Westbrook’s practice of having its constables issue tickets payable to the town rather than the state for motorists pulled over for moving violations on town roads ended on Oct. 6 with a unanimous Board of Selectmen (BOS vote, but the inception of the legally ambiguous practice has been harder to nail down.

Westbrook’s town ticket program was formalized at a Jan. 12, 2015 Police Advisory Board (PAB)/Traffic Authority meeting, approved at a BOS meeting on Aug. 10, 2015, and an ordinance was subsequently passed at a special Aug. 24 Town Meeting that year, according to meeting minutes and to First Selectman Noel Bishop.

The program enabled town law enforcement officials to substitute local tickets for state tickets when stopping a driver on town roads for a moving violation. By means of this program, the town issued tickets for $50, far less than the fines associated with state tickets and, assuming the violator paid, kept the entire sum.

While the program wasn’t formalized until August 2015, references to what appears to be an ongoing practice of issuing town tickets go back as far as June 2011 at Police Advisory Board/Traffic Authority (PAB) meetings.

The issue came to light after Don Harger, the town’s volunteer violations hearing officer, had a conflict with Tax Collector Kimberly Bratz, leading to his resignation. For several months, the BOS declined to accept Harger’s resignation, with Selectman Hiram Fuchs expressing concerns about the source of the conflict and the way in which tickets and appeals were being handled. This led to his growing concern about the legality of the town ticket program.

Hazy recollections and lack of specific dates in discussions during the BOS meetings on Sept. 24 and Oct. 6, 2020 made it difficult to pinpoint any formal action on the part of the BOS and/or town that authorized the program. As more than one person said the program was finalized during Chris Ehlert’s term on the BOS, the Harbor News narrowed the window of time to between March 2011 and November 2015.

The difficulty in pinpointing dates was compounded by a dearth of meeting minutes and agendas on the town website.

In addition, at the time of publication of Harbor News’s Oct. 15 story “Westbrook Ends Legally Ambiguous Traffic Citations Practice,” the town ordinances on the Westbrook town website, which were designated as “current,” did not include the ordinance passed in 2015.

Since then, the town ordinances on the town website have been updated; they still do not include the 2015 ordinance.

At least partly for these reasons, asked by Bishop at the Sept. 24 BOS meeting to find authority for the town ticket program, Town Attorney Duncan Forsythe was unable to do so.

“I just haven’t been able to connect the dots to understand what took place way back when [to result in] this process being implemented,” Forsyth said at the Oct. 6 BOS meeting. “How it came to be and what the process was and on what authority it was, I just haven’t seen that information.”

Forsyth said he had consulted State’s Attorney for the Judicial District of Middlesex Michael Gailor.

“It is Mike’s very strong opinion that any moving violation should be handled by way of a state infraction,” Forsyth said.

According to Forsyth, Resident State Trooper Ben Borelli agreed with Gailor.

An email seeking information prior to the publication of the Oct. 15 Harbor News story was sent to Bishop as well as selectmen Fuchs and John Hall, but was not answered before press time. Harbor News has since learned that both Suzanne Helchowski, Bishop’s executive assistant, and Bishop were away, and an email Helchowski sent in response to the inquiry while on vacation failed to transmit.

The following week, Helchowski and Bishop sent portions of minutes from PAB, BOS, and town meetings demonstrating that the program was formalized in 2015. Only the minutes from the Aug. 10, 2015 BOS meeting are available on the Westbrook town website.

Town Vs. State Tickets

In a recent telephone conversation, retired resident state trooper Wayne Buck said the practice was already in place when he started working for the town of Westbrook in 2010.

“We had these town tickets,” he said, but “[t]here were no protocols in place for the collection of them...That’s why they really weren’t written that much. There was no way to track it.”

With the state tickets, “there’s a force to [compel violators to] pay because it goes through the court system if they don’t,” he continued.

The driver for the program was to create “more of a revenue stream for the town,” Buck explained. With a “state ticket, the state gets the money,” but a town ticket is “only a $50 ticket as opposed to a $150 or $200 ticket for a moving violation” when the ticket is issued by the state. The driver pays far less and the ticket doesn’t affect his or her insurance.

“Everybody’s happy,” he said. “Nobody likes to get a $150 or $200 ticket.

“In 2015 [the town] got all their ducks in a row” as far as formalizing the program, Buck continued. “They set up a way for the person to contest the ticket. It was a little bit more defined and set up the way it should have been.”

The town would send out a letter if the ticket wasn’t paid, and Harger served as a judge of sorts for those who contested tickets.

“You can only write a town ticket on a town road,” said Buck. “You couldn’t write it on a state road...That’s where the state gives you a little leeway to create your own ordinance.”

The program was set up in “2015 with input from the state resident’s trooper’s office,” and was based on similar programs in other towns, Buck said.

At its Oct. 6, 2020 meeting, the BOS ended the practice.

“It is my recommendation, it’s [Borelli’s] recommendation and it’s the strong recommendation of the state’s attorney’s office that, at the very least, all moving violations go” to the state, Forsyth said.

The town may still issue town tickets for parking violations, however.