Monthly Archives: April 2025

BREAKING NEWS: Halls Road Improvements Committee Chair Edie Twining Resigns

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OLD LYME — This afternoon, Halls Road Improvements Committee Chairwoman Edie Twining submitted her resignation in a letter to Old Lyme First Selectwoman Martha Shoemaker. Twining’s resignation from the volunteer position is with immediate effect.

The text of Twining’s letter is as follows:

“Dear Martha,  

It is with a heavy heart that I resign as a member and Chair of the Halls Road Improvements Committee (HRIC). My family has been part of Old Lyme for three generations. When I returned to Old Lyme after living in Boston for 40 years, I followed in my father’s footsteps volunteering for the town. My  commitment to this committee has spanned over 8 years and many thousands of unpaid hours of work. In that time, the committee held dozens of public outreach sessions, responded to feedback and created  a Vision Proposal that informed the Halls Road Master Plan. All of my efforts have been done as a volunteer and, contrary to false accusations on social media, I have never had or sought any monetary gain, direct or indirect, from my involvement on the committee.  

The committee has received multitudes of letters of support for both the Master Plan and the Halls Road Overlay District (HROD) proposals, Planning Board Approval, detailed Zoning Commission review and dozens of public outreach sessions. To those supporters; I am deeply grateful for your attention to this  committee’s work and for your ongoing support. You understood the HRIC was never a partisan project,  but sought the benefit of the whole town, regardless of political affiliation!  

Despite seven years of very public effort, well publicized by friends and foes, many people claim never to  have been aware of the HRIC and its efforts to improve pedestrian safety, add new crossings, and update our 1960’s commercial-only zoning with a mixed-use option. Those who have followed the HRIC process have seen the multiple layers of work we have done and provided constructive suggestions that have altered the plan. Many who opposed it and chose to never attend a meeting, never visit the town website (where all details were publicly available), claim, instead that all of this was proceeding covertly with no community outreach. The fact that they chose not to attend any public meetings, not to read the detail on the town website or get involved does not give them the excuse to say the public was not informed.  

Critics have relentlessly misrepresented and misunderstood the plan, its aims, the challenges faced by the town, and the nature of the solutions proposed. This pervasive disregard for facts culminated in the latest campaign of wild exaggerations meant to mislead our community about the goals and details of the HROD proposal. The social media avalanche of invented nightmares and half-truths is indicative of the poisonous, adversarial politics that is tearing our country – and now our town – to pieces. None of those opposing the proposal ever directly asked the committee to explain how the regulation works, nor did they ever suggest any concrete alternative proposals.  

They were not interested in squarely facing our Town’s future in a changing world. Instead, they created a monstrous fantasy version of the HROD proposal that no one could support, used it to whip up a storm of protest, and set out to bully the town’s officers into submitting to their fantasy. 

The Zoning Commission’s refusal to deliberate, and abandonment of their efforts to modify the HROD  proposal in any way, was, in my view, an abdication of the Commission’s rights and responsibilities. The most important statement about the whole process was made by Zoning Commission member Denise  Savageau. She blamed the dysfunctional Old Lyme bureaucracy for failing after 10 years to work together constructively to create a unified plan and new zoning for Halls Road. It was, is, and should have been treated from the beginning as a TOWN effort. Instead, an appointed committee of the Board of Selectmen was treated by other Boards and Commissions the same way they treat a private person applying for permission to make modifications to their house. That approach doomed the effort from the start, because it foreclosed the possibility of collaboration and working together to frame what was  needed. The separate silos of Planning, Zoning, and HRIC; the fiction that the town itself could not demand that the three cooperate with one another—all of these, in retrospect, were fatal errors.  

This “us vs. them” madness is such a sad and destructive trend both locally and nationally. There seems no way to fight back against waves of falsehoods. So, I am leaving all the work we have accomplished to those who come after. If they do nothing, outside forces will dictate our town’s future. Meanwhile I look forward to contributing my time to more productive pursuits in my board positions with the Old Lyme Land Trust, Old Lyme Historical Society and my design work for the New London Homeless Hospitality  Center.  

Respectfully,  

Edie Twining”

Editor’s Notes: i)Twining also provided a list of the committee’s accomplishments.
ii) A reminder of Our Policy on Comments.


Letter to the Editor: Old Lyme Selectman Thanks Board of Finance for ‘a Job Well Done’ at Tuesday’s Budget Meeting

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Editor’s Note: This letter was published April 17, after the Board of Finance meeting held April 15.

To the Editor:

I’d like to thank the Old Lyme Board of Finance for a job well done, completing work begun jointly with the Board of Selectmen in December to produce a prudent, fiscally-sound budget.  Through good compromise and the identification of additional savings, the budget for our upcoming fiscal year maintains a healthy surplus while keeping our taxes as low as possible. 

Our new proposed mill rate of 16.2 is among the lowest in the state, and holding taxes to a modest 4.52% increase is quite an accomplishment in this inflationary environment.   

Two voter-approved projects:  renovation of schools and Senior Center expansion, both hit the budget this year, presenting a special challenge.  Over the course of several hours-long, publicly-held budget workshops through January and into early February, the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance met together with the heads of all departments, boards, commissions and committees to discuss, analyze and justify each expenditure.   These joint meetings were conducted with mutual respect and fair-mindedness from all parties.   

The Board of Finance continued their deliberations through April, culminating in a contentious meeting this past Tuesday night.   At the 11th hour, a compromise was reached:   $800,000 from the surplus would be dedicated to mill rate reduction, which along with over $170,000 in additional savings identified by First Selectwoman Shoemaker, would bring us close to the $1,000,000 in tax relief we were seeking for our townspeople.   The budget now goes to the voters for a public hearing on April 28th at 6:30pm at Town Hall.   The final vote by town residents will take place at a May 19th town meeting at the LOL Middle School.  I believe we are presenting a solid budget that meets the needs of our citizens while keeping taxes as low as possible, and I appreciate the effort of all those involved.

Sincerely,

Jim Lampos,
Old Lyme.

Letter to the Editor: Old Lyme Selectman Recommends Transferring $1.3M from Town’s Surplus to Reduce Residents’ Tax Burden

Editor’s Note: This letter was published April 13, prior to the Board of Finance meeting held April 15.

To the Editor:

An Open Letter to the Residents of Old Lyme

On Tuesday, the Board of Finance will meet to set the mill rate which will determine Old Lyme residents’ property tax burden.  Over the past two years, the Board of Selectmen has worked cooperatively with the Board of Finance to craft fiscally-prudent budgets that have resulted in hefty surpluses. Indeed, this year through the concerted efforts of not only these two boards but also all town staff and volunteers, we have a record surplus of nearly $15 million, or 33% of next year’s budget.

This surplus is not an accident. Knowing that the next two fiscal years would present challenges due to expenses incurred by voter-approved projects such as the school renovation and Senior Center expansion, the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance concurred that we would need to have a hefty surplus going into this period in order to have the ability to provide some tax relief when setting the mill rate.

Most towns are expected to have a surplus of 15%. Being a shoreline community with exposure to potential loss of revenue due to hurricanes, Old Lyme has maintained a higher surplus. A 30% surplus is extraordinary and ideal for bond rating agencies to maintain Old Lyme’s AAA rating. With this year’s very healthy surplus, we can afford to move $1.3 million from surplus to tax relief and still maintain a 30% surplus.   

Doing so would also allow the town to set a mill rate of 16.09. This is substantially lower than our current mill rate of 24.4, but due to this year’s state mandated revaluation, many people’s property values have also increased significantly. In real terms, a mill rate of 16.09 would reflect a very modest 3.81% tax increase from last year.   This modest increase fully accounts for all burdens, including the school budget.

Surveying other towns in our regions, this is very good news indeed. We are faring far better than towns that are experiencing 10% tax hikes or more.  While it has been common practice to use surplus to offset tax increases in the past ($600,000-$800,000 was common two or three years ago), at the most recent Board of Finance meeting there were members who were reluctant to approve anything over $600,000.   Settling for this would only allow us to cut the rate to 16.38, and would reflect a 5.65% real increase.  This is still not bad in terms of what we are seeing in neighboring towns, but since revaluation has doubled some homeowner’s property values, we need to provide as much tax relief as we possibly can while maintaining services and fiscal prudence.

It is important to remember that the surplus is excess money that the town has collected from taxpayers.  We need to provide our taxpayers a dividend.   As we speak, numbers are still not completely finalized and we are still working to identify further budget cuts as well.  And while I understand that, even though we would still maintain a very robust 30% surplus, some may find moving $1.3 million to tax relief to be too much.  But I think many would agree that $600,000 is far too little.   I encourage those who are interested in this question to attend this Tuesday’s Board of Finance meeting.

Sincerely,

Jim Lampos,
Old Lyme.

Editor’s Note: The author serves on the Old Lyme Board Selectmen.

After Much Disagreement, Old Lyme Board of Finance Decides to Take $800K From ‘Rainy Day Fund’ to Offset Tax Increase

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OLD LYME – With many residents concerned by the recent revaluation that hiked the value of taxable property in town by more than 60%, the Old Lyme Board of Finance on Wednesday evening agreed to use $800,000 from the town’s ‘Rainy Day Fund’ to help mitigate the impact to taxpayers of a proposed $45.39 million 2025-26 spending plan. 

The proposed budget – which includes town operations and capital expenses as well as the town’s share of the Lyme-Old Lyme Schools regional district budget – represents an increase of $3.28 million, or 7.8%, over the current budget. 

It includes education costs in the amount of $31.52 million, which is up $1.99 million, or 6.72%, from the town’s current share of the regional school district budget. The increase is driven by debt payments on a multi-building renovation project approved by voters at a cost of $57.5 million. 

The Old Lyme budget proposal will now go to a public hearing on Monday, April 28, at 7:30 p.m. in the Town Hall meeting room. 

Based on preliminary numbers provided by Finance Board Chairman Bennett J. Bernblum, a Democrat, the  decision to use $800,000 from the town’s reserves will result in a projected tax rate of 16.2 mills, an increase of 4.5%. 

The tax rate would be going up 6.8% if the finance board didn’t move to offset the increase, he said.

A mill represents $1 in tax per $1,000 of assessed property value.  

The current tax rate is 24.4 mills. After taking the revaluation into account – and if spending did not change at all in the coming year – the tax rate would be 15.5 mills. 

The board of finance will not set the final tax rate until immediately after the budget is approved at the Town Budget Meeting on May 19. The Lyme-Old Lyme Schools budget referendum is scheduled for May 6.

Contacted by phone on Wednesday, Assessor Melinda Kronfeld said that she will not be able to detail the potential tax impact until the town’s Grand List of taxable property is finalized after the Board of Assessment Appeals concludes its hearings next week. 

She said the median increase in real estate values was 64% based on preliminary numbers. That means anyone whose property value went up more than that will see a tax bill higher than the projected 4.5% increase. 

Finance board member David Kelsey, a Republican, said during this week’s meeting that about 2,200 of the 5,500 households in town were looking at above-average property tax increases. 

First Selectwoman Martha Shoemaker on Thursday said the budget increase is driven by debt service on the school renovation project as well as the renovation to the Lymes’ Senior Center that is nearing completion. On the town side, the $702,350 debt service line that includes the senior center project represents a 62.9% increase over current spending.

In the capital budget, the town allocated $443,500 to save for the purchase of three fire department apparatuses. Also included in the budget is an additional $200,000 for road-paving projects, bringing the total line item to $1 million.

Shoemaker last week carried out a finance board directive to come up with some last-minute cuts by working with Finance Director Anita Mancini and department heads to slash $171,350 from the proposed budget. While decreases to individual line items were typically less than $5,000 each, a notable savings came from paying for a $50,746 equipped police cruiser using revenue collected from the fund for officers’ road construction detail assignments rather than the capital budget.

‘Who Knows?’

Finance Director Anita Mancini in budget documents estimated the Rainy Day Fund, known in accounting parlance as the Undesignated Fund Balance, currently represents 35.15% of the total operating budget. 

Using $800,000 to offset the tax increase will bring the Rainy Day Fund balance to an estimated 29.6% of the total operating budget, according to budget numbers. 

The move was a compromise between Republicans, who wanted to take out less from the Rainy Day Fund, and Democrats, who wanted to use more. 

Democrat Kimberly Thompson put it this way: “There are a lot of people who’ve had major adjustments to their evaluation of their property. And I think whatever we can do to minimize the impact of that this year, we should try and do.”

Republicans Kelsey and Andy Russell said they want to make sure there’s enough money in reserve in case a catastrophic storm wipes out the shoreline tax base. 

Russell invoked the idea of a 100-year storm when he said the Hurricane of 1938 occurred almost a century ago. A storm of that magnitude has a 1% chance of occurring each year, but hasn’t happened since. 

“Well, here we are,” he said. “That’s only 13 years away. So who knows?” 

Kelsey pointed to large-scale projects that could impact future budgets such as the installation of sewers in the town’s beach communities which will require extensive appropriations in coming years.  

He also pointed to unknown costs that could hit at any time. This year, those unexpected costs amounted to $1.65 million. Included in that amount were the construction of the Emergency Operations Center, reconstruction of the Hawk’s Nest sluiceway, construction and paving of accessible parking spaces in the Sound View parking lot and a comprehensive revision of the town’s zoning regulations.  

Finance Board Chair Bernblum said the town’s bond attorney advised him creditors like to see undesignated fund balances in the amount of 30% of the total budget, but that the town’s AAA rating with S&P Global Ratings would be unlikely to change if the amount went down to 25%. 

“In general, I’m informed by what I think the sentiment of the taxpayers would be, and without having done a study, my gut tells me that they would argue for a larger withdrawal in order to mitigate their taxes this year,” he said. 

He cited those on fixed incomes as the most vulnerable to the tax increase. He said he was less worried about himself and fellow finance board members Kelsey and Russell. 

“I don’t care too much about Dave or me or Andy, for that matter, if our houses went up in value because we can afford to pay it,” he said. “But there are folks in town who can’t, and for them it’s a real burden.” 

Thompson, who also serves as chairwoman of the Democratic Town Committee, expressed confusion about the unwillingness of the Republicans to agree to a larger withdrawal from the Rainy Day Fund when the finance board under Kelsey’s leadership set aside money to mitigate tax increases several times, including $600,000 in 2023 and $800,000 each year in 2022, 2020 and 2019. 

“And in all those years, I don’t think we ever actually ended up needing that money,” she said. 

Meanwhile, the Undesignated Fund Balance (Rainy Day Fund) has grown from 22.2% in 2020 to the current 35.2%. 

Finance board member Anna Reiter, a Democrat, pushed for a $1 million withdrawal from the Rainy Day Fund. 

“We could take out another million next year and another $900,000 a year after that, assuming we don’t increase this fund at all. And we would still be at over 25%,” she said. 

But Kelsey and Russell pointed to debt levels in the school district and the town that will be felt for years to come. 

“I think the stakes have changed,” Russell said. “I think the increases we’re seeing and are going to see in the next few years are going to be more significant consistently than we’ve seen in the past.”

Ultimately, the group decided against a suggestion from First Selectwoman Martha Shoemaker to let voters decide at the budget referendum how much to take out of the Rainy Day Fund and then against Bernblum’s subsequent idea to leave it up for discussion at the public hearing. 

The vote to set aside $800,000 was endorsed by Republicans Kelsey, Russell, and Matthew Olson along with Democrats Bernblum and Thompson. Reiter (D) was the lone nay vote.

Editor’s Notes: i) This article has been updated to correct some budget terminology and figures
ii) Bennett Bernblum is a financial supporter of LymeLine.com, but has no input to the editorial process, which remains completely independent.
ii) A reminder of Our Policy on Comments.

Death Announced of Scott Speers, 54, of Old Lyme

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OLD LYME – Scott Speers, 54, of Old Lyme, passed away Thursday, April 10, 2025 …

He is survived by his daughter, Meghan, wife, Sandy, mom and dad, Robert and Marian, and brother, Rob …

An Old Saybrook High School graduate, he was an ironworker for many years. 

A private memorial for the family will be held at a later date.

Editor’s Note: Visit this link to read the full obituary published by the New Haven Register on Apr. 16, 2025.

Old Lyme Zoning Commission Resoundingly Rejects Overlay Proposal, Calls for Cooperation in Determining Future of Halls Road

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An audience of around 80 in the Town Hall Meeting Room and those watching remotely listened as the Old Lyme Zoning Commission voted 4-1 to reject the Halls Road Overlay District proposal.

Controlling Destiny … and Density

OLD LYME – Change is going to come to Halls Road, but the Zoning Commission on Monday said now is not the time. 

In front of an audience of around 80, the commission voted 4-1 to deny a proposal created by the Halls Road Improvements Committee (HRIC) for an Overlay District to allow apartments and condominiums to be built above, or behind, ground-floor businesses set close to the street. 

Commission members credited their decision to a groundswell of opposition manifested in “Overlay? No Way!” signs all over town as well as in comments on social media and at public meetings. Concerns revolved around the hazards of allowing multi-family residential development in a commercial area with limited septic availability and no sewers. Critics also called out a lack of information and not enough opportunity for residents to get involved in the process. 

Denise Savageau, a former alternate member, who was elected to a full seat last November, told commission members during their deliberations that she shared the frustration of residents that felt they were left out.

A retired environmental planner, who now serves on numerous state-level commissions concerned with natural resources, Savageau said there needs to be more involvement from the Planning Commission, Zoning Commission and other relevant agencies in coming up with changes to Halls Road regulations. And the discussions need to be conveyed clearly to the public at every step.

“I want to stress that this is not about the Halls Road Improvement Committee, but about the silos that have been created by all of the land use commissions in town,” she said. 

She described issues such as climate change and a lack of affordable housing options — both of which are subject to more state mandates with each passing year — that require local regulations to evolve. 

“The changes are going to come,” she said. “We need to plan.” 

The failed overlay district application is the latest in an effort going back more than a decade to improve the three-quarter-of-a-mile strip between two Interstate 95 interchanges that feed the town’s historic district and its shoreline. First there were calls for sidewalks; then came the possibility of village-like storefronts and apartments, a pedestrian bridge and more greenspace. Much disagreement and several discarded plans later, one of the only areas of widespread agreement is that Halls Road remains unattractive.

Some want big changes. Some want more modest aesthetic improvements. Others are fine with the way things are.

Member Jane Marsh in her deliberations recalled the commercial zone’s origin in the middle of the last century as a place people could easily access and find a place to park amid the rise of suburbanization. 

“It was created because it wasn’t going to be the most fabulously beautiful location in town. It was going to be functional and pragmatic for people, and that’s how it got built,” she said. “… It serves its purpose. It may not be very beautiful, but I don’t expect it to be beautiful, actually. I expect it to be the way it is.”

The overlay district proposal was approved by the Board of Selectmen in a 2-1 vote in November. It was endorsed 5-0 by the Planning Commission in January. 

Having a Conversation

One of the loudest voices against the overlay proposal was Robin Breeding, an artist whose social media posts and graphic design helped galvanize the opposition. Many people did not find out about the overlay district proposal until she began to publicize the issue after a sparsely attended public hearing in January. 

She welcomed the Zoning Commission’s decision in a phone interview Tuesday. 

“People didn’t know this was happening a month and a half ago,” she said of the overlay district proposal. “They thought it was going to be the sidewalks and that pretty stuff that they talked about in the beginning. And then they started to realize that it wasn’t that any longer. And they started to learn about what it was.”

She said the contention that the plan would help address a need for affordable housing was inaccurate. With the state pushing for towns to ensure at least 10% of their housing stock is affordable to lower income households, she argued the Halls Road Overlay District plan to require one out of every 10 housing units to be rented or sold at affordable rates wouldn’t advance the town’s obligation by even one percentage point. 

Only 1.58% of the town’s housing stock is currently affordable by state standards, according to data from the state Department of Housing. 

She said the overlay proposal threatened to drive out existing small businesses — many of them service providers in office settings — through its focus on new development and ground-floor retail options to be built over time if there’s enough interest from developers. 

“And so it was basically saying, ‘We don’t care about you now,’” she said of the plan. “‘We only care about some future pie-in-the-sky version of what this could be, but we can’t guarantee it.”

She said the ongoing overhaul of the zoning regulations by an outside firm presents a new opportunity for the public to learn about and become involved in the process of improving the town, including Halls Road. 

The $129,776 update of the town’s zoning regulations is being conducted by the Hartford-based FHI Studio. 

The planning and design firm was hired late last year to embark on a year-and-a-half-long project to clean up existing language in the regulations and then engage the public in discussion about potential changes as to what can be built in town, and where. 

When it comes to the kind of changes that residents of Old Lyme have a tolerance for, Breeding cited sidewalks as a good place to start. 

“And let’s have a conversation with the town, and talk to the town about how they want to move forward,” she said. 

For and Against

Commission Chairman Paul Orzel during the hearing said the public opposition brought to light some questions that have gone unanswered. 

Estimates for how many units could be built under the overlay application range from 200 to 1,200, depending on who’s doing the calculation and which variables are considered. 

“I’m a firm believer in controlling my destiny,” Orzel said. But the proposal as he saw it left too much to chance. 

Member Mike Miller applauded the residents, who spoke up against the plan. He said he shared their concerns related to the environment, tax increases and the effect of more residents on the school system and the delivery of public safety services. 

He called for a return to the basics. 

“There are many things that the HRIC brought up to our attention that are good. For example, the original charter of sidewalks and landscaping,” he said. “I think we need to have a safe corridor for pedestrian traffic for the kids from school. We have our students that come into town and work the shops. There are things that we can do.”

The lone vote not to deny the application came from Mary Jo Nosal, a former selectwoman who disputed the contention that the public hadn’t been a part of the process. She cited public surveys, various workshops, town update meetings, annual budget approvals, and reviews and input by local agencies including the Zoning Commission, Planning Commission and Board of Selectmen. 

She recalled that a master plan to guide improvements on Halls Road emerged as a response to efforts from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to run high-speed trains through Old Lyme. 

Fears of the FRA’s plan slowed home sales and threatened business closures, according to Nosal. 

“The town also faced a scarcity of housing and office space options, and still does,” she said. “Long time residents had nowhere to live once they sold the family home; our children could not return to their hometown as there was nowhere for them to live and certainly afford; and community workers — teachers, healthcare workers, beauticians, grocery store workers — could not find an affordable home in town. Electric Boat was beginning its exponential growth but these professionals could not find a home here.”

She said the guiding question at the time was how to maintain and attract business and make housing more available, “While making it harder for the FRA to bulldoze our community.”

“The result was the development of the master plan for Halls Road and the effort to protect and improve our town center while being able to apply for state and federal grants for various improvements and bring in design experts to guide the process,” she said.

Nosal acknowledged many in the community feel the process behind the overlay proposal was flawed. 

“The Town of Old Lyme could look to improve the process for future town regulations and assure that more town meetings, land use joint meetings and significant planning occur as a lead-up to planning and zoning review,” she said. “But it cannot be denied nor should we dismiss the fact that many residents, the non-profits and business owners were represented in the process.”

Next Steps

After the vote First Selectwoman Martha Shoemaker said the Board of Selectmen will discuss the issue at a meeting over the next few weeks. She said Halls Road Improvements Committee Chairwoman Edie Twining has already expressed interest in working together to plan the next steps.

Twining on Monday night declined to give her own comment. But she referred to Denise Savageau’s speech on the need for town boards and commissions to work together — rather than in silos — so they could better inform and invite participation from the public. 

Twining could be seen during the meeting taking notes as Savageau spoke.

“Denise was 100% correct,” Twining said.

Editor’s Notes: i) Mary Jo Nosal is a financial supporter of LymeLine.com, but has no input to the editorial process, which remains completely independent.
ii) A reminder of Our Policy on Comments.