The agenda from a March 19 meeting of the Derby Planning & Zoning Commission.
DERBY – Last week members of the city’s planning and zoning commission discussed three potential development applications without telling the public in advance.
The move sparked a freedom of information debate between Mayor Joseph DiMartino’s administration and longtime P&Z commission chairman Ted Estwan.
The agenda for the March 19 meeting of the Derby Planning & Zoning Commission listed an “informal discussion with Attorney Dominick Thomas on various subjects.”
However, the agenda failed to list the specific subjects to be addressed.
Agendas are supposed to let the public know what a public entity will be discussing, according to the state’s Freedom of Information Act. However, the law doesn’t specify how much information should go on an agenda.
The items turned out to be three potential development projects, about which the commission and Thomas talked for more than an hour.
One item was a mixed-use development on Route 34 next to the intersection of Derby-Milford Road.
Another was two development options for the around 100 housing units to be built on or around Telescope Mountain, between Summit Street on Coon Hollow Road, next to existing condos. That property has been the site of at least two prior – and controversial – development applications.
The third informal discussion was on a conceptual plan to build hundreds of housing units in the area of Great Hill Road and the Seymour border, in the general area of the Fountain Lake development in Ansonia.
The meeting was held on Zoom, click here to watch. The Thomas discussion happens at about 1 hour and 22 minutes in.
At the very start of the March 19 meeting, Linda Fusco, Mayor DiMartino’s chief of staff, read a statement from the mayor calling the commission out for lacking transparency.
“This item is not noticeably clear or transparent for anyone to understand what will be discussed. I ask you to hold off on any informal discussion until it is clear to the public and to the administration what specific items are to be discussed,” Fusco said. “This is the appropriate way for an agenda to be put together and I ask for that courtesy both for me as a leader of this new administration and for the public who has a right to know what’s going on.”
Later in the meeting Estwan pointed out his commission has been having informal discussions with potential applicants for years.
He said the public would have the chance to weigh in if a formal application was submitted and the commission called for a public hearing.
He repeatedly said the informal discussion was fine, since the commission was not going to take formal action on anything. The public would have the chance to participate once a formal submission was made, Estwan said.
Brian Lema, a lawyer with Berchem Moses, the city’s corporation counsel, said the issue wasn’t with the informal discussion.
He said the issue was with not telling the public in advance by putting the topics on an agenda, but Estwan brought it back to the fact the discussion was informal.
“If the public can’t speak, why do I have to list it on the agenda?” Estwan asked.
“Because you have a quorum and you’re discussing actions that may result in action of this board,” Lema said.
Derby Town/City Clerk Marc Garofalo also said the agenda notice was not up to snuff.
He said the practice gives a developer or attorney a chance to “tee up” an application before the public knows anything about it.
“It totally violates the spirit of FOI,” Garofalo said.
Thomas said informal discussions are needed because a property owner might have several different options on how to develop a certain property.
Having an informal discussion to take the commission’s temperature on a development idea can help an applicant know which way to go.
Thomas said he didn’t ask that the three projects he discussed be kept off the agenda. He said Mayor DiMartino and Estwan both knew about the properties to be discussed, which touched off a debate between commission member Gino DiGiovanni, Estwan and Garofalo over who knew what and when.
