Editor’s Note: This op-ed was submitted by George T. Frampton Jr., who owns12 Tantummaheag Rd. in Old Lyme.

Because Old Lyme Republican have apparently refused to debate the Democratic slate for Town Selectmen, the public has little way of evaluating the truth or falsity of their claim that the current administration tried to promote a “secret land deal” in 2024 by proposing a short-term agreement to help resolve the legal status of Tantummaheag Landing.

Fortunately, since the current governance structure of the Town makes secret land deals impossible –– in two important respects –– there is no validity whatsoever to that claim.

First, Connecticut’s system of recording land records preserves public transparency and ensures that private land use rights are always objectively determinable. Those records show conclusively that we –– not the Town –– own the Landing in fee simple, as Tim Griswold’s Town Attorney publicly conceded at a BOS meeting in August 2022 and Town officials and its counsel have repeatedly confirmed publicly and privately.

While the Griswold administration originally claimed there might have been a “public highway” along our back driveway based on a 1701 right of way, we discovered and published more than two years ago official Town records establishing that this right of way never went down what is now our back driveway, wasn’t even being used and indeed couldn’t be found in 1712, was replaced by another right of way in 1713 (which traces the current Tantummaheag Road and never  touched our property), and that by contract with the then-landowner Richard Lord,  the Town agreed to surrender all rights to any and all Town rights-of-ways over and through his property upon his death (which occurred in 1727).

Indeed when Lord became First Selectman in 1720 one of the first things he did was register in Town records additional documents (witnessed and notarized deeds and a will) making sure those records would also confirm that his heirs could no longer be bound by any rights of way –– just in case the Town ever tried in the future to reverse that bargain by ignoring its agreement to unburden the property. He was quite prescient.

Second, Connecticut’s governing structure guarantees that land-use restrictions or changes  by the Town be made in open meetings accessible to all residents, which is precisely what occurred in the spring of 2024 when the current Administration put forward for public comment what was no more than an agreement to establish a process for resolving the issue without either party giving up any rights. Since then, in fact for the last two and a half years, no Town official or lawyer has ever disputed  -–– in public or in private –– the validity of the official documents or their effect, or articulated a single coherent legal position, claim, right or theory of any kind that would provide any further basis for any remaining Town claims to public access whatsoever.

Their inability and failure to do so speaks for itself. 

As we found out, there was indeed an inconvenient truth embedded in the modern history of Tantummaheag Landing  which we discovered through our historical research: That in the midst of the depression in 1931 another Griswold administration arranged to “steal” for the Town what was then the back driveway to our property by hiring a surveyor who conveniently ignored the fact that the 1701 right of way had been replaced by a different route in 1712 which itself ceased to exist in 1727; then intentionally mis-mapped the 1701 route (which would have gone under what is now an ice-pond created before 1900) so that the Town could use our back driveway for river access. We even discovered a typed and signed letter from the surveyor to the Town Selectmen conveying his discomfort at the fact that he had changed the 1701 route to avoid its having been inundated by the ice pond and to give the Town the opportunity to use our back driveway in its place (a document that at some point mysteriously disappeared from the Town map drawer).

To be sure, our historic governance structures are sometimes complicated, tedious and a bit arcane; this is often what makes finalizing Town decisions cumbersome and often delayed. Even so, not only is there no “secret land deal” involving our back driveway, but the torrent of misinformation about this issue over the past four years makes clear that the Town will be best served by leaders with the background and experience needed to arrive at legal and fair decisions about private property rights while honoring the pathways and complications history and state public meeting law constraints have imposed on Old Lyme’s government.