New Haven Independent

Asked why the change, Mrs. Morris told the Eagle that the ad hoc committee meeting investigating Granite-gate was expected to be a long one. The Ad Hoc committee meets tonight at 7 p.m. at the Canoe Brook Center. The BOS was supposed to meet an hour earlier.

The failure of the public to receive sufficient notice of the BOS meeting means that citizens will not have the opportunity to question Mrs. Morris about significant witness issues. For example, for the second time, Branford police detective Duncan Ayr, who investigated the granite found at Former First Selectman Anthony “Unk” DaRos’s business, has declined to attend. Other witnesses slated for tonight’s event are DaRos, who makes his first appearance as a witness, along with prior witnesses Police Chief Robert Gill, Mrs. Morris, and Ed Marcus, the town counsel.

Marcus, who asked Ayr to investigate the matter, has said the meeting between himself and Ayr fell under the attorney-client privilege and was confidential. But John Opie, the Republican Third Selectman, and Short Beach Republican RTM member Peter Black, have said previously the privilege belongs to the client and the client is the town. Black, an attorney, had suggested that the BOS waive the privilege. Opie pressed for full Marcus disclosure. Mrs. Morris asked Shelley Marcus, Ed’s daughter, and a partner in their firm, to speak.

Shelley Marcus said the firm had consulted the law books and found two cases on point, one right in the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which covers Connecticut.

And while she did not say that Daddy was wrong, she did report that the attorney-client privilege had been waived once Detective Ayr’s police report became public. “Ed Marcus,” she added, “will provide a full explanation. He will fully cooperate with the ad hoc committee.” Opie took her at her word, but not before saying, “I don’t want anything to come between the RTM and the truth.”

In yet another controversy over a citizen appointment to a board or a town Commission — a recurrent theme for the Morris Administration— a mini battle erupted when Morris and Dick Sullivan, the Second Selectman, sought to remove Fannie Ungemack, a landscape architect, from the Center Revitalization Review Board, which examines projects for Branford’s downtown.

“It is bad judgment,” said the board’s chair, Otty Norwood, who asked to be heard. He was deeply upset with the Morris-Sullivan decision. Opie recommended she stay.

“We are preparing to do major work that will probably last for the next one hundred years. This is a critical time in the history of the town center,” Norwood told the BOS and the two citizens in attendance.

“Add to that the work that is coming up on the Green and you want to replace a person with three generations of experience in landscape design. It makes absolutely no sense.” The Morris-Sullivan decision had created havoc on his board, he said. “In the last day I may have lost three members from our board partially in response to this. Your communications have been dreadful. If I were still a school teacher you would get a failing grade.

“Fannie Ungemack got a call from someone saying she was not going to be reappointed. She said, ‘what I have done wrong?’ This is a volunteer who works hard in this town…And if that is a message to other volunteers … Norwood made his point.

Opie pressed for her reappointment and ultimately Morris and Sullivan reconsidered and gave her another three -year term. Town historian Jane Bouley, who was to replace her, is expected to be appointed to the board when a vacancy occurs in the next year.
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