By Thane Grauel

WESTPORT — No vote will be taken before September on a controversial proposal to re-subdivide a property off Sylvan Road North.

The proposal to carve No. 50 into two lots was first floated in January and has been discussed and debated with neighbors ever since.

Rick Benson, a longtime resident and developer, wants to split the 3-acre lot into two parcels. His original plan added a driveway feeding into Sylvan Road North, near the existing driveway and Sylvan Farms Lane.

But the plan, after earlier concerns, was changed to join the two driveways into one.

The plan needs Planning and Zoning Commission approval. The commission on Monday closed the public hearing. While some members appeared ready to vote that night, more wanted to delay a decision until recently filed documents could be examined and digested.

Monday’s discussion lasted more than two hours.

Neighbors have worried that the plan will make exiting a private road and nearby driveways onto the main road more dangerous. All involved seem to acknowledge speeding is a problem on Sylvan Road North, but traffic speeds are beyond the commission’s purview, and the developer’s responsibilities.

A couple of the neighbors have engaged a lawyer, Timothy Herbst, former first selectman of Trumbull who unsuccessfully sought the Republican Party’s gubernatorial endorsement in 2018. He, in addition to pushing for alternative driveway plans, has raised questions about Town Hall’s involvement, noting that First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker lives nearby.

One of his clients, Elizabeth Bishop of Sylvan Farms Lane, commented at the previous meeting she had concerns about Benson’s connections, and filed a Freedom of Information request, seeking recent communications between Benson, zoning staffers and the first selectwoman and her staff.

A filing by Herbst was among several just hours before the P&Z’s Monday meeting.

Some commissioners appeared to grow impatient with the applicant’s presentation and last-minute filings by the applicant and those by representatives of the neighbors.

“These incoming emails are lobbed in kind of last-minute hand grenades into the bunker,” Chairman Paul Lebowitz noted. “This is definitely not something that this commission wants in the future …”

“This commission would much rather have this in advance so that we can not only read it, but a have a chance to digest it, look it up, think about it and actually come up with some cogent questions about it,” he said.

“Unfortunately, you’ve got us at a disadvantage,” Lebowitz said to Jackie Kaufman, a lawyer for Benson, and Herbst.

Member Neil Cohn said he didn’t like the matter dragging on, but also didn’t like getting hit with new, last-minute information.

Member Michael Cammeyer also weighed in.

“I’m never one to say this, but guys, why don’t you just withdraw the application and bring it in September when this can be organized?” he said. “This is wasting everybody’s time and it’s not productive.”

Kaufman said that the responses in the previous 24 hours were in response to the neighbors’ recent comments.

Member John Bolton also didn’t like the late filings.

“We prepare, and everyone has different schedules, but we prepare for X and Y,” he said. “I try to do it Thursday before the hearing, but when we get Z thrown at us at 3:49 p.m., I just really think it’s bad form.”

He said that went for both sides.

“The fact of the matter is, you throw FOIA and the lack of a FOIA in there and things are going to be withheld and everything else, really?” Bolton said. “I feel like both sides are setting this up for some type of litigation and I don’t like it.”

“One of the reasons this hearing was continued from two weeks ago is some of the neighbors requested two weeks to hire a traffic engineer, which they ended up not doing,” Benson said Monday.

Benson said the neighbors’ attorney called his attorney at 4:30 p.m. Friday to offer two more suggestions about where the driveway could go.

“Which aren’t any more feasible than what we’ve already responded to,” Benson said.

He said that Monday afternoon his team uploaded surveys and title searches that confirm a stone wall is indeed not on the property of 50 Sylvan Road North, but in the right-of-way of three lots on Sylvan Road Lane, a private road.

“They are the only three that have any access to that right-of-way,” Benson said.

Kaufman went into the details of the documents.

Ken Bernard, a lawyer for the contract purchaser of the potential new lot, also spoke.

“I’m not throwing any aspersions, but the delay in part has been at the request of the neighbors, who at the last hearing told you we were going to have a traffic expert and then they didn’t get a traffic expert,” he said, “who have submitted documents at the last minute, which has caused the members of the commission to be frustrated …”

He said his clients seem to be the victims of, “I don’t want to call them tactics, but it appears to be designed to delay this project as much as possible.”

The P&Z will take the matter up again at its next meeting, 6 p.m. Sept. 9, online and on the town’s website.

Thane Grauel grew up in Westport and has been a journalist in Fairfield County and beyond for 36 years. Reach him at editor@westportjournal.com. Learn more about us here.