In a week of jarring news from Caracas, Greenland, Denmark, and Minneapolis, it was reassuring in a turbulent world to see that our own Bloomfield has not lost its enduring power to grab a local headline.
Bloomfield, a town with 22,000 residents living in 26 square miles north of Hartford, features fractious politics like no other community in the region. Last week, a judge dismissed a lawsuit initiated by former town officials seeking to overturn a budget referendum held last year. The plaintiffs pledged to appeal the decision and press on with their claim that the budget presented to voters was not accurate.
That news was preceded by an announcement revealing the town government’s chronic failure to complete audits of its finances on time is starting to attract the wrong kind of attention. Those late audits have caused ongoing comments by engaged residents who are perplexed that year after year the town’s government is not able to provide the same audit the state’s other 168 municipalities complete and submit to the public and the state’s budget office.
Bloomfield’s new mayor, Anthony Harrington, made a passing reference to the most serious consequence of the late audits: a downgrade in the town’s bond rating. Harrington’s message welcoming the new year appeared in the free weekly Bloomfield Messenger (which frontpage describes its cost to readers as “priceless”) addressed and minimized the bond rating change.
Harrington wrote deep in his message, “Recently Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings issued a one-notch adjustment to Bloomfield’s credit rating, which remains strong investment grade ‘AA’. This change is tied to the timing of recent audit filings–not to the Town’s financial strength or ability to meet its obligations.”
No government or business likes a bond downgrade. It profits no one to pretend it did not occur or to coat it with ambiguous language. The “adjustment” was a downgrade, and the ratings agency tied it to the town’s ability to produce accurate financial reports in a timely manner.
The town is overwhelmingly Democratic, and elections are decided in the party’s primaries for local office. They are ferociously contested and closely fought. Last year there was even a primary for the library board. Challengers have defeated endorsed candidates. Winning slates sometimes fracture in office. Some years the battle moves to choosing members of the party’s town committee, though on Thursday night all was calm at the local Democratic caucus.
In 2023, local political conflict caused an embarrassing skirmish over the naming of the high school gym after Donald Harris, a star athlete and returned to Bloomfield to spend his adult life as a teacher, coach, principal and elected official. Harris had crossed someone in a different faction than the one he was in, and the Board of Education refused to discuss the naming honor. The town council stepped in and two months after the Board of Education went mute, named the high school gym after Harris.
A town manager resigned in 2023 after just two years on the job, complaining on the way out about conflict with elected officials. The town council conducted a nationwide search and decided the best candidate was a local resident who had retired from the police department. It has been slow to fill the curiously numerous vacancies in the upper ranks of town government.
I know Bloomfield and it is more than its politics. However fractious its politics becomes, the town’s library is a striking symbol of a town united in a common cause. In 2021, 80% of voters passed a referendum to build a new library on the site of the one to be replaced. The building itself is striking, with floor to ceiling windows facing the street, but it’s what happens inside that caught my attention.
In December, the Messenger published a small announcement that the Prosser Library would be hosting “Pups at Prosser: Read to a Dog” on two consecutive Saturday mornings. What bibliophile dog lover could resist that?
Daphne Wilson, who spent her career in early childhood education, brought her therapy dog Zuri to the library and gently led children through 15-minute reading aloud sessions to Zuri, a polite and attentive audience. The experience gave each child a chance to practice communication and reading skills in a warm and encouraging atmosphere.
Ethan read “Charlie Goes to School.” Three-year-old twins Jenny and Rose laughed their way through a book about a dog that plays basketball. Wilson created the first Reading Education Assistance Dogs program, so she knows how to direct children excited to be sitting on a library floor with a friendly dog.
Some uplift feels out of place when each day brings more disorienting tumult to our nation. The Prosser Library on a Saturday morning provided a vivid reminder of what we are determined to preserve. The library helps introduce children into the magical world of reading for pleasure. When students from local elementary schools visit, many are astonished at how many books they make take home to read. They are so mad for Manga that the Japanese creators of the graphic novels struggle to keep up with demand.
Bloomfield’s dynamic library director, Elizabeth Lane, presides over an enthusiastic staff that oversees book clubs, STEM-themed family nights, Pokemon cards on Saturday mornings, a tween room where whispering is not required, and programs that bring home schooled children together for robotics and engineering challenges. The Friends of the Library, with 25 volunteers and growing, provides packs introducing children to reading and runs a bookstore in the building’s basement.
Manchester, Lane told me, is the number one library in the state for children’s circulation. Bloomfield is determined to give the City of Village Charm, also building a new library, some competition for that prized spot.
A town that was savvy enough to hire Lane as its library director ought to be able to produce an audit on time. If it still cannot, maybe its leaders ought to take a trip to the library to figure out what they are doing wrong. There are a lot of answers to big questions in that building across the street from the town hall.
Reach Kevin F. Rennie at [email protected]