Over the past three months, officials in East Lyme have been conjuring an illusion of free choice over a property proposal. Thomas Hobson, a 17th century stable owner in Cambridge, England, was a famous purveyor of such tactics. Hobson’s clients only had the “choice” of taking the horse located closest to the barn door or nothing. His customer’s choice was really his choice.

The “Hobson’s choice” in East Lyme is proffered by a “task force” in hot pursuit of a referendum. Residents are asked to vote yes for $5 million in borrowing to buy a property vacated by Honeywell. A no vote will force the police to stay in a decrepit leaking station atop a brownfield of hazardous waste. The illusion is that anyone voting no will be responsible for the police department's ongoing deplorable working conditions.

Nothing could be further from the truth. That responsibility lies squarely with the officials who oversee the upkeep of town property, the same officials who have fallen short in that regard and now bemoan the consequences of their own mismanagement. Related is the question of how quickly a new building would fall into similar disrepair.

The illusionists of town hall offer their performance on a hazardous stage. The town’s credit rating was downgraded last summer subsequent to borrowing approximately $37 million to renovate schools. There is evidence that this downgrade has already harmed taxpayers by increasing their loan repayments. School classrooms are located in echoing gymnasiums or buildings with exposed wiring and plywood windows in the midst of winter. Renovations are incomplete. The town agreed to borrow more than $4 million this month for “well improvements.” Meanwhile we’ve been warned: additional borrowing could trigger another credit downgrade and more burdensome loan repayment. The impact on taxpayers of our downward credit spiral has not been officially quantified, yet we are asked to bless more debt.

Additional concerns abound. Our police force is dedicated and effective. Their presence deters crime. This means that removing the police from downtown Niantic has the real potential to increase crime rates there. Should the police relocate to a similarly central part of town, such as Flanders Road, then we’d likely see a decline in crime rates in a new spot. But officials propose to relocate police in the woods on the border of town. There will be no offsetting decline in crime in the Four Mile River forest.

Approximately half of the proposal is for open-ended “renovations” to the Honeywell property. Our illusionists would like a $2.3 million line of credit with a vaguely defined “public safety” earmark. Taxpayers glance across recent headlines and learn that our first selectman reported a public safety official to our police chief for possible criminal prosecution due to payroll “discrepancies” (see “Niantic fire chief resigns” The Day, Dec 22, 2018). If public safety officials have mismanaged something as routine as time cards why should they be trusted with a multi-million dollar loan?

There are even more reasons to “leave it” when officials finalize their offer. Demonstrably false statements have been made about the elevation of the property. Officials use public safety expenditures and expenditures in other towns to “show” that their plan is “affordable” yet there is no attempt to establish that the comparison towns are remotely similar to East Lyme. Officials want to co-locate various public safety functions at significant cost without showing any benefit. Regionalization is the future (see “Firmin, Nickerson Debate”, The Day, Oct. 30, 2017) yet officials are planning to boldly deregionalize from Waterford’s facilities.

It is increasingly clear that town officials are operating under the illusion that these issues are irrelevant. Taxpayers do have a choice. There are a wide variety of less expensive and centrally located options to improve police workspaces. Taxpayers can comfortably see through the illusion and vote no. And in coming elections they can vote to place fewer illusionists in positions of authority.

Brendan M. Cunningham, PhD

The author is an Associate Professor of Economics at Eastern Connecticut State University and East Lyme resident. The views expressed in this commentary are the author's alone.