Edmond Town Hall Passed Over—

Regional Probate District Court Will Be In Bethel

By John Voket

The top elected leaders of Ridgefield and Redding sided against Newtown First Selectman Pat Llodra in determining a new regional probate court should be located in Bethel. The 3-1 vote, which effectively killed a proposal to locate the court in Edmond Town Hall, was also supported by Bethel First Selectman Matthew Knickerbocker.

Both Ridgefield First Selectman Rudy Marconi and Redding First Selectman Natalie T. Ketcham said they based their vote on an impression that Bethel would be more central, and therefore more convenient for constituents who might have to travel from the farthest points of any of the participating communities.

The four officials met to decide on the matter Monday at 10 am in Redding. At that meeting it was also determined that the new regional probate district would be referred to as the Northern Fairfield County Probate Court.

Before a brief discussion leading up to the vote, both Ms Llodra and Mr Knickerbocker gave presentations about the facilities each community had to offer. It was already determined that neither Ridgefield nor Redding had the space, facility, or infrastructure to house the regional court operations.

Mr Knickerbocker extolled the Bethel facility’s copious amount of free on- and off-street parking, two elevators to help constituents access the proposed court’s second floor location, and the substantial amount of space available in Bethel’s municipal center to conduct court affairs.

The only apparent drawback would be the need for Bethel to either share vault space with the local town clerk, or to convert a storage closet into a vault, utilizing an old vault door that was currently installed in the former Town Hall.

In her presentation, Mrs Llodra outlined the proposed use of the entire southern first floor wing of Edmond Town Hall, including the former town clerk’s suite, its existing vault, and the former judge’s office that has its own independent vault, which could be joined to the adjacent chamber by installing a passage between the two.

Opening up the brief deliberations, Ms Ketcham said “on the charm scale,” she had to give it to Edmond Town Hall. But in an attempt to view the choice practically, the Redding official set about measuring the driving distance and timing a trip to Bethel Center from the current Redding court office, versus a trip to the center of Newtown.

“It’s five miles to Bethel’s Municipal Center and 16 miles to Edmond Town Hall,” Ms Ketcham said. “It’s hard for me to ask our citizens to drive three times the [distance] without any other major overriding advantages. It would be better for Redding to go to Bethel.”

Recognizing she had no possibility of winning in the matter, Mrs Llodra told the panel that she would send Newtown constituents to Bethel, “but not happily.”

Prior to Monday’s meeting, Ms Llodra told The Bee that the other three officials involved in the probate decision had visited and toured Newtown’s potential site, and that she had pitched the idea to the town hall’s Board of Managers late last week, with a positive reception.

But it all came down to location, and as Mr Marconi put it, “I have said all along that because of the geographical separation between the westerly end and the easterly end of the district, based on that Ridgefield would go with Bethel.”

Mr Marconi said if the decision was between Ridgefield and Newtown, he imagined Newtowners would apply the same logic.

Mrs Llodra advocated strongly for Newtown during Monday’s meeting, in part because she said Newtown has the highest population among the four towns, and the busiest court, which not only serves the community, but approximately 600 inmates at the Garner Correctional Institution.

Mrs Llodra said centralization of the court will also mean electing a probate judge to serve all four districts, and that whomever is elected will be expected to travel among the four communities when cases demand it.

The bill that mandated the regionalization of the 300-year-old “neighborhood court” system requires that each judge of probate be elected for a term that begins on or after January 5, 2011. Legislation also mandates that any candidate must be a member of the bar of the state of Connecticut, and that candidate must have been a member of the bar for at least ten years.

Judge Paul J. Knierim, Connecticut’s Probate Court administrator, told The Bee that the election of a regional judge would play out the same way as an election for a state representative whose district covers multiple communities.

“There would be one candidate from each major party, as well as any minor party or petitioning candidates on the ballot,” he said Monday. Newtown’s Democratic Registrar LeReine Frampton said the election for the new regional probate judge will occur on the ballot this November.

Newtown’s current probate judge, Moira Rodgers, said she is considering a candidacy for the regional post, as did her Democratic opponent in last November’s election, Timothy Holian. Both local contenders would have to be accepted by their respective town committees as their party’s choices for the regional probate candidacy in order to win a spot on next November’s ballot.