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On Sept. 6, the Colchester Republican Town Committee held a Vote of No Confidence in Republican First Selectman Andreas Bisbikos. The reasons were numerous. He uses town meetings to attack, threaten, and belittle anyone who is critical of his decisions or behavior, including the very citizens who pay his salary. He overstepped his authority and spit on our Constitution and the First Amendment when he attempted to ban RuPaul’s biography from our public library. As chief of police he has abused his power by using the police to try and intimidate critics and silence dissent. These are the marks of a tyrant. This is not the behavior of someone who truly believes in their promise to put the people before the government.
While there’s still more that I don’t have enough space to cover here, I must address the dishonest budget he presented to the BOF and BOS for a Town Meeting on 9/19. Bisbikos is on record stating he is eliminating the Director of Operations position and doing so will give him $90,000+ in “financial flexibility”. In other words he is taking the citizen’s hard-earned money to fund a position he has no intention of filling, allowing him to spend that money away from citizen oversight. That, in my opinion, is defrauding the people of Colchester.
These are not merely mistakes. People admit honest mistakes, apologize, and do better. Our First Selectman has never uttered the words “I was wrong”. Instead he has doubled down at every turn. I fully expect retribution from him and his surrogates in the coming Board of Selectmen and RTC meetings. My Vote of No Confidence was as much a statement about his past behaviors as it is about my distrust in his willingness to do better moving forward.
Jason LaChapelle
Vice Chairman, Colchester RTC
Board of Selectmen
LaChapelle writes to CT Examiner in his capacity as a private citizen