To the Editor:

In the New Haven Register, Wednesday January 28, 2009 article Town of Guilford OK's buying 624 acres, the town of Guilford  easily passed a town referendum to purchase property for open space. Nearly 600 acres at 15.5 million was easily passed by an astounding 2645 yes votes to 486 no votes. Guilford's first selectman Carl Balestracci praised voters for their support quoting "this is preserving something historic and beautiful".

In my opinion, with the difficult times people are facing financially nowadays, this yes vote took a great deal of courage. What a contrast to our town of Killingworth and the seemingly unresponsive actions of our selectman.

I have read that the town recently had successful negotiations between the town and the Venuti family based on independent appraisals for their land and the town. This seemed like such wonderful news, as anyone who has ever seen the Venuti property knows it is ideal for any town lake, hiking, fishing or just plain open space which is "historic and beautiful".

But then I read that our  three selectman decided that they knew what was best for the town in this struggling economy and put together some committee to yet analyze the issue again and again and again to determine if this was worth pursuing . This is not courageous but cowardly...let the town vote. 

Without question this property has been and always will be the most attractive parcel in town.  To me it seems there are at least hundreds of reasons to own this property and only one reason not to..an increase in taxes.  Whether the many benefits of ownership of this property by the town outweighs the only negative issue (tax increase) should be decided by the registered voters in the town...like the Town of Guilford, not by the three selectman.

Every study ever done on residential property shows the overall cost to our town for developing a property far exceeds the cost of purchasing a property for open space/town use. Many people in our town suggest that it is essential to keep our taxes down, yet many more insist in  preserving the rural character of our town (which I believe most of us moved here for.)

If the Venuti property gets sold  or worse, developed, I will always wonder why we were not treated  like the people in the Town of Guilford, with respect from our selectman  to make an intelligent decision based on all the facts. 

Joanne Gorman