New Haven Independent

But this crisis was instructive. For what has been laid bare for the citizens to view is the stark contrast between how this administration and the two prior ones go about making decisions. The difference is not only in style, but in ability, philosophy and how the town’s top executive views the role of a town attorney.

At a meeting of 80 citizens, a dozen Representative Town Meeting (RTM) members and others connected to the evolution of the latest lease, Anthony “Unk” Da Ros, a former Democratic First Selectman and John Opie, former Republican First Selectman, discussed the issues and the latest compromise that assures the RTM is the final arbiter of the deal and that residents have a direct say in the lease approval process.

“What is good government?” DaRos asked. It is a question that has been asked often during the tumultuous events that nearly reached the point where the RTM might have sued the executive branch.

The process of public involvement in the quarry’s lease took a 360-degree turn after Republican Minority Leader Kurt Schwanfelder hired a lawyer, gave the Board of Selectmen one week to change course or face a lawsuit and orchestrated a 13-11 vote to adopt a resolution declaring the RTM has “sole authority” to approve the lease under section 73.3 of the Town code. This section governs town property and the quarry belongs to the town.

Once the RTM won, Doug Anderson, the new president of the Stony Creek Quarry Corporation and the tenant- in- waiting, learned his title insurance attorney was deeply upset. “Once he heard the word lawsuit, he stepped back,” Anderson said. The original deal now looked precarious.

Morris’s first reaction was not to sit down and talk. Her style is to lash out. She did not disappoint. In an article in the New Haven Register, she said bluntly that the RTM “screwed up the deal.” She used scare tactics, saying that the historic quarry could be foreclosed—-a reality that has loomed, in fact, over the last five months.

But Morris’s fear tactics didn’t budge the RTM. Finally, Morris and the town’s attorney, the Marcus Law Firm, blinked. Either Morris would be willing to settle or the deal would be dead and she would be in court fighting her own RTM. This was not a happy prospect.

Over the last weekend, Opie, now the third Selectman, worked with Anderson, who in turn worked with the Morris people. Back and forth by phone they hammered out a deal. Anderson acted as liaison, no easy task because he is a businessman who found himself caught in a major political crisis in the town’s government. But he rose to the occasion. The lease will be dealt with in two steps. In the first step, the Board of Selectmen acknowledges the right of the RTM to act, and the Republican RTM agrees to abandon litigation.

Under the new deal, the Marcus Law Firm goes back to square one, to when the lease was known as Addendum II in 1999 except that Anderson agrees to honor specific financial obligations as well as putting in a new weighing scale under the third addendum worked out by town attorney Shelley Marcus.

Anderson agreed to this in a letter he sent to Morris on September 19th. He explains that without title insurance there is no deal because “with the threat of a lawsuit we cannot obtain the title insurance required by our Lender and therefore we are unable to close.” He said that in order to address “the concerns of the RTM and the Community and in order to avoid this transaction from imploding,” he would agree to the new terms.

The BoS unanimously approved this new variation on Wednesday, Sept. 20th. The RTM, now the final arbiter, is expected to do the same at a special meeting Thursday, Sept 28th.

The second step requires the real work of the community. First the lease goes to the RTM’s Administrative Services Committee, chaired by Gail Chapman. It meets this Tuesday, September 26, at 7 p.m. at Canoe Brook Center and is open to the public.

Opie told the audience that he hopes the committee will first appoint a small group of experienced quarry people, including DaRos, to examine certain controversial sections of the new lease. “This will be a very public process. When each group is happy with what they have, it will go back to committee and then to the RTM for more public discussion. Then it would become the new package for the lease,” Opie said. Finally, Anderson must agree to the revised modifications that the RTM will act on.

For example, a key issue is section 12 of the new lease that allowed storage and redistribution of Non-Stony Creek Quarry materials. One concern, raised by several residents at the meeting, was increased truck traffic. The Republican’s new attorney, John R. Lambert, said this new use of the quarry was banned by town law. “This goes to planning and zoning first, not afterwards,” he said of the 2-1 vote on Sept. 13th.

In directly bypassing the RTM as well as the Planning and Zoning process, Morris was “absolutely wrong, absolutely wrong,” DaRos told the audience. The current administration, he said, was wrong “to lead anyone to believe that they could go off and bend and break every zoning law that we have. It was wrong to put Anderson in that position…The quarry is not zoned for reclamation work. Why would you do that to him? It was not fair to the man. It was not fair to the public. When you go before the zoning board, what are you going to tell that zoning board, that the selectmen said it was alright?”

Lonnie Reed, one of the RTM’s most thoughtful representatives, told the audience that in addition to section 12, there was section 5-D that gives Anderson until 2008 to develop a business plan. “The plan should come first, not in 2008.”

She told the group: “I am not cozy with this administration. I find some of what they do…no, all of what they do—intolerable.” In a subsequent interview, Reed said the RTM needed its own attorney. “I don’t trust the town lawyer. The Administrative Services Committee hearing this and the RTM itself needs an advisor of its own and we should seek funds for that.”

From the point of view of Da Ros and Opie the RTM resolution was a victory for the people and for the Stony Creek Association whose voice was heard through an elegant letter written by its president, Peter Brainerd. Both former selectmen said this is how a democracy works. Consensus building is crucial and to get there you need to have a process, a concept Morris has yet to understand.

Opie and DaRos said the legal course Morris charted that kept the RTM out of the loop was wrong. Regardless of what one termed the lease, an addendum or a new lease, this distinction should have yielded to public need. But this is not how lawyers think and this administration is lawyer-dependent.

True to her style, Morris told the audience at the BoS meeting Wednesday night that she viewed the RTM’s victory as underhanded. “I am not going to let political chicanery interfere with the best interest of the citizens of Branford.” Not surprisingly, she also announced that there was “no question in my mind” that Ms. Marcus’s legal opinion “is correct.”

She also termed the RTM, the residents it represents and the citizens who attended the quarry meetings “obstructionists.”

“…Notwithstanding the desire of some people to kill the deal, I am going to prevent the obstructionists from killing the deal and will continue to work with everyone in order to make this transaction happen.”

DaRos could not believe it. “When there was something the citizens didn’t like, I listened to them. They are constructionists, not obstructionists. I hardly think to protest is obstructionist. They asked to be heard, for the government to run smoothly. Morris says it is a small minority against her. Not at all. It is a majority,” DaRos declared.

Opie said: “There is no better form of government than the RTM. This just proved it. I do want to thank everyone who came out to the RTM meeting the other night. You may take this as the same badge of honor that I do because at the Selectmen’s meeting tonight, you were all called ‘Obstructionists.’”

The audience gasped, then laughed and finally applauded loudly. “It is a badge of courage. Wear it proudly folks,” he said.

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