Jones Pursues Petition to Repeal Senior Safety Zones

Montville Town Councilor Rosetta Jones spent last Saturday at the Transfer Station collecting signatures on a petition (attached) to have the Senior Safety Zones repealed. The new ordinance goes into effect early next month.

Jones said she decided to act “in an effort to save taxpayers the expense of a court challenge by the ACLU.”

“I've gone out on the limb ...to try and reverse this ordinance before the town get entangled in a costly, protracted legal challenge.”

As of Dec. 17, Jones has collected 100 signatures. She said she needs 500 by Dec. 31 in order to hold a town meeting sometime in January “to overturn this ordinance.”

Jones acknowledged but said the rules mandate a petition to repeal an ordinance must be pursued within 20 days of passage.

Jones said Board of Education member Tom McNally, Town Councilor Dana McFee and others “have teamed up,” to get the requisite signatures.

Jones has been opposed to the ordinance because, as she stated in her testimony offered in the public hearing earlier this month, “This ordinance places the town in an unnecessary legal quagmire. Resulting from emotional, shortsighted decisions by some leaders. Haven’t we as taxpayers endured enough of those?”

See the full text of her testimony and argument against the ordinance, as a ‘senior’ herself, a longtime corrections administrator, town councilor and resident/taxpayer attached to this story.

Supporting the zones

Town Councilor Billy Caron, council liaison to the senior and social service community said from the outset that the ordinance was a request from seniors concerned for their safety, initially in response to the then-impending sex offender facility.

Caron has said the intent of the ordinance is to “make it clear” the town seeks to keep its seniors safe.

Caron was joined by fellow councilors Candy Buebendorf, Laura Tanner, Chuck Longton in voting for the ordinance, which was supported by outgoing Sen. Edith Prague, Senior and Social Services Director Kathleen Doherty-Peck and seniors. Councilor Gary Murphy was ill and did not attend the Dec. 10 meeting when the vote was taken. He did however previously support the ordinance.