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.
It is unfortunate that the talent and energies of Edie, and other members of the Hall’s Road Improvement Committee, have been so misdirected by First Selectperson Shoemaker and have resulted in her resignation. Zoning Commission members who rejected the Overlay Proposal were correct to praise the hard work of Edie and her committee and place blame for their no vote at the front office of town hall.
Edie and I joined the HRIC about the same time, and in spite of all the work, the numerous challenges and obstacles, it also provided us with the opportunity to not only develop a strong working relationship, but also to become good friends. It is often said that the journey is more important than the destination. I am so pleased to have had the opportunity to take the journey with her. Edie is the most down to earth, straight shooter, no nonsense and committed person I have ever met.
I too would like to thank Edie for her dedication, hard work and mostly for her personal commitment, with only one goal in mind, to make our town better.
Howard Margules
Well said, Howard.!
For me, it is important to remember that volunteer work is the lifeblood of small towns regardless of politics.
Jeri Baker
Jeri, Very well said although even those who volunteer must be held accountable.
Thanks to Edie for all the great work she did for OL and the compelling vision she presented.
I was a big supporter of the HRIC as many other people were but our voices were drowned out by the pitchfork people who showed up at the town meeting as if they were bused in.
But fortunately, we can rely on these pitchfork people to stop the next gas station application that is submitted on Halls Road or the next Dunkin or Subway and then we’ll have the same lovely Halls Road that we always had, the same decaying Soundview Beach area, etc.
We can depend on nothing changing in OL and it will always remain the way it is.
What a loss and what a shame that the good will and hard work of Edie Twining should be misunderstood and misjudged by a crowd instructed to be hostile at the meeting referenced above.
Thank you Edie.
Thank you for your incredible dedication to our town and all the thankless hours of work on our behalf.