Guilford Race: TROTTA

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mister Trotta, Hey, good morning, bed.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
I appreciate you you calling in. I believe I got
a message from you a couple of days ago, too,
Did I not? I apologize for not getting back to you.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Oh, I know, brom Vinny. You get a lot of
calls there.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
And I got a lot of Trata's in my family.
But Trotta hear that. No, there's some of the family
members that I still like. I don't like most of
my family anymore. The Trata's still love fun, Yeah yeah, fun,
fun memories A Trota in Guilford. How long have you

(00:33):
raised your family there? How long have you been a
Goferd resident? And you're running for first selectmen?

Speaker 1 (00:38):
I am, indeed, I've been there for twenty five years.
Came there with my new wife and baby daughter and nice.
You know, I thought it was a beautiful town to
raise a family in. But it's starting to be a
lot of trouble for our conservative residents. And that's that's
why I'm trying to run for first select and I
want to make it a place that everybody can call home.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah yeah, how did your You said you have a daughter,
how did she fare? As far as the high school
is concerned. I've been covering a lot of just crazy
stories out of Guildford for years now. It feels like
that Freedman is just running a muck.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Well, I'll tell you, I don't know. You know, a
lot of people don't realize it, but sometimes Guildford has
called ground zero for this battle against the DEI and
the SEL.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
I actually sent my kids to Catholic school because I
just didn't like the values they're pushing in school.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
You know, I envy that. I wanted to do that.
My kids started in Catholic school and my goal was
for that to continue. I didn't run into what I
hear a lot of you know. I actually had a
dinner last year around this time, a little less than
a year ago. Actually, it was big old dinner at
Encore Goodfellows downtown New Haven, and a couple of Guildford

(01:54):
High school students wound up being at the table. Uh
maybe a year out, maybe they had been on college.
There were old friends of mind their kids, and I
asked them, and I expected to get told, Ah, we
don't even know what you're talking about. We heard about that,
I asked them. I said, there's a lot of drama
on my show, I get a lot of phone calls

(02:15):
from parents who are butting heads with the administration there.
Do you guys know anything about that? And these are
young ladies and they're like, oh, it's miserable. It was
a miserable four years. They they actually confirmed that it
was nothing but nonsense. They didn't feel like they actually
got an education. They just got lectured every day on

(02:37):
how to be a good human being.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Well, I'm telling you that's you know, that's what we're
worried about. There's a lot of woke policies, you know,
everything from the boys playing in the girls' sports, you know. There,
I think they're allowing the male that identifies as a
as a female to go into your you know, the
bathroom with your daughter. And you know, I haven't met
a single father who agrees with that kind a policy.

(03:01):
So there's a lot of woke policies that are going
on at the school. And I think this is becoming
a town issue because it's been mentioned in Board of
Finance meetings. I actually sit on the Board of Finance.
I've been on there for three terms. We actually have
Board of Finance members who want to use our rainy
day fund in case, the federal government stops giving us

(03:23):
some of the assistants they're given the schools because of
these DEI issues. So this is something that could be
like a million dollar issue going forward. We think we
might lose a million dollars of funding if the school
keeps doing this DEI SEL stuff and they refuse to
give it up. I asked them outright, if they would
just stop doing it, I don't think we need it.

(03:43):
And then I'll tell you what's crazy, Vinny, is if
people don't realize in the meantime, the school got they
do these niche scores. They test the kids on their
reading and their math, and right now in a Guildford
public school system, about one out of four kids are
not reading at grade level and one out of three
kids aren't doing performing in math at grade level. So

(04:05):
you know, here you have them focused on everything but
traditional education and it's just not working. And if people
pay attention, they realized it, we don't need this stuff.
We got to get it out of our schools. And
I think it's going to come to a head a
little if we lose some some federal funding for the schools.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah, and that's been going on across Connecticut. I mean,
that's education across Connecticut. You know, you tell me you
moved to Guilford twenty five years ago, what did Jeb Guildford?
I still loved that. I'm right next door in Branford.
Guildford's beautiful town. Man, it really is. But there was
a time when I was reading it not too long ago.
I think it was when I was looking to move

(04:43):
from New Ave And so around twenty thirteen that the
list came out of best high schools in Connecticut, and
Guildford was number one, And it has plummeted from that perch.
But this freedman, somehow he manages to weather every storm
that it comes his way.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
You know, I'm trying to put it together myself. I
think the latest news Week were ranked thirty fourth. I
think last go around we were ranked twenty eighth. And
I think I actually think the school keeps getting worse
and it's just getting hard to justify having one of
the highest paid superintendent in the state. And then I
don't know if you know this, this guy, Tony Farrierrella,

(05:25):
I was just gonna say that story is crazy, and
it disappeared just like he did. I can't believe the
story came out from Veritas. You know the guys. I
believe it's illegal in Connecticut. He's telling these miners that
they can go get the hormones and they can go
get these binders. And believe it or not, our superintendent

(05:45):
had hired this guy to do transgender sensitivity training for
our teachers. I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yeah, and did you ever get a price tag on
what he got for that too? For that that parents
weren't even informed that this was taking place. I covered
that story in great detail here on my show because
a pastor at a church I want to see in
Woodbury was really taking on the church end of the equation,
because Fariola was working with a pastor out of a

(06:15):
church in Hartford who I believe has since disappeared as well.
They go into hiding. They caught them on tape Project
Veritas caught them on tape talking to twelve year olds.
Somebody posed as a twelve year old saying, you know,
I feel more like a boy than a girl. And
I had this pastor saying, well, we'll get you a binder.

(06:36):
You don't get your measurements. They're like, well what about
my parents? Right on videotape saying they don't need to
know anything. We've got a whole group of kids. They
don't need to know anything. And that story just kind
of went away. Too many stories just go away.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
I'll tell you, Vinny, I think they're just purposely not
covering it. I mean, I live in a town where
our rocket paper last cycle, Vinnie, we had five Republicans
write letters to support me, letters to the editor. All
five got rejected for various reasons.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
And you know, it's stiff starting to become too much
of a pattern to just ignore it. And the town
higher in this guy, what a misstep, you know. And
going back to your comment, do I know how much
money he got paid? I've been asking those questions on
the Board of Finance and I don't get answers. And
then what's crazy our superintendent he says, oh, I you know,

(07:28):
we can't figure that out. There's no specific budget item.
But then at the same time he says, this is
half of everything we do.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah, yeah, no number on how.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Much they're spending, but it's half of everything they did.
It's crazy, and.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
I'll and I'll tell you, I'll tell you, and this
might tick not tick but ruffle some feathers as far
as gilfred parents are concerned, and again ram with Jonathan Trotta.
He's in a race against Democratic first Selectman Matt Howey,
who ran unopposed last time around. So I'm glad to
see you come up against him. We'll talk about that

(08:03):
debate that's coming up between you two. I'd love to
be a part of it. But that's what when I
watched the Feriola videotape that came in, I guess from
Project Veritas. I'm trying to recall. That's what rubbed me
most the wrong way. Is it seemed like a racket,
Like I get paid a lot of money. I appear

(08:24):
at schools across the country. I feel like the price
tag is sizable, and that it's less about his do
goodery or what he views is really and that's what
I mean, Like there are probably some parents who are like, no, no,
what he's doing is dangerous and he believes in it.
It's all He came across to me as a grifter,

(08:46):
as just someone like I'm in it for money and
I charge a lot because it's a very serious and
sensitive topic.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
You know. I can't speak to whether he's a grifter
or not. But I I'm just really unimpressed with the
people that are choosing to coach our teachers and to
have as uh you know, the sensitivity transgender of sensitivity,
uh coach for our teachers. This is this guy who's

(09:16):
doing something illegal and he's and we've been trying to
get the school to say we're not going to do
this to minors, and they won't even they won't even
acknowledge these emails that we send them this school. It's
just something that none of us, I think, would recognize
from when we went to school, you know, these these

(09:36):
you know, let me let me try and have a
little bit of sense of humor about this for a
second here. I mean, Dinny, I identify as a first
class passenger. Yeah, but does the airline have to like, uh,
you know, take my delusion as being real enough. But
these students are asked every day, you know, somebody says
I'm a furry, and they got to say, oh, okay,

(09:57):
you're a furry. School's gotta gotta they got to drop this.
They just got to focus on traditional education. You know,
the kids are not being prepared for college. I think
this school is doing this thing where they send the
kids to like these advanced college courses. And now there's
a uh you know, there's a lot of attention on

(10:17):
that because they think they went to the kids went
to take the tests and I think none of them passed.
Actually was uh was what the information I got. So
you know, the school's got to concentrate on academics. You don't,
you know, you don't move to Guildford because you want
your kid to be a collaborator or a global citizen,
which is in all their rhetoric about their their their

(10:38):
program at school. You send your kids to school so
that they're prepared for college, so that they can actually
read and write, they can do math, And it's not
it's not happening, and people are you know, it's like
look over here at these uh you know, democratic social
issues and then forget about you know, how you would
really measure education and whether the superintendent's doing a good job.

(11:00):
And I'll tell you I have to look at the
school too. You know, I've got some stories about how
I think the town is not spending money wisely. There's
a school project that's been going on in Guildford. We
decided to consolidate the administrators for the school in a
building that sits next to our high school, and there

(11:20):
was good reason to do this. The building needed to
have a purpose. We didn't tear it down years ago
because of our high school project. Wouldn't they wouldn't allow
some funding to tear it down, So we sort of
left this building next to the high school, and it
seemed like a good idea to consolidate the administrators there.
But here's the story of what happens to this capital project.

(11:41):
We start out by asking the public for nine hundred
and fifty thousand dollars to do this. I have the idea,
because I'm on the board of finance, that we're going
to sell the other buildings after we move them into
the new one, and there's going to be a little
bit of payback there. So okay, the project goes forward.
I even complained that it seemed like it was a
little high to just modify the building to get him
in there. So what happens in the meantime They asked

(12:03):
for another three hundred thousand for furniture. Then they asked
for another three hundred and seventy thousand, damn to redo
the fitness center inside this building. And then then cost overruns.
This project went from nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars
to two point eight million dollars. I gotta tell you,

(12:25):
I don't know how this really benefited the students or
the teachers even you know, this was all just to
move administrators into this luxury space. So you know, this
is just another example of HOWPAS are not spent wisely