Letter to the Editor: Experience Makes Michael Barnes the Clear Choice for Zoning Commission

To the Editor:

I write in opposition to the reported consideration of Bonnie Reemsnyder for appointment to the Old Lyme Zoning Commission. The Board has before it a candidate of exceptional qualification in Michael Barnes — an Old Lyme native, multi-business owner, and six-year alternate with a near 97% attendance record and deep working knowledge of the town’s zoning regulations, coastal development rules, and the current regulation rewrite that is already well underway. Bypassing Mr. Barnes in favor of any outside appointment at this moment would be difficult to justify. Bypassing him in favor of Ms. Reemsnyder is indefensible.

The public record raises serious and unresolved questions about Ms. Reemsnyder’s fitness for public trust. In July 2019, she resigned as Chairwoman of the Connecticut Port Authority at the explicit request of Governor Ned Lamont, following reports that the authority had paid her daughter $3,000 for photographs hung in a state office — a transaction she herself acknowledged was a mistake. A state auditor simultaneously confirmed that a whistleblower complaint alleging management misuse of funds at the authority was pending. These are not minor or technical lapses. They are precisely the kind of ethical failures that disqualify a candidate for a quasi-judicial role in which residents must have confidence that every decision is made with undivided loyalty to the public interest.

Old Lyme is in the middle of its most consequential zoning regulation rewrite in over fifteen years. This is not the moment for a learning curve, and it is certainly not the moment to install someone whose record of public stewardship has been publicly called into question. The Board has the right candidate already prepared, already seated, and already doing the work. I urge you to appoint Michael Barnes and to decline Ms. Reemsnyder’s consideration entirely.

Respectfully submitted,
Christopher Roy
Old Lyme