Fireworks: Mayor and Nora King Clash at Council Meeting [Video]

Mayor Richard A. Moccia and Nora King, a member of the Common Council, argued repeatedly and bitterly at the council's meeting Tuesday—first about how much King should be allowed to say during a question period with a city official, then about the city budget.

(See accompanying video.)

In what Common Council President Richard McQuaid called a "whackadoodle" meeting, five-minute recesses were called twice during discussion about a "matrix," or set of merit pay standards for certain employees, including a number of department heads whose offices are established in the city Charter.

Moccia's fellow Republicans, except for one, supported the pay plan. King and the three other Democrats on the council voted against, and McQuaid abstained.

Republicans, together with city Personnel Director Jim Haselkamp, argued that in recent years the "ordinance" employees, about half of whom are heads of departments, did not receive pay increases when other city employees did—including some heads of departments who are in a city union. Ordinance employees also had to take "furloughs" (unpaid days off) when others didn't.

King, as well as other Democrats on the council, said that at a time when Republicans were cutting back services, particularly in Norwalk public schools, raises for department heads were inappropriate.

Moccia and some other Republicans on the council said the public schools were given more money for the upcoming fiscal year than they received in the previous year, and employees for the public school system were not asked by the Board of Education to give back pay increases nearly as much as employees on the "city side" of the budget.

Moccia said that Norwalk public schools were receiving millions of dollars in another year of "TARP" money (a term Moccia has used for the federal government's temporary education grants as part of its anti-recession, stimulus spending). Even without that second year of "TARP" funding, which initially hadn't been expected, the city had expended more tax dollars on the educaton budget than it had in the previous year.

(Much of the increase in education spending was to be spent on union-contract salaries and on items that had increases in price because of inflation. Education officials, , have said some program cuts are inevitable in the budget, although their impact would be greatly lessened if the education unions accept give-backs in their labor contracts.)

The "matrix" plan presented by Haselkamp would have raised salaries by a total of just over $40,000 until five city-mandated, unpaid furloughs are factored in, which would decrease the money going to the ordinance employees to about $11,000.

At the suggestion of council member Douglas Hempstead, the number of furlough days was reduced from five per year to two per year, which would result in more money going toward salaries for ordinance employees.

King and the Democrats also said it was suspicious on the part of the majority Republicans to increase salaries of any city government employees in ways not mentioned during budget deliberations.

Moccia and King have clashed before on other issues, Common Council members have said. In April, Moccia said of King's criticisms of city Department of Public Works officials, "Nora has attacked department heads before. It seems nobody can do anything right."

, King said of Moccia and city Public Works Director Harold Alvord, "I would say I've been trying to work with Hal for the last year and a half, and the mayor, but they like to do things behind closed doors, so the only way you can communicate is to be loud about it."

Editor's note: After seeing the video, take our Facebook poll: Did Moccia or King behave inappropriately Tuesday evening in the Common Council Chamber? Both? Neither?

Correction: Friedrich Wilms' name was misspelled in the original version of this article.

Update 8:25 a.m.: Minor changes were made in some paragraphs of this article for greater clarity, including the explanation of "TARP" funding.