The room may have changed, but it was business as usual for the Board of Selectmen (BOS) last week—including the continuing saga of an inconclusive farm tax status settlement between the town and resident Wayne Cooke.

Cooke wasn’t among the small audience during the board’s first regular meeting in the spacious, state-of–the-art community meeting room in Branford’s new fire headquarters on Sept. 5, but his letter to the BOS, entered into the minutes by First Selectman Anthony “Unk” DaRos, made his frustration with the situation clear. Apparently equally as frustrated is Town Attorney William Clendenen, Jr., who apologized for having to “vent” while speaking to the BOS to clarify the town’s position.

In 2009, Cooke was notified by the town that the 2008 Grand List included a land status change to his 573 East Main Street parcel, from “farm” to “light industrial.” The alteration increased property taxes from approximately $17,000 to $85,000 annually. Cooke filed a suit against the town. A settlement between the town and Cooke was reached in April 2010.

However, that settlement was later revoked by the town in the fall of 2010, citing deadlines missed to begin farming and failure, on Cooke’s part, to properly file needed paperwork.

Cooke said he did comply.

“We submitted paperwork in May 2010 and they sat on it for five months and one day before it was due, they said it’s not good enough. They said plant something by June 1, which we did, and harvest it by Nov. 1, which we did,” Cooke told The Sound.

In 2011, then-third selectman John Opie (R) provided an extensive report to help clarify the matter for the BOS, finding Cooke had ostensibly complied with the terms of the settlement and that any remaining arguments of town in the matter were barely tenable, but then-second selectman Fran Walsh (D) and DaRos (D) backed the stance which had been taken by the town—and the debate continued.

Since then, some amended paperwork filed by Cooke led to the town restoring farm tax status on the property for the 2011 Grand List. However, it has not been continued retroactively back to 2008, 2009, and 2010. Cooke argues the status should be restored retroactively based on the 2011 paperwork.

That latest edge in debate has now strung out over the past several months, with  current Third Selectman Jamie Cosgrove (R) carrying on Opie’s request to have the matter settled based on Cooke’s compliance with the original agreement.

As town attorney Clendenen reiterated to the BOS on Sept. 5, however, the town has “acted in good faith,” in the matter, adding Cooke is “not above the law.”

Clendenen said Cooke needs to pay uncontested taxes on the property and to get the action from the state on his farm sales tax exemption in order to be in compliance.

Cooke told The Sound getting an exemption from the state was never a point of the original settlement. According to his attorney Nicholas Mingione, other farmers in Branford may choose to file for the exemption based on their own needs, but Cooke does not choose to take advantage of the exemption and therefore does not need to file.

“The point is the stipulation never called for any of this,” Cooke said, adding his inability to pay taxes is due to “fighting the unlimited resources of the town for this matter alone for four years.”

At the Sept. 5 meeting, Clendenen explained the town has not been able to procure a proper map of tillable and non-tillable land at 573 East Main Street, something he said the town assessor needs for reporting purposes. He noted that when two agents of the town were sent to inspect the property last spring, Cooke “kicked them off.”  Overgrowth now restricts town map inspection until next spring, said Clendenen.

“There’s a lot of contention over the map,” said Cooke, adding the town has tried to map in an abandoned peach orchard, among other incorrect property aspects. Cooke has submitted his own maps to the town as a “good faith” gesture.

“We’ve submitted four or five maps, and the town’s rejected every one,” Cooke said.

Regarding kicking people off his property, Cooke said, “They came up when our attorney was on vacation with his family and didn’t tell us they were coming. I said, ‘I’m not taking you anywhere without our attorney.’ The question is, are you inventorying our farmland like everyone else’s?”

Of his quest to have the town make the property’s farm tax status retroactive to 2008, Cooke said, “There’s no reason in the world they should be making this retroactive aspect contingent on this paper work. So the paperwork was approved for 2011. (Then) 2010, 2009, and 2008 should have been restored once 2011 was approved.”

At the Sept. 5 BOS meeting, Cosgrove said to Clendenen, “My question, I think, is the same as what Mr. Cooke is saying in his letter. You restored (farm tax status) for 2011 and you had an agreement it would be retroactive to 2008, 2009, and 2010. Then why are we holding tax bills for those years?”

Clendenen answered, “For those years, he still hasn’t supplied documents like any other farmer…Why is he different? The problem I’ve got…He won’t pay his uncontested taxes. He thinks he’s different. It makes it real hard for me, as the town attorney, when I’m dealing with other taxpayers. He wants to be different from other taxpayers and I just can’t do it.”

But then Opie, speaking from the audience, noted, “I’m a little confused about the unpaid taxes. We have a number of people in Branford who, for various reasons, are unable to pay their taxes—but that was not part of our agreement (with Cooke). There was no mention of back taxes when this board agreed to that. It was just simply the paperwork and the planting of (a) crop. I think those are two separate issues. I don’t think we should be prolonging this thing when there’s a legal remedy: putting a lien on property (and) we get paid when property gets sold.”

With regard to a property map to be submitted by the town to the state, Opie noted it will simply be filed away and “never see the light of day.” He suggested, “in the spirit of togetherness, we ought to accept (Cooke’s) map.”

Second Selectman Andrew Campbell (D) responded, “My issue is it’s not a map, it’s not a slight change of a map, but it’s actually misstatements about the land itself which correlate. The map is an addendum to (a) form required by the state, and the believed-to-be incorrect information on these forms has never been corrected...It doesn’t correspond. But with all of this, my problem is we are in fact creating exceptional rules for this one person that we’re not giving to all the other farmers in town, for example, who all do the same paper work. So it is perplexing to me—to be asked to be given a tax break…I would think that would be huge incentive to just fill out the forms. But we remain stuck on the same forms and these are the same forms we’ve been stuck on for 9 or 10 months now.”

Cooke said he intentionally stayed away from the Sept. 5 BOS meeting because, “I’m not going to go in there and get baited into an argument when I said the same thing for last year. How many times can you go in there and say the same thing without getting frustrated?”

Cooke said he instead sent in a letter, trusting the selectmen “can work this out.” He said he feels Cosgrove and Opie have been “very fair and logical about this…[They] understand the situation and will come to fair resolution that’s in the town’s best interest.”

As Cosgrove noted on Sept. 5, “After three or four years, not one person can give a logical reason why we revoked this farm tax status. [There have been] a lot of comments from people, they don’t agree with 490 and its benefit it has to the landowner, but don’t recognize the benefit it has to the town as a whole. Deal with it up in Hartford—don’t deal with it on an individual basis, by revoking farm tax status and then making a person go through hoops to reapply. We all know there’s a big difference between applying and maintaining. We’re setting all the rules for him to apply again; when he’s had it and there’s no reason why it’s been revoked.”