News

Letter: Eversource Failed To Take Advantage of Public Resources

By |

Many residents and officials of the Town of New Canaan observed, and there were additional reports published in the press of, Eversource crews parked in public parking lots and the parking areas of take-out establishments doing nothing while municipal highway crews were awaiting their arrival to make-safe downed wires so that roads could be cleared to allow passage of ambulances, fire engines, and police cars. This delay in restoration was obviously the result of a management failure by Eversource to coordinate with Town officials. Town officials knew where public roads were obstructed by Eversource’s wires and what the appropriate community priorities for restoration were. By failing to take advantage of public resources, Eversource wasted rate-payers’ money, duplicating such information-gathering in a less prompt and obviously  much less efficient manner. In addition Eversource’s mismanagement in this respect materially delayed clearance of public roads and prompt restoration of electric service. Moreover, the unnecessary delay endangered the safety of rate-payers and their properties. Accordingly, the [Public Utilities Regulatory Authority] commission should disallow the money wasted by crews sitting idle while the Company performed inefficient and duplicative “surveying” of the damage because of its management’s failure to take advantage of local sources of information.

News

Letter: P&Z Should Mind Legal Standards with Respect to Grace Farms

By |

As a taxpayer I write to share my apprehension that the legal standard being urged upon the Commission by the opponents of Grace Farms is Constitutionally suspect and, if applied by the Commission, could result in financial liability to the Town and its officials under the Third Force Bill of 1871, now 28 U.S. Code § 1983. Even if the legal standard urged by the opponents met the Constitutional standard of the Fifth Amendment, viz., the nuisance or “pig in the parlor” test laid down by Justice Sutherland for the Court in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co.. 272 U.S. 325 (1926), it likely would not meet the higher standard of the free expression clause of the First Amendment. In 2012 the opponents alleged that the purposes listed in the Foundation’s certificate of incorporation “go far beyond those activities that are typically held by a local New Canaan church.” In February, 2016, the then-chairman of the Commission, Mr. Papp, apparently said that the Commission “need[ed] to decide if the ancillary activities of the church are usual and customary activities of a church.” Attachments to recent letters to the Commission from David Markatos, listed “a number of activities which, in [the opponents’ view], are of the sort for which many other organizations in town would be required to seek approval, were they to occur at their facilities.” That the activities at Grace Farms go beyond those of a typical New Canaan church may be among the reasons for the Grace Church’s success and is clearly a legally improper basis for decision. Put differently, for proponents of Grace Farms to contend that the activities at Grace Farms are religious activities “cannot be deemed bizarre or incredible.” Frazee v. Illinois Dept., 489 U.S. 828, 834 n2 (1989).