Will Partisan Squabbles Hobble P&Z Again?

It didn't take but a few moments.

At the first meeting of the Planning and Zoning commission after the election, in which two new members were placed on the commission, the election of a chairperson turned the meeting into a contentious deja vu session of multiple vote-takings, without a commissioner ever being elected.

Dan Russo, newly elected P&Z commissioner, and chairman of the town's Democratic Committee, says the problem preceded the meeting.

"What was very distressing is the evening of the swearing-in, simultaneous to several members of the bar, including supporters of the mayor, encouraging me to pursue being the chairman, at the same time Republican members of the commission were telling Richard Pelletier (Democratic P&Z member, and the last chair of the commission) that they absolutely would not allow me to be chair," Russo said. "So that was politicizing the process before the first meeting."

Russo nominated himself for chairman as the very first action at that first meeting, and proceeded to criticize this newsblog, and Republican commission member Catherine Johnson for printing Johnson's list of qualities she thought a commission chair should possess.

"Her criteria were targeted at Democratic members of the commission," Russo said. In particular, Russo believed Johnson was singling out the attendance record of former chairperson Barbara Plumb who is regularly absent for up to six consecutive meetings because of a winter vacation.

"If you look carefully at the records," Russo continued. "Deb Kleckowski had a worse attendance record than Barbara Plumb."

Kleckowski made several attempts to be elected chair when she was a member of the P&Z commission, but served most of her tenure on the commission as a Democrat. Kleckowski switched parties when the Democratic committee refused to support her run for Common Council. She was elected to the Common Council as a Republican.

In a review of Johnson's criteria, Russo had no major differences with the qualities she cited.

"Every city commissioner should put city business before politics and before personal gain," Russo said. "That's part of the ethics rules, so to imply that has not been the case is insulting."

"I don't do politics," Johnson said in an interview Sunday. "I do content. I want to be sure we have good planning in town. That's my background and my training. That's why I ran for the commission. My biggest worry is that we'll be consumed by partisan maneuvering.

"I don't think a newcomer to the commission ought to be elected as chair. That's not a rule, but it's the convention," Johnson said. "In fact, I'm in favor of the chairperson being elected on a rotating basis. The truth is, I don't care who's chairman as long as we are able to have a commission that functions well, and rules for planning and development that are good for the city."

At the end of the first meeting Russo told Eye correspondent Stephen Devoto that "I will never accept the changes to the Plan of Development" that Johnson has been spearheading through community input meetings over the past year.

"If those changes are a result of meetings that she held improperly, then I will never accept those," Russo said in an interview the next day. "And my belief is that those meetings were not properly conducted. They may have violated freedom of information requirements and therefore any work product from those meetings are unacceptable. They did not meet the requirement of public notice. My understanding is that no separate minutes were kept, another freedom of information violation. So I would be pretty dubious about accepting work product from those meetings."

The city clerk confirmed that all of Johnson's meetings were properly noticed and that minutes have been submitted to her office.

In the end both Russo and Johnson agreed that politics should be a secondary matter when it comes to doing city work. Whether the commission will be able to move beyond the wrangling at the first meeting at its next meeting in December will be the proof of whether politics or city business comes first.