Darien has much to be proud of in terms of fiscal management. The Darien Board of Finance is responsible for approving most budgets and expenditures and designing the tax and financing plans that fund the town. Jim Palen, Chairman of the Darien Board of Finance, will take us inside this process of financial management and discipline in a local Town Economics 101 presentation. Jim has been a member of the Board since 2015 and became chairman in 2021. Prior to that he served eight years on the RTM, including as Chairman of the Finance and Budget Committee which is responsible for analyzing and reporting on financial and budgeting matters. He also is Chairman of Darien’s Audit Committee and has served on various building committees. Additionally, he has been a member of the negotiating team for numerous town and school union contracts. Jim’s career includes more than 25 years in investment banking, primarily focusing on the transportation sector. He is currently a Managing Director at Jefferies LLC, specializing in airlines and other private sector transportation clients. Previously he had a similar specialty at Credit Suisse and Bear Stearns, including specializing in municipal finance for transportation infrastructure. Jim and his wife Hallie, who have three children, have lived in Darien for 18 years during which Jim has been very involved in his children’s sports activities, has taught boating safety with the Darien Sail & Power Squadron, and has served on and been Chair and Vice Chair of the Darien Republican Town Committee.
Arranged by John Wolcott
Hamish Lutris is Associate Professor of History and Political Science at Capital Community College, Hartford, where he receives top ratings from students as an engaging lecturer. He credits his ability to teach with a job when he was in college as an interpretive ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park, where his job was to talk about the battle and cemetery where Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg address. “With over 1.5 million visitors a year, not only was my job to provide accurate information, but to also entertain.” He has worked in some of America’s premier natural and historical sites, leading hiking and historical programs. He has also lectured extensively in the United States, Europe, and Canada, presenting programs on wide-ranging historical topics, including Native American history, the Civil War, Scientific History, Social and cultural history, World War I, World War II, and the American West
Mark Albertson, who is well known to DMA members as an entertaining and informative speaker and historian, will talk about George Washington’s Farewell Address, delivered in 1796. It’s one of the best by any departing president. Washington offers an array of prognostications along with his concerns, a number of which, unfortunately, have arisen over the course of our history. Washington himself, of course, is fascinating. He was a large landowner. He was a slaveowner. But here is a man who had the opportunity to take control of the country as General of the Army and refused to do so. Here is a man who served his two terms as president and then willingly vacated the highest political office in the land, setting the precedent of the two-term presidency. Into the 20th century all second term presidents willingly leave office. That is American Exceptionalism. America was blessed from the historical perspective that George Washington was not another Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell, or Napoleon Bonaparte, which is something that comes around once every Haley’s Comet.
Basil Hero is an award-winning former investigative reporter with NBC News television stations. For his book, “The Mission of aLifetime: The Men Who Went to the Moon,” he interviewed the twelve remaining lunar explorers. They talk at length about the real right stuff, the true source of courage, leadership, and the quiet patriotism that it took to risk their lives going to the moon. Their voyages led them to the most incredible discovery of all: our home planet and its precious place in the universe. They fear for earth’s future and offer sensible solutions to its mounting crises and the path to future space exploration.