Ellen Mello, whose son, Chris DeMeo, sat directly behind the suspected ringleader of the hijackings, Mohamed Atta, on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to hit the World Trade Center, lamented the political climate greeting the World Trade Center report's release. Her son, a 25- year-old Greenwich native, Princeton University graduate and telecom analyst, was on a business trip.
Greenwich earmarked nearly $30,000 in its 2004-05 budget for new voting machines, which will be required nationwide in two years under the Help America Vote Act of 2002. But town officials said they recently learned that the secretary of the state's office had yet to develop a uniform set of standards for new voting machines. Some people warned that the office could recommend technology other than optical scanners.
The board voted unanimously to recommend changing the Town Charter to officially give it oversight of construction projects at the nursing home. As it stands, the charter requires that the Board of Health initiate and oversee all such projects. The health board had agreed with the prior Nathaniel Witherell board to make the charter change, board member David Ormsby said, but it never reached the Board of Selectmen or Representative Town Meeting for approval.