Shelton Commissioner Bows Out Of ‘Oppressive System’

Josh Kopac still feels zoning regulations are an abuse of power, but from now on it will be somebody else’s problem.

Kopac resigned on Election Day last week as the Republican alternate member on the Shelton Planning and Zoning Commission, ending an unusual year in which he vowed to routinely vote against every zoning application as a matter of principle.

He never got much of a chance to carry out his threat. The other four Republican PZC members managed to keep him from voting on all but a few applications at the beginning of his two-year term.

Kopac said he has plans next year to move to another state and join some friends in opening a wellness center, where he will teach yoga.

In an interview, he said the main reason he resigned was that the other Republicans let absent members participate electronically, by speaker phone or Skype videoconferencing software.

That practice eliminated the need for him to fill as an alternate and effectively thwarted his plan to oppose the very idea of zoning.

In an interview with the Valley Independent Sentinel in February, he explained, I’m not voting no to the applicant. I’m voting no to the system.”

Nevertheless, Kopac, the 20-year-old director of business development for an online marketing firm, said he believes he made his point and had decided it was time to move on and do something else with his life.

His resignation letter was another opportunity to state what his objective.

A real man does not need government, government needs man to thrive,” he said. Consider this note me opting out of the oppressive system. No longer am I consenting to the system that pillages (its) people, through fear and control. A vote shows you are giving authority to have your life run by a babysitter.”

He’s a man with a mission,” observed PZC member Elaine Matto, a Democrat. She also referred to him as an ideologue,” but conceded that Kopac appeared to feel what he was doing was important.

Parkins denied that she and the other Republicans on the commission were using electronic participation simply to keep Kopac from voting. She said her colleagues on the commission were simply being diligent about their participation in its deliberations, and that electronic participation is allowed under state law.

This isn’t a matter of convenience, so commissioners can sit at home and still vote,” she said. Kopac said he objected to it when it started, on the grounds that it violated the city charter.

But Corporation Council Thomas Welsh and Assistant Corporation Council Ray Sous both sided with the other PZC members, something that, to Kopac, smacked of the same kind of cronyism that led him to stage his protest against zoning in the first place.

He said he had already decided to vote no on every application when he put his name forward to the Republican Town Committee as a potential candidate for the 2011 election. 

He intended it as a way to generate public debate on his idea of doing away with zoning.

Kopac said he was motivated by his view that zoning was just a way for people to use the power of government to do favors for their friends. Nothing during his term on the commission changed his mind about it.

He declined to give an example of such an abuse.

But that criticism was the focus of the FBI corruption investigation that pointed at Mayor Mark Lauretti and several members of the PZC. Neither the mayor nor any PZC member was ever charged, although developer Robert Scinto, developer James Botti and Building Official Elliot Wilson ended up serving prison sentences.

Kopac confirmed that he never told the leaders of the Republican Town Committee what he intended to do when they interviewed him as a possible candidate in 2011.

My only guess is they didn’t know what they were getting when they put him on the board,” Matto said.

Parkins said she isn’t on the town committee’s Steering Committee, so she didn’t participate in the interview and didn’t know what they asked Kopac.

Republican Town Chairman Anthony Simonetti declined to say what he and the other Republican Party leaders knew about Kopac’s views when they picked him for the party slate.

Despite Kopac’s somewhat radical zoning views, Simonetti insisted that Kopac was properly vetted. He refused to comment on whether party leaders pressured Kopac to resign.

He’s gone, off the board. He’s history,” Simonetti said.

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