be monitoring events as they develop.
From a safe distance, of course.
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Day 1: Watch Those Bowling Balls
Tuesday, Apr. 8 — After just one day of fighting, clouds of dust fill the hallways of Sacred Heart's Trumbull campus. No word on who won yet, as the judges came under heavy paper airplane bombardment and retreated in disarray.
Exploding bowling balls, rabid attack ferrets, mongrel hordes and Vikings in Armani suits — the rival forces of Fairfield County Bank and Patriot National threw everything they had at each other. A highlight of the day was a grueling 3 hour karaoke deathmatch between opposing squads of Elvis impersonators, and at least one combatant was forced to eat his own phone. Fatal paper cuts claimed many lives on both sides.
Heads are rollin' and building up momentum as we look forward to tomorrow, when Admiral Marilyn Wiegman and her People's United Bank armada will trade cannon balls with the fearsome pirate fleet of Commerce Bank's Peter Andreotto.
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Day 2: Take No Prisoners
Wednesday, Apr. 9 — People's United Bank came armed for bear, but they were totally unprepared for the chihuahuas.
The pirate fleet that Commerce Bank sent against them spent more time flinging small dogs onto enemy warships than firing actual cannons. Not that it mattered, since the opposition was too busy running from the ankle-biters to return fire anyway.
The only known casualty of the day was an invisible U-boat crewed entirely by mimes. Apparently, invisible U-boats don't float, and the vessel was lost with all hands.
Mid-afternoon, a solitary Coast Guard cutter arrived to break up the fight, such as it was. By this time the chihuahuas had seized command of the People's United warships and were taking them on joyrides up and down the Sound. Commerce Bank's pirates just sat back and laughed their wooden legs off.
Nobody seemed particularly concerned about the missing mimes.
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Day 3: Lawyers, Guns and Turkey Vultures
One week later — Like the Japanese soldier who emerged from the Philippine jungle 29 years after World War II was over, our correspondent has spent the last week hiding in the bushes near Sacred Heart's Trumbull campus, waiting for the coast to clear. Or so he says — privately, we think he went on a bender and fell in with those hard-partying chihuahuas.
But no matter. Now that he's returned to the ChamberWorks newsroom to tell his story, we can close the book on the Battle of the Banks:
Expecting little or no resistance by this time, HSBC Bank's jaunty army waltzed into Trumbull Thursday morning. And indeed, they found only turkey vultures and personal injury lawyers roaming freely on the battlefield.
Dimitris Raptopoulos's men promptly declared victory and began using the vultures for target practice, which seemed like a great idea until the vultures started shooting back. Nearly half of the HSBC contingent fell within the first two minutes; the rest threw their guns on the ground and ran for their lives.
That's when the vultures and the lawyers began to quarrel.
The fallen HSBC men had suffered minor flesh wounds for the most part, thanks to the vultures' lousy aim, and were in no great hurry to expire. The lawyers rushed in to represent the victims, but the vultures closed ranks and claimed the spoils for their own. The lawyers would take the casualties dead or alive, but the vultures wanted them mostly dead.
As the impasse dragged on, the opposing forces eyed each other warily. Vultures and lawyers are by nature reluctant to fight one another, but many on both sides of the conflict were already thinking that they could make an exception for this one.
The vultures used delaying tactics to buy themselves time, launching into an impromptu performance of Wagner's 15-hour opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen. Critics agree that the role of Brünnhilde was especially well cast, but found the vultures' Siegfried a little weak.
The ploy worked: Long before the fat lady could sing, fresh troops arrived to reinforce the vultures. They had plenty of ammo, a Sherman tank, and most importantly, they had their own corps of fearsome patent lawyers. The opposition surrendered immediately, and it was all over.
While the vultures ran victory laps along Oakview Drive, the judges declared them the winners of the Battle of the Banks and left the scene in haste. Emergency personnel quietly led the wounded HSBC troopers off the field.
You just knew it was going to end that way, didn't you?
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Pictures and Frames
For the impatient folks out there who can't wait for our Pulitzer-prize winning scribe to finish writing about the March Business After Hours at Troy Art & Framing, here are pictures from the event by Greg Beno, our photojournalist extraordinaire.
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