Judge’s ruling lays bare HDC’s bias, bad faith, and ‘petty cruelty’

In your September 4 front-page story, The Bridge acknowledges the Superior Court ruling that the Historic Districts Commission (HDC) acted with “bias and bad faith” in rejecting our applications to build a single-family home on Lowell Road, despite repeated attempts to satisfy the HDC’s stated concerns.

Nevertheless, The Bridge allows HDC member Luis Berrizbeitia another opportunity to advance claims explicitly rejected by the court. Indeed, the court found that Berrizbeitia was never going to vote to approve a house on that property, no matter how many modifications we offered. The court unequivocally rejected Berrizbeitia’s testimony claiming otherwise.

Although we submitted six different options, including designs prepared in consultation with the town’s experts in historic preservation, the HDC rejected them all. After visiting the property in person, Judge Brent Tingle ruled that the HDC based its rejections on “pretextual” and, in some cases, “demonstrably false” assertions.

The court further found that HDC members “expressed open hostility” to the report of town experts. Worse yet, the court found that board members considered “sabotaging” an HDC meeting by denying a quorum to discuss the report — a blatant example of unelected and unaccountable board members abdicating their public responsibilities.

Sadly, the court’s opinion not only exposes the commission’s bias, it also lays bare its petty cruelty. In an email cited in the opinion, commissioners sarcastically joked about a serious neck injury sustained by a project engineer, asking: “Whose neck did he break: a) the engineer (his own); b) [the builder’s] or c) Mr. O’s? I have my wish list.” The engineer subsequently died of his injuries.

HDC’s bias and bad faith have already cost the town significant legal fees. Will the commissioners’ continued opposition to this modest family home cost taxpayers even more?

Elise Stone
Old Marlboro Road

Mike Bushnell
Northwoods Road, Groton