A Crowded Town Meeting & A Rowdy Parking Lot

At an unusually well-attended Annual Town Meeting, the crowd spilled out of the Veterans' Meeting Room and into the hall. After First Selectman Bill Morrison asked the overflowing crowd whether it was best to move upstairs or over to the Community Center, the group decided to stay put. Despite the large crowd, little was said inside the room.

If you haven't attended one of these meetings in a while, let me tell you how they usually go. A handful of people show up and are given motions to read. The language has to be exact. Then someone else seconds it. Anyone present in the room can vote yay or nay. More often than not, there aren't enough people to read all the motions, and people have to double, triple, or even quadruple up. That wasn't the case on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. Still, the perfunctory motions inspired little discussion.

One motion "to waive the payment of any property tax due in the amount of $2.00 or less due to the costs of collecting such tax..." inspired Board of Finance member Tony Pellegrino to say he thought the bar was too low. Not for the first time, he said he thought chasing small amounts that might be well above $2.00 probably wasn't worth the time and money to do it. For this reason, he was the lone vote against the motion.

Later, when it came time to approve the Water Pollution Control Facility (WPCF) budget, resident Derek Dimmock asked if it was "self-funded." Rick Hartenstein, a selectman, and the WPCF superintendent confirmed that it is funded by fees levied on sewer users.

And that was about it for discussion in the room, but a small group lingered in the parking lot. As I walked by, I heard one person who is a regular at town meetings and who was disruptive during a recent executive session at a Board of Selectmen meeting, saying, "I see what they're doing..." What or who is being referred to is unclear. However, this same group of people yelled at and heckled a town employee as she walked to her car. One of these people has been involved in a lawsuit in which he was accused of engaging "in threatening, intimidating, and/or harassing conduct toward the plaintiff’s employees."

Since this article originally published multiple people have come forward on social media, claimed to be part of the goup, but also say that only one person was doing the yelling despite conflicting reports. You can follow that conversation here.