Town Officials React to Referendum Effort

Town officials reacted today with skepticism that an effort to force a referendum on $350,000 to build a girls' Little League field and infrastructure for a park on Hoyden's Lane would be successful.

Meanwhile, organizers of the attempted referendum set up a Web site Thursday night where they plan to tell residents where they can sign petitions to have a referendum.

The organizers, who include Kirk Manley of Hoyden's Lane, need to submit signatures from 5 percent of town voters by 4:30 p.m. July 13 in the Town Clerk's Office to put the $350,000 funding request to a townwide vote. The Town Charter says the number of voters in town is determined by the most recent computer printout available in the Registrar of Voters' Office when the Representative Town Meeting approved the funding request. That number was 35,310, meaning the organizers need to get 1,765 signatures to hold a referendum.

Town Clerk Betsy Browne said today that the last successful referendum was in August 1995, when voters overturned the RTM's decision to spend $24.6 million to turn the former Roger Ludlowe High School into a building that included the town's Recreation Department, the Board of Education's maintenance offices, a middle school and an elementary school. The building now houses Fairfield Ludlowe High School, and a middle school that opened in the building in 1998 is now in a building constructed in 2003 on the Ludlowe campus.

The Town Charter, going all the way back to the first Charter in 1946, has required 25 percent of voters to vote against the RTM's approval of a funding request for a referendum to be successful. Those votes also must be a majority of votes cast.

The Town Charter used to require signatures from 3 percent of town voters to have a referendum, but that changed to 5 percent when the Town Charter was amended in 1975.

First Selectman Ken Flatto, who voted in favor of the funding request and who advocated for it before the RTM's 22-to-20 vote early Tuesday, said, "It's a shame a few people wish to do this given the expense it would cost the town, and it is, in my opinion, a waste of time because there is no way they will be able to get the percentage of voters needed to vote on such a small bonded cost item."

"To my knowledge, there has never been a referendum in the history of the town for such a small item," Flatto said.

Selectman Sherri Steeneck, who also supports the girls' Little League field and infrastructure for a park on 9.42 acres at 520 Hoyden's Lane, said today that she didn't agree with the effort to have a referendum but that organizers had a right to do it.

"That's the process. I don't agree with it because it's something that services the whole town; everyone can use it," Steeneck said, adding that $350,000, when viewed in the context of the overall $251.5 million town budget this year, was a relatively small amount. The $350,000 would be bonded over 15 years and cost the average household 93 cents a year, according to Town Fiscal Officer Paul Hiller.

Steeneck said she hopes organizers, if they succeed in getting enough signatures for a  referendum and the referendum is successful, work to turn one of the fields used by boys into a home field for girls' Little League. "If they do overthrow it, I hope they're also in line for one of the boys' fields to be converted to a girls' field to make sure there's equity...which is also going to cost money. It's not free," she said.

Boys' Little League has home fields behind Mill Hill School and in Tunxis Hill. Girls' Little League plays on a variety of fields in town but doesn't have a home field.

But Steeneck said the $350,000 funding request is for more than a girls' Little League field. It also includes money to demolish a house on the 9.42-acre property and install a restroom building, well, electricity, septic system, driveway and parking lot.

RTM Majority Leader James Millington, R-9, who voted in favor of the funding request early Tuesday, said referendum organizers had the right to attempt to hold a referendum on the $350,000 funding request, but he said the town would bond $25 million in a few weeks regardless of whether the $350,000 is included because that amount was set by town officials to finance various town projects.

"The RTM voted and we are now moving forward to other business," Millington said, adding that proposed contracts between the town and unions representing town employees and a funding request for the reconstruction of Penfield Pavilion are on the horizon. Millington said he looked forward to seeing opponents of the $350,000 funding request at town meetings when union contracts and a potential $3.6 million funding request to reconstruct Penfield Pavilion are debated.

RTM Minority Leader Cristin McCarthy Vahey, D-6, who voted in favor of the $350,000 funding request early Tuesday, declined comment on the referendum effort but said one of the factors that didn't get highlighted at the RTM meeting was that girls' Little League, by having a home field, could raise money to put back into the field and that infrastructure for a park may increase revenue at H. Smith Richardson Golf Course's driving range.

"It improves the facility in terms of parking, bathrooms. It has the potential to make it more attractive," Vahey said.

Steeneck said opposition to the $350,000 funding request seemed principally to be based in Hoyden's Hill. "It's a neighborhood issue for a number of people. Whether it's more than that, we'll find out," she said.

Manley said the referendum effort includes many residents who don't live in Hoyden's Hill.

Residents who want to find out where to sign a petition to have a referendum on the RTM's approval of the $350,000 funding request, or who want to read the organizers' statement on why they are attempting to have a referendum, can check the Web site, http://nomorebonding.blogspot.com/