by Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT–The Representative Town Meeting (RTM) welcomed nine newly-elected members and new First Selectman Kevin Christie to its first meeting after November’s election on Tuesday. The RTM re-elected its long-time moderator Jeffrey Wieser and Deputy Moderator Lauren Karpf and approved a seawall at Compo’s Ned Dimes Marina.

Christie invocation

The meeting began with an invocation by Christie who said RTM members will “come together as neighbors who care deeply about Westport… The work before us matters. It affects our residents, our schools, our local businesses and the future well-being of our town,” he said.

Although Christie also spoke about working together “with patience, and with respect for one another,” the election of a moderator for the RTM, which followed, met with some resistance when RTM member Jennifer Johnson from District 9 objected to Weiser’s re-election. 

Johnson the lone holdout

She said she would not vote for him because she felt he had not made the RTM’s business open to public review as often as he should, had allowed RTM members at times to make “objectional statements in both context and tone,” and appointed chairs of RTM committees instead of letting the committee members themselves vote on the election of their committee chair.

“I will not be voting for Mr. Wieser tonight,” she said. “I do not believe the moderator has effectively protected the public’s right to transparency and access to meetings and documents as required under CT’s FOI [Freedom of Information] laws.”

Mall “disturbed”

Speaking against Johnson’s action at the RTM meeting was RTM member Louis Mall from District 2, who said he was “very disturbed” by Johnson’s claims against the RTM, and her refusal to vote to re-elect Weiser as the body’s moderator. “The divisiveness continues,” Mall said. 

Johnson was the only RTM member out of the 35 present who did not vote to re-elect Wieser. Deputy Moderator Lauren Karpf was re-elected unanimously.

Johnson has filed a complaint with the state FOI Commission on the basis of a $103 million appropriation the RTM made to pay for building a new Long Lots School. She does not believe RTM members and the public had enough information on the cost given to them in time to vote knowledgeably on the large appropriation, she said in the complaint. She also is charging that an RTM Finance Committee meeting held in executive session should have been open to the public.

A hearing on Johnson’s complaint was held in Hartford on Wednesday before an FOI Commission official.  Johnson testified on the details of her complaint. The town was represented  by attorney Nicholas Bamonte. As the proceeding exhausted its time limit, it will be continued at a future date, to allow engineers hired by the town to give more information on the project’s costs. Ultimately, the full FOI Commission must make a decision on the complaint within the next year.

 Replacement of Compo sea wall approved

A $500,000 appropriation was approved to replace an 800-foot seawall at the Ned Dimes Marina at Compo. The seawall was built in 1930 and has collapsed, Peter Ratkiewich, the director of Public Works told the RTM. The last major repairs to the seawall were done in the 1970s, he added.

 Replacing the wall now gives the town “an opportunity now to build a sidewalk and a nice fence along the top,” he said, which will also include benches. “It’s an opportunity to extend the Compo Beach Road sidewalk along Compo marina and tie together a loop a lot of people use,” he said.

The appropriation was recommended for RTM approval by the Board of Finance which has inspected the wall, along with several RTM members, Ratkiewich said.  The RTM approved the appropriation 35 to 0 with one abstention.

Gretchen Webster

^{_{Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, has reported for the daily Greenwich Time and Norwalk Hour, the weekly Westport News, Fairfield Citizen and Weston Forum. She was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman for ten years. She has won numerous journalism awards over the years, and taught journalism at New York University and Southern Connecticut State University.}}