Old Saybrook, Connecticut, Residents Vote to Allow Group Home Petition

OLD SAYBROOK - A proposed adolescent group home for Anchorage Lane was the topic of a special town meeting on Aug. 29 attended by about 100 residents.

The Board of Selectmen called for the town meeting after residents requested to petition the Connecticut Department of Children and Families, DCF, for them to review the expected licensing of the group home facility to Middletown-based Gilead Community Services.

The license would allow the home at 7 Anchorage Lane to house five adolescent boys between the ages of 14 and 21.

State law allows residents to petition a state agency only after receiving permission from the town's legislative body.

Those living on Anchorage Lane and other residents expressed serious concerns about the safety of neighbors and the boys if the home were allowed to open.
Tom Kehlenbach III, a U.S. Coast Guard Licensed Marine Officer and operator of Sea Tow Central Connecticut, has written a book entitled "Safety Report and Risk Analysis Update, July 1, 2007 - Use of 7 Anchorage Lane as a D.C.F. Group Home."

In the book, Kehlenbach explains that patients of the group home could be suicidal and cites concerns about the home's proximity to three sides of unfenced deep water, the eight-lane Interstate 95 Baldwin Bridge which fails to have suicide barriers on either side of its public walkway, and the fact that the group
home's backyard was recently transformed into a large driveway.

One resident at the meeting expressed concerns about a group home for troubled boys being located near a marina where the boys could look out the window and see boaters having parties with women in bikinis.

Kehlenbach questioned why the state legislature required a municipality to hold a town meeting to allow interested residents to petition a state agency.
The provision was placed in the same bill, Bill 1216, which prohibited towns from treating group homes differently than single-family homes.

That bill was passed by the legislature in 2001.