The Groton Town Council and town manager are elected to serve the people. This was turned on its head by the last council and the new council is continuing in lockstep. The past council voted to give a single out-of-state developer exclusive rights to develop the William Seely School property with “no strings attached.” The school property only has vehicular access by way of Walker Hill Road, a neighborhood road.

My property that abuts the school property has access to a main state road, Route 12. I have tried for years to get the council to commit to a selling price (major information needed by any developer) for the school and to work together to market the properties so that we could compete with neighboring towns with larger acreage, better main road access and visibility. This would attract quality retailers with lower risk for failure and increase our tax base, giving residents’ tax relief and a place to shop in a modern center, when compared to the many older strip-type centers Groton has a plethora of.

I introduced the current preferred developer along with one retailer to our town manager. Apparently our town manager has decided to be a colleague of this preferred developer, bringing these two parties together with council help to make the path clear for the preferred developer with a resolution that fails to prohibit it from putting all entrances directly onto Walker Hill Road. This theoretically would let this preferred developer bypass the purchase of my property.

The collateral damage would be to the surrounding neighborhood (my neighborhood) because they would suffer forever with traffic late into the night rather than having that traffic go directly onto the commercial road on Route 12. It certainly would lower the values of their homes.

This neighborhood has presented the council with a petition to make the sale of the school property contingent on all major entrances coming off Route 12.

Due to the lack of action from this Town Council, a council that does not consult with unbiased professional commercial development experts, including our own planning staff, we must now ask the RTM to vote this resolution down and send it back to the council for a rewrite to require major access onto Route 12. Let us hope that the RTM cares most about the long-term future of Groton and our neighborhoods with development.

The RTM should consider the needs of all stakeholders, rather than the quick lining of the pockets of a preferred developer -- and who knows who else within the Town of Groton government.

Gretchen Chipperini, who lives in Groton, is negotiating to sell her property along Route 12 for commercial development.