Waterbury evening Democrat., 1907-12-18
CITY OFFICIALS
Getting Ready 10 vacate Places
 Held for Past Two Years.

City fathers whose terms of ofics
 expire on the first Monday in Janu-
 ary are getting ready to turn over
 their seats to their successors, and
 the fellows who have been chosen to
 succeed them are learning all they
 can about the ropes This explains
 why so many strange faces are no-
 tlceable at city meetings and why you ] see aldermen-elect pouring over the
 city charter and rehearsing Cushing and other authorities upon parlia- l mentary usuage.
 During the past two years the al- dermen held seventy-two meetings.
 MT Sandland, the city clerk, was | present at every session. The word
 absent appears after the name of
 E. 0. Goss forty-two times, which
 gives him distinction as an absentee.
 In the other extreme Aldermen Bowe
 and Noonan are tie, each being
 marked absent twice. In one of
 these cases MT Noonan was on a tour of inspection with the health board and on another it was election day,
 and while d meeting was called none
 was held. This is one of the sessions
 which MT Bowe absented himself
 from, so you see the two-ffth warders
 are neck and neck in this respect.
 Already the board of public works
 has held 5S meetings this year. Tie
 number of times the commissioners
 were absent are as follows: Lawlor
 4, Dennison 6, Walker 2, Finn ,,
 Nell 4. MT Hartnett was on the
 board for some time and was regular in attendance, being absent but once or twice. The board never had to adjourn for want of quorum.
 The board of safety met Al times, the finance committee had 2S ses- sions, the health board 17, and the bureau of assessment 54.
 At the present time nobody out side the mayor knows how many, if any, changes will be made in the diff ferent boards, but everybody is familiar with the new order of things in the aldermanic chamber. Aldermen Filling, Goss, Elton and Sherwood will retire. They are good men and did their work in very creditable manner. On the oth- CT side of the house MT Noonan and MT Bowe are the only ones to retire. They appeared in the chamber two years ago with pretty clean skirts and they will step down and out without soil on them.
 So far the new board of aldermen has not held even private caucus. One of the republicans told repre- sentative of this side of the house that so far as he has been able to get line on what will be expected of him. self and his colleagues, the plan is to work in harmony with the ma jority as long as they see no chance of having things their own way, but they will be constantly on the alert and whenever the opportunity offers they will not be in any way bashful in manning the ship. Nothing has been heard from the democrats, but it is safe to predict that they will have something to say at the proper time. They are handicapped in the sense that they have no organization to take counsel with. The republi- cans have their board of directors to whom they appeal from time to time for information. When anything of importance comes up they caucus and at these private sessions others than the aldermen are present. Some times, very rarely though, they fail to agree. but when they get together and the majority decides to do cer- tain thing, and this meets with the approval of the grand advisors, then there is absolutely nothing for the minority to do but follow the leader. They say this is the only way to maintain an organization, but the democrats will adopt that plan is something nobody knows 1t this time. Some of them think it would be we'll to eliminate politics IS far as such thing is possible. but when this statement is made the question is invariably asked: Why is t that the republicans found it nec- ,ssary to caucus on even very trivial natters?" But this and other .hings of that kind will be taken up n due time and in case the demo- ,rats should decide to caucus as the republicans always have done the worst that can be said of them is that hey are governed by precedent. Of ,ourse that is not always the best hing to do and the democrats may lot adopt that plan on all occasions.