Groton, the former economic hub of southeastern Connecticut, was in serious financial trouble before COVID-19. It is sinking faster because of Gov. Ned Lamont’s war on public opinion.

Failed, self-serving, authoritarian leadership and gullible politicians on our present Town Council are increasing taxpayer costs by continuing grossly wasteful and redundant government. Meanwhile, we watch our population and businesses disappear in synch with what has become routine, unheard-of, yearly property tax and staff salary increases.

This costly and multi-layered government is causing our historical financial failures, finally breaking this once thriving economic hub into a community of complete failure, which will probably never recover in my lifetime, if ever.

Our present do-nothing town council is foolishly and blindly following an ingenuous idea from our failed snake-oil selling planner — who also has ordained himself the economic development director — and blindly accepting his promises of fake, quick success to solve their serious financial failings. This will result in long-term harm to this town’s future turnaround.

The council has found a way with COVID-19 to wrongly quell repeated opposition by using Lamont’s executive order of outlawing the citizen’s right to assemble.

The council’s solution is to approve at record pace, under the cover of this governor’s executive order, the DonMar Development of the former William Seely School property, fake “upscale” apartments on the town’s (if not southeastern Connecticut’s) most valuable commercial property.

What they are ramming through with no public input is a 1960s Howard Johnsons-style, apartment-only complex, facing the high noise of the highway. This poorly designed project takes no advantage of the unique attributes of this property. It could go anywhere in town.

They are squandering valuable property and the chance for future investment that could earn substantially higher tax dollars if this property were put to a much higher and better use.

We already have thousands of apartments with many vacancies and they have repeatedly proven here and across the Thames River in New London to be neighborhood-ruining, property value-deteriorating, and high police-need, money-sucking, town-destroying failures.

I am sure by the time this failure occurs, our superstar economic development director/planner will be long gone. He and the equally overpaid town manager are more concerned with padding résumés for future job opportunities.

Meanwhile, our grossly ignorant town council is only looking for “brownie points” in the short term to get those all-important votes so that they can continue their do-nothing agenda.

These apartment units are moving forward unchecked — and in contradiction to the history of citizen opposition — under the guise that these “upscale” units are being built by a builder with years of development experience, when in reality they have never built anything larger than a house and have zero rental experience. They mislead in claiming these apartments are going to save our financial hide. As a commercial real estate expert with years of experience in the residential and commercial rental business, I strongly disagree.

All public meetings before COVID-19 regarding these apartment projects were attended by dozens of opposing citizens, but since Lamont’s executive order allowing local governments to conduct business by Zoom, we have gone from scores of citizen involvement speaking out against them to four speakers in each of the two last critical public meetings.

The last time citizens were allowed to give normal in-person public input on this project was back in 2017, at the zone change meeting for this town-owned property. There are many reasons for this. The town is purposely not making these meetings known. Many people do not have a computer or the skills to use Zoom. And people are occupied with very important life emergencies that should have precedent over this project.

Such projects are not emergencies. They can wait until after this virus subsides and we can go back to normal public hearings. Lamont did not think it through (or maybe purposely he came up with his executive order) that he was giving these controlling local governments a powerful weapon to squash citizens’ First Amendment rights, allowing local leaders to continue their self-serving agendas without public opposition.

This Groton council is playing Lamont’s executive order like a fiddle and it cleverly allows them to choose tyranny over freedom.

It is a clear example of how an incompetent government can use dirty tricks to take advantage of its constituency by keeping them in the dark or simply keeping them quiet.

Gretchen Chipperini is a local businesswoman who owns property adjacent to the proposed apartment complex. She lives in Groton.