By John Schwing

WESTPORT — The process of finding new members for TEAM Westport, initiated after a legal threat was lodged over how the multicultural advocacy committee is currently constituted, sparked questions during the group’s Thursday meeting.

Current membership of TEAM Westport and four other town advisory committees will change under revised rules issued by First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker in February.

Tooker set forth the changes in response to a complaint filed in January challenging the membership of TEAM Westport on grounds that it violates provisions of the town charter.

Specifically, Tooker said that members of TEAM and other advisory groups now must be registered Westport voters and that no more than half of the committees’ members can be registered with a single political party.

In addition to TEAM, the committees — all of which are advisory only and have no binding authority — immediately affected by Tooker’s decision are the Arts Advisory Committee, Wakeman Town Farm Committee, International Hospitality Committee and Maintenance Study Committee.

To address the issues of residency and minority political party representation, Tooker last month issued a call for voters interested in volunteering to serve on the five committees to submit letters and resumes by April 15.

The first selectwoman, in a brief appearance during TEAM’s Thursday meeting, said the town has received an unspecified numbers of letters from interested residents, and that Selectwoman Andrea Moore will review the submissions and start interviewing applicants after the deadline.

Selection of new committee members will be made with input from leaders of the affected groups, the selectwomen indicated in answer to a question from Harold Bailey Jr., TEAM Westport’s longtime chairman.

Moore said she is “excited” by the opportunity to recruit new committee members, but acknowledged that change can be hard.

She told the meeting that the goal, in complying with the new membership rules, is “to do good things” while including people with different perspectives and diversity of thought.

Political representation rules questioned

Several speakers, however, expressed dissatisfaction with Tooker’s decision to set a stricter limit on majority political party representation than allowed by state statute — Tooker wants no more than half of a committee’s membership to be from a single political party, while state law permits up to a two-thirds majority.

When the challenge to TEAM Westport’s membership was filed in January, 11 of its 14 members were Democrats and at least two were not town residents.

The new political representation ratio makes it challenging to find new TEAM members among Republican or unaffiliated voters, particularly since Democrats in Westport have a large voter registration advantage, said Danielle Teplica.

Moore said that Tooker, who already had left the meeting, set “a high bar” for minority political party representation so the membership rules for advisory committees conform with those for most of the town’s elected boards and commissions.

“Why” proves troubling

Catherine Lewis and several others said, while they aren’t averse to the prospect of new TEAM members with different perspectives, they are troubled about “why” the process was initiated.

The decision to change membership criteria, she said, came only in response to the challenge from people whose real motive is to oppose TEAM Westport and its mission.

Zoe Tarrant agreed, saying the changes are being made because of “a few vocal people who want to shut down TEAM Westport.”

Diversity essay contest winners praised

Earlier in Thursday’s meeting, Bailey, Tooker and Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice all effusively praised the recently named winners of TEAM’s annual Teen Diversity Essay Contest, co-sponsored by the Westport Library.

This year’s topic was, “Why It Can Be So Difficult to Talk About Race.”

Winners were: Ian Patton, first place for, “How to Be a Good White Person;” Colin Morgeson, second place for “Villains of Our Stories,” and Leigh Foran, third place for, “Embracing Privilege to Tackle Racism.”

The complete essays can be read here.

Bailey said he hopes to have a video of the students reading their essays at Monday’s awards ceremony posted soon on TEAM’s webpage.