To the Editor:

Below is a letter that I sent to our first selectwoman today.  Before getting to that, I wanted share my enthusiasm for the Democratic party's candidates Honan, Eva Bermudez Zimmerman, and Jennifer Padilla running in District 2 for the Legislative Council (LC).  I'm entitled to four votes, but because of the way they are counted I'll only use three, giving these candidates the best chance.  Ms Bermudez Zimmerman already an LC member, has displayed commitment to families and education in many ways, most notably speaking out in opposition to closing Hawley School.  As for Ms. Padilla, she gets my vote many reasons, however none more important than the fact that Newtown desperately needs a change from this “business as usual” (see below) attitude of our current officials.

Dear First Selectwoman,

Please make a statement of support of the Board of Education’s recent motion to pursue an investiga-tion regarding the unauthorized disclosure of an attorney-client privileged communication, and then, since your employee was involved directly, launch one of your own.  Please add this to your agenda for the upcoming BOS meeting on Monday November 2.

It appears, at this time that a Board of Education member shared private communication with a member of your staff, Mrs Llodra, who in turn appears to have displayed the document on social media in what seems to have been the intent to silence another member of the Board of Education. Those who witnessed this have used the words, badger and intimidate when describing what this person was do-ing.  I’ve since seen statements from elected officials  on social media regarding this.  Shockingly they seem to be uniquely focused on whether or not the document was classified at the time it was shared and not on this person's conduct.

These private texts and confidential documents were used to argue that the recent news of Mary Ann Jacob and John Kortze (current Legislative Council chair and Board of Finance respectively) meeting “privately” with Superintendent Erardi, forcing the Board of Education chairman to wait outside the door,  was just “business as usual.”  She seemed to be trying to say - “See, we all do this.”

So this was not an accidental slip by a member of your staff.  It was an intentional act by someone  re-sponsible for handling confidential voter information as registrar, and tasked with taking sensitive notes during town government meetings. It was intentional. Seems the aim was first to show that these behaviors are the norm in Newtown and  also to intimidate someone from speaking out against such behavior.  In my opinion, its not enough that the BOE member and your staff person be held account-able. As a taxpayer and voter,  I want to identify all officials involved in setting this in motion. It seems your staff member went way over the line to stop the conversation around this private meeting of Jacob, Kortze and Erardi. I think the public has a right to know who else was active in this pursuit.

Thank you,

Michele Assante

16 Wendover Road, Newtown         October 28, 2015