New Milford Council Declares Gronbach Arguments Null and Void

NEW MILFORD, CT -- When former Mayor Gronbach authorized spending money from the Landfill Settlement Fund to help convert John Pettibone School into a community center without Board of Finance review, he cited two documents to justify his action. The News-Times is reporting that those documents were voided at a meeting of the New Milford Town Council on Monday night.

One of the documents cited was a 2017 letter from the town attorney at the time, and the other was a white paper by former finance director Lee Palmer. The documents both argued that Board of Finance approval for the expenditures was not necessary because the allocated money came from settlement of a lawsuit against a waste hauling company, and not from taxpayer coffers.

Town Attorney Matt Grimes made representation to the council on Monday that Gronbach had based his actions on “unreasonable and misguided conclusions of law.” The council in turn declared the documents "null and void." Councilmen Peter Mullen and Tom Esposito did not attend the meeting.

Read the full story at The News-Times.