RTM Moderator Sarah Seelye Resigns, Moves to Fairfield

The Darien Representative Town Meeting Is Looking for New Members

Here’s Who Was Elected to the Representative Town Meeting

RTM Questions, Postpones Handover of 35 Leroy Ave to School District

Government & Politics

By David Gurliacci | September 12, 2016

Government & Politics

By David Gurliacci | December 1, 2015

Government & Politics

By David Gurliacci | November 5, 2015

Government & Politics

By David Gurliacci | October 27, 2015

Sarah Seelye, moderator of the Representative Town Meeting for almost the past three years, is resigning from the RTM and moving to Fairfield to be closer to her new job. “I really thought I was going to be staying in Darien,” Seelye said in an interview Monday morning, “but my job [in commercial real estate] takes me farther from town.” Seelye said some meetings in Town Hall take place during the day, when she’ll now be at work. “I made the decision I couldn’t do both the way I wanted to, and I couldn’t be half in and half out,” she said. The RTM Rules Committee, which Seelye chairs as moderator, will meet Monday night. Seelye’s resignation is on the agenda.

You can belong to the Darien Representative Town Meeting, which has numerous vacancies, if you apply to your district chairman — unless you’re in District 3, the only one out of six that already has a full roster of members. The RTM has 13 vacancies when not enough people ran for office this November. One new member of the RTM is former Selectman David Bayne, who recently applied for a position and was approved by the caucus of members from his voting district. These RTM Districts have vacancies:

If you’re unsure of your RTM district, you can figure it out from this Web page.

These 41 Darien residents were elected Tuesday to the 57 seats up for election this year to the Representative Town Meeting. To fill out the remaining 16 positions, caucuses of the members of each of Darien’s six voting districts can meet in a caucus to elect new members, once the chairman of the district caucus holds a meeting. There were two write-in candidates (who didn’t file at the candidate registration deadline but then decided to run) — Christopher Ezbiansky won a seat in District 1 with 26 votes (just over the mandatory minimum of 25 votes for write-in candidates), and Kte Haueisen won a seat in District 5 (she received 43 votes). Jim Cameron in District 4 received more votes than any other RTM candidate — 343. Here are the votes for each member, according to the preliminary count released by the Registrars of Voters office:

District 1 (13 open seats, nine candidates on the ballot, one write-in candidate):

Stanley Buchesky — 268 votes
Patricia Bumgardner — 319
Curtis Butler — 266
Brent Hayes — 269
Patrick Keane — 272
Colin Kelly — 275
Bradley Pattelli — 266
Lois Schneider — 291
Bert von Stuelpnagel — 331
Christopher Ezbiansky (write-in) — 26

District 2 (eight open seats; two candidates):

Monica McNally — 265
Nina Miller — 287

District 3 (seven open seats; seven candidates):

Steven Anderson — 305
Adele Conniff — 299
Eugene Coyle — 309
Thomas Moore — 305
Seth Morton — 310
Edward Washecka — 277

District 4 (10 open seats; nine candidates):

Martha Banks — 324
A. James Cameron — 343
Lucy Fiore — 320
Frank Kemp — 322
Joseph Miceli — 331
Andrew Millar — 285
Susan Morrison — 321
William Peters III — 313
Sandra Savage — 318

District 5 (eight open seats; six candidates):

Carolyn Bayne — 303
Kenneth Fiveson Jr. — 264
Marlene Hayes — 276
Harry McLachlin — 271
James Patrick — 283
Kate Haueisen (write-in) — 43

District 6 (11 open seats; seven candidates):

Susan Lauritzen — 304
Martha Luz — 329
Emily McDermott — 325
Debra Ritchie — 322
Gary Swenson — 325
William Van Loan Jr. — 326
John Whitehead — 315

Correction: An earlier version of this article indicated there were only 57 seats on the Representative Town Meeting.

« August 2022 »

In an overwhelming vote of 48 to 14, with two abstentions, the Representative Town Meeting postponed considering whether or not the “care, custody and control” of the former library building at 35 Leroy Ave. should be handed over to the school district. Instead of approving a resolution to give Darien Public Schools control over the building it is already using as its headquarters, the RTM voted to postpone the vote until its first regular meeting of 2016. ______________

UPDATE, 9:54 a.m., Wednesday: Darien TV79 has now posted this recording of the meeting online. ______________

Two other RTM meetings, in November and December, are scheduled exclusively for organizing the body (including committee assignments and election of a moderator and other officers) in November, after this year’s elections, and for State of the Town speeches in December.