Battle Against Sex Offender Facility Making Headway, Montville Council Concludes

Gary Pike had spent much of Monday in Hartford, waiting to be heard in the public hearing on the siting process used to select Montville as the town where a sex-offender treatment facility should be located.

 He had wanted to thank the members of the judiciary committee for rewriting the bill, and giving it their attention, but there were too many people in line before him.

So he came back to Montville, and went to the Town Council meeting and, as he often does, led the citizen comment session that starts the meeting.

Pike has been fighting long and hard to keep the sex-offender treatment center out of Montville. And while he nearly gave up the fight at least once, he was not ready to give it up on Monday.

The council had met to vote on whether to terminate the funding for the legal fight between the town and the state.

Pike begged the council not to pull the plug.

“To pull it now, after Waterford, North Stonington, Ledyard, Salem, Preston and East Lyme have stepped up to stand beside us on this, I think it’s the wrong thing to do,”  Pike said.

James Andriote Sr., who at the end of the meeting would issue a press release calling for Mayor Joseph Jaskiewicz to resign, also stood in the comment session.

He said he was against pulling the funding for the lawsuit. Until the town receives a Memorandum of Understanding from the state – essentially a signed promise of the rules and regulations on the sex-offender treatment center, and how the state will enforce them – Andriote said the town should not eliminate the funding, but keep it as leverage.

“We’re looking stronger and stronger,” he said.

To date, according to Jaskiewicz, the town has spent about $87,000 on the lawsuit. The next court-related event is a pretrial conference on May 4.

Councilor Candy Buebendorf, who requested the special meeting to vote on the question, said she felt it was time to make a definitive decision.

The town met with representatives of the Department of Correction, the Attorney General’s Office and the governor’s office last week.

In that meeting, the state outlined the steps it would take to contain the sex offenders and protect the citizens of Montville. Click here to read that story.

After that meeting, the general sense that Montville officials had was that the sex-offender treatment center was coming to town.

If the Legislature passes the bill that was discussed in the public hearing on Monday, however, the site-selection process could begin again, and Montville might or might not end up as the site for the facility.

Councilor Gary Murphy, who works for the Department of Correction, said he believes it is coming.

The DOC has already started building it, he said. And while he doesn’t want it here, he said he believes “It’s going to end up here.”

Billy Caron asked how far the town intended to go with the lawsuit. The case already has been dismissed by one judge; the current legal work is the appeal of that decision.

Dana McFee said he was feeling optimistic. If the town’s legal battle has made the state change the way it intends to have the sex-offender facility operate, McFee said, “that’s money well spent.”

McFee, looking out at the nearly empty room, said he believes Montville citizens are with the council on the spending issue. “When the public is opposed to something that the council is in favor of,” McFee said, “they’ll fill this room.”

Russ Beetham also voiced his opinion that the town should continue to pay. He said he believed the state had already made concessions, in vowing that the sex offenders will not be free to walk around Montville, or interact with citizens; will not be worshiping in Montville; will not be allowed out of the facility unguarded.

“The only reason (the state) made concessions,” he said, is that Donna (Jacobson), Ellen (Hillman) and (Billy)Caron really pushed it right away… So I say this: I think for what we are going to get to protect the people of Montville, I think we got our money’s worth. Were going to know what’s there. Until that happens, I can’t pull the plug.”

Vice Chairman Ellen Hillman said that while the state had made concessions, the town still did not have the signed memorandum.

“They promised us an MOU for a long time,” she said, “and we don’t have it in writing yet.”