New Haven Independent

Both Mark Zaretsky, who covers the town for the Register and Pam Fowler, a Republican RTM member, made written complaints to the Commission after a special Board of Selectmen’s (BOS) meeting took place on August 29.

The agenda posted on Monday, August 28, for the next day’s BOS public meeting, read as follows:

1. To consider and if appropriate approve an addendum to a lease.
2. Adjournment.

After receiving the notice, Zaretsky left a phone message with First Selectwoman Cheryl Morris’s office, inquiring as to what lease she meant. He told the FOIC he received no response. Zaretsky said that had the August 29th agenda “provided adequate detail of the business to be transacted, I believe that meeting would have been better attended, including by myself, as the quarry, one of Branford’s historic resources, is a subject many people would have wanted to hear the discussion and debate on.”

In fact, only about a dozen persons showed up, their arrival prompted by cell phone calls that the topic would be the quarry. One resident publicly chastised Ms. Morris for how she was conducting the business of the town.

The Stony Creek quarry has been at the heart of a recent town investigation for the last several months so any discussion about a lease, which town attorney Ed Marcus said needed to be changed, was an issue of public importance.

Morris and Marcus also have tied the Stony Creek lease to the Granite-gate inquiry, an investigation into whether Marcus abused the power of his office when he requested that a Branford detective investigate granite found at the masonry business of former First Selectman Anthony “Unk” DaRos. DaRos has become a vocal critic of the current administration.

” While I have no way of knowing for sure what thought or motivation went into the agenda’s wording,” Zaretsky wrote, “the possibility that the agenda might have been purposely vague in order to minimize citizen participation and/or stifle dissent, as has been suggested by some, concerns me. I would think that with someone as politically experienced as Ed Marcus as Branford’s town counsel, the town should be able to avoid such pitfalls.”

Zaretsky asked the Commission “to give Branford’s government and its advisors a lesson in how to adhere to the spirit, as well as the letter, of Connecticut’s sunshine law.”

Fowler took it a step further. She asked the FOIC to render “null and void” the action taken at the Board of Selectmen meeting, where by a 2-1 vote, the Board adopted “an addendum” to the quarry lease. If warranted, she added, the FOI Commission should impose “any and all other applicable fines or punishments.”

Meanwhile, the Marcus Law Firm continues to defend its decision not to send the Board of Selectmen’s 2-1 quarry decision to the 30-member RTM. The RTM, the town’s legislative body, is supposed to have oversight approval.

Other attorneys interviewed by the Eagle said the “addendum” named a new lease holder and added new and different terms to the contract. They called it a new lease and said that it fell under section 73.3 of the Branford Town Code. This section requires RTM approval and, according to Kurt Schwanfelder, the Republican Minority leader, was designed precisely for this type of situation.

Not only is there a new tenant but there is also a new corporation, The Stony Creek Quarry Corporation. It was first registered with the Connecticut Secretary of State’s office on August 3, 2006. Its president is Doug Anderson, who is also the president of Anderson-Wilcox, a well-known Branford housing developer. Under the terms of the new lease, Anderson will have the ability to obtain collateral in the amount of $2 million on the town owned quarry property.
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