To the Editor:
You will notice that there are now five letters of support for the purchase of the Guilford Mooring Restaurant Property prominently displayed on our town of Guilford website. Four of these letters (from the Guilford Preservation Alliance (GPA), the Guilford Economic Development Commission, the Rotary Club of Guilford, and from our State Senator Christine Cohen and our State Representative Moira Rader) are addressed to our Guilford Board of Selectman, while the fifth letter (from the Guilford Land Acquisition Commission) is not addressed to anyone, but merely states that they are in full support of the acquisition and in fact even support using Guilford’s bonding authority to make the purchase.
What is stunning about all these letters in support of the purchase of the Guilford Mooring Restaurant property is that none of them are addressed to you, the overtaxed residents of Guilford, who are getting crushed by the out-of-control spending on the part of our Town leadership. You are not even an after-thought when it comes to spending millions of dollars of your hard earned and scarce tax dollars on unnecessary and uncertain purchases like the Guilford Mooring Restaurant. There is absolutely no consideration of the increase this purchase will cause in your already sky-high property taxes.
In all these letters of support for the purchase of the Guilford Mooring Restaurant, there is no mention of the other expenditures the Board of Selectmen will be asking the taxpayers of Guilford to approve and fund through bonding questions on the upcoming budget referendum on April 8th. These other expenditures include $30 million for a new Public Works facility (which will surely grow to $40 million before the project is finished) and $6.5 million to renovate the police facility. Also, the Guilford Education Department has announced they will be asking for a 6.53%, or $6.64 million, increase in the Guilford Education Budget, and who knows what else the Town will be asking for. To deceive the hardworking taxpayers of Guilford by holding a Special Town Meeting to vote on the purchase of the Guilford Mooring Restaurant, without evaluating these purchases in conjunction with all these other funding requests, is the height of disrespect. The Special Town Meeting has been rescheduled for February 26th, less than 5 weeks before the Guilford Budget Referendum on April 8th. Why not cancel the Special Town Meeting and put the purchase of the Guilford Mooring Restaurant on the ballot as a bonding referendum question so it can be evaluated in consideration with all the other budget requests?
In the letter of support from the GPA, they say “We believe that development of the property for commercial or residential use is not in the public interest … It is essential that the Town designate the property for appropriate public uses consistent with its location and climate change impacts.” In their letter in support of this purchase, Christine Cohen and Moira Rader say, “This opportunity would allow the town … to address the challenges of climate change.” Not to encourage another restaurant to develop this property in a futile attempt to slow perceived “climate change” is pure folly, yet “climate change” is apparently their primary reason that the taxpayers in Guilford are being asked to purchase this property.
I encourage all my fellow Guilford overtaxed residents to make every effort to attend the Special Town Meeting on February 26th at Guilford High School at 7:00 PM and vote for fiscal sanity by rejecting the unnecessary purchase of the Guilford Mooring Restaurant Property for $3 million (plus demolition, cart away, engineering and environmental costs). The out-of-control spending by our Guilford Town Leadership must end.
Dave Holman
Guilford, CT