Gathering for about five minutes on Memorial Day morning, the selectmen rescheduled the town meeting about leasing land to Ability Beyond for a group home on Prospect Ridge.
A public hearing to discuss and a town meeting to vote upon the proposed $1-a-year lease to Ability Beyond are now scheduled for Wednesday, June 10, at 7:30 p.m. in town hall.
The meeting had originally been scheduled for Wednesday night, May 27, but that is now canceled. A Board of Selectmen’s meeting previously scheduled for May 27 has also been canceled.
The highly unusual selectmen’s meeting at 9 a.m. Memorial Day, May 25, was needed to make the scheduling changes before the June 27 meeting.
The town meeting and public hearing — which will be conducted together — were rescheduled to June 10 to allow time for the town to properly re-publish legal notices keep and in line with statutory requirements concerning meeting and hearing notices.
The mix-up is procedural, and is unrelated to the specifics of the lease, or the concerns that some neighbors had about developing the land on the corner of Prospect Ridge Road and Halpin Lane, according to First Selectman Rudy Marconi.
It stems from state statues concerning the disposal of town property.
“There’s a statute that requires two notices for a public hearing,” Marconi said… “I thought it was just for the sale of land, but it was also even if you lease the land.
“The statute requires that one notice must be between 10 and 15 days prior to the hearing.
“And the second notice cannot be any less than two days prior to the hearing,” he said.
“So, we need to re-notice everything, and that’s what caused us to push it off to June 10, so we can properly notice, according to Connecticut Statutes, the public hearing.
“We’re fine with our charter,” Marconi added.
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