Date: Fri 23-Feb-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Quick Words:

council-ordinances-Cascella

Full Text:

Cascella Wants Review Of Outdated Ordinances

B Y K AAREN V ALENTA

The question of ordinances - who should write them, how many should be written

and whether some have outlived their usefulness - has captured the attention

of town officials.

First Selectman Bob Cascella would like to amend or repeal many of the more

than 50 ordinances that are on the books, calling them outdated, outmoded and

troublesome.

Pierre Rochman, chairman of the Legislative Council's ordinance committee,

believes the fewer ordinances a town has, the better off it is.

"Too many people are trying to get what they want done in town by having

ordinances written," Mr Rochman said. "These special interest groups are

behind the suggestions that the power to write ordinances should be taken away

from the council."

"I think the process works quite well as it exists despite complaints from

people who are not getting what they want," Mr Rochman said at the Charter

Revision Commission last week.

Mr Rochman singled out the Police Commission and its former chairman, Dick

Sturdevant, as an example of a special interest group that is attempting to

strip the council's authority. Mr Sturdevant sent a letter to the Charter

Revision Commission recently in which he said the power to write ordinances

should be given to the Board of Selectmen and the council should be disbanded

and reconstituted as a Board of Finance.

The (police department's) proposed alarm ordinance has been stalled in

Legislative Council for three years and it is not an isolated incident, Mr

Sturdevant said in his letter.

"We've revised this proposed (alarm) ordinance three times already but there's

no pleasing (the police commission)," Mr Rochman said. "We are going to revise

it. But some procedural changes have been made in the police department

regarding false alarms and we wanted to give it a little time to see how well

the new system will work."

Mr Rochman said other instances of special interest groups are residents who

want the council to write an ordinance to prohibit neighbors from storing junk

on their property and firemen who want buried water storage tanks to fight

fires. Local fire chiefs have been asking the council to enact a water tank

ordinance for the past four years.

"These are areas which are more properly addressed through zoning

regulations," Mr Rochman said. "In fact, through the advice of our legal

counsel, we sent the proposed water tank ordinance to P&Z."

Ordinances are not the best way to get things done, Mr Rochman said, and they

should be written only as "a last resort."

"A lot of people don't even know that many of the current ordinances exist,"

he said. "If you want the registration of alarms or the installation of water

tanks, it should be part of a procedure that is regularly handled by town

government."

Several weeks ago Mr Cascella gave the ordinance committee a list of

ordinances which he believes should be repealed or reviewed.

"Some of these ordinances, such as the sound amplification one, is absurd," Mr

Cascella said. "Our office and the police department have great difficulty in

enforcing them the way they are written. Some are just outdated, like civil

defense's blackout shades."

The ordinance committee met Tuesday to review the list and assign those

ordinances to the committee members for review. Besides Mr Rochman, the

ordinance committee includes council members Gail Halapin, John Kortze, Bill

Brimmer and Lisa Schwartz, all of whom were elected to their first terms on

the council in the last election.