On Tuesday, August 20, Russell Blair from the Freedom of Information Commission visited the Economic Development Commission following a complaint from Dave Ackert.

Blair is the director of Education and Communications for the FOI Commission. He provided training for the EDC commissioners and First Selectman Jeff Capeci. He discussed proper time lines for scheduling regular meetings and special meetings, posting agendas, and meeting minutes. No changes can be made to regular meetings once they are scheduled at the beginning of the year with the town clerk. Once they are scheduled, if the date or time is changed, it becomes a special meeting. A meeting cannot be changed less than 24 hours before the scheduled start time, and the town clerk must have proper documentation by the end of the day, for Newtown, that is before 4:30 pm.

Blair advised that email may not be the best way to submit those changes. “I would say [a change should be] received and stamped [by the clerk] because part of it is it needs to be publicly available 24 hours before the meeting. So if it’s sitting in an email inbox, it’s not publicly available.”

Blair also gave a brief refresher about when meeting minutes should be filed for a regular meeting and a special meeting. “Really, the most important thing with minutes is we need to get that filed within seven days, so seven calendar days for a regular meeting, seven business days for special meetings.”

Blair also discussed emergency meetings. He said, “Essentially, it’s an unnoticed meeting. There’s no notice, there’s no agenda. You can only consider an emergency matter ... it really needs to be something where you cannot wait 24 hours.” He gave examples as bad weather and public health issues.

The last type of meeting Blair described is an executive session, where the public is not privy to what boards and commissions discuss. He listed some examples as “personnel issues” or “legal strategies.” The most interesting piece of information Blair shared about personnel executive sessions is that “you do have to notify the person who is going to be the subject of that discussion … you don’t tell them this, but their right under FOI is that they can request it, instead of having an executive session discussion, the board can discuss that matter in public. If the person makes that request, the board has to honor it.”

When the training concluded, the commissioners moved to Barabara Snyder’s “historical explainer for 6 Commerce Drive.” Snyder, vice chair for the EDC, put together “an extremely edited document” about 6 Commerce Road. The document pieces together EDC’s involvement with the property dating back to 2005. Following Snyder’s overview of the explainer, the public was invited to participate.

Jenny Hubbard came forward and spoke on behalf of the Catherine Violet Hubbard Animal Sanctuary. She said to Barbara, “I understand that you have interviewed all the people that are involved. I was never interviewed. So I’m very interested in the time line … until I see that time line, I’m going to reserve comments as to this … commission’s involvement in 6 Commerce development.”

Next to speak was Joe Hovious. He said, “it would have been nice to have an opportunity to put some of the real background in here on what happened with earlier projects and the lack of public involvement, which caused major controversies.”

Dave Ackert presented to the commissioners a document that seemed to take 6 Commerce Road off the EDC’s hands in 2009. He said, “I have a whole bunch of documents that, if you like, I’d be happy to share with you … including this [correspondence] from June 18, 2009 where your predecessors wrote a letter to the state asking them to redirect the remaining STEAP funds that had not been spent yet trying to build the tech park. It says, ‘The reason for this request is to preserve and protect the virgin open space and agricultural lands that the proposed project would impact.’”

Following Ackert’s presentation, attention was drawn to Snyder’s document about “6 Commerce Drive.” It was noted that the “GIS listing…is 6 Commerce Road. It’s on the town’s GIS listing and it’s in the deed [for the CVH Animal Sanctuary],” by Laura King, director of events and programming at the sanctuary.

Dee Davis was the last to speak at the meeting.

“The biggest mistake this town could make is selling 6 Commerce [Road],” Davis said.

She noted that when she moved in 35 years ago, “there were more horses than people.”

Public participation ended, and the commissioners discussed briefly about visiting businesses affected by Sunday’s torrential downpours and flash flooding. Capeci stated that he would like to join commissioner Tracey Pertoso on that effort.

“I just think it would be a nice thing for us to be able to be there with them when the times are good and bad,” Pertoso said.

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Reporter Sam Cross can be reached at sam@thebee.com.