For the past three months, most of Newtown has been clear in its reaction to a proposal to bring an Army Reserve training center to a 13-acre site at Fairfield Hills known as the High Meadow. The reaction? We don’t want it! While everyone from economic development officials to conservationists found reasons why the plan was an exceeding bad idea, Newtown’s First Selectman Joe Borst seemed strangely equivocal in conveying that view to the US Department of Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC), which is overseeing property acquisitions for the Army.

From the time most of the town first became aware of the prospect of an Army base in town late last year, the local response has been negative. No one seemed to be able to articulate a good reason why the town should forfeit prime land, for either preservation or development, for a one-time payment from the Department of Defense followed by an eternity of property tax exemption and restricted access to the public. Still, Mr Borst’s communications over time have conveyed hope and possibility to BRAC, offering alternative properties, including the town’s planned technology park off Commerce Road, issuing invitations to local meetings to help the military sell the idea to the town, and in the end acknowledging that a deal for the High Meadow might be a “hard sell.”

The first selectman was so unclear in expressing the town’s position on the proposed training base that an Army District Commander wrote to him late last month pleading for an “official yes or no” on the Army’s offer to purchase the High Meadow.

Finally, this week, Mr Borst’s fellow selectmen on the Board of Selectmen delivered the unequivocal “No” the Army had been waiting for, but they had to do it over Mr Borst’s objections. In the face of  near universal opposition to the plan in town, Mr Borst defended his recalcitrance with an adage: “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” He didn’t seem to understand what everyone was trying to tell him — the bird he had in his hand looked a lot like an albatross.

The first selectman’s freelancing in his dealings with BRAC over the Army Reserve training base proposal is worrisome and raises questions about his willingness to act as a representative of the town in the face of consensus. He first learned of the military’s interest in land in Newtown nearly a year before he informed his colleagues on the Board of Selectmen, compressing the time for consideration of the proposal into a few short months, fraught with urgent deadlines from an increasingly impatient Department of Defense. Finally, through the intervention of others, the Army has the answer it should have had at the beginning of 2008.

Mr Borst’s handling of this issue brings to mind another adage: Experience is a dear teacher, and some will have no other.