Woodbridge Town Government Needs an Immediate and Drastic Course Change

What follows below is nominally modified from public comment that I provided December 10, 2025 to the Woodbridge Board of Selectman (BOS).

I have been a resident of Woodbridge for 39 years. With the exception of a 12-month period 23 years ago, when, in order to serve on the Amity Board of Education, I was required to join a political party that ultimately voted against me (after which the Board of Selectmen unanimously appointed me to the ABOE), I have always been an unaffiliated voter and remain so today.

I would like to address the BOS’s last regular meeting of the year to enumerate and describe six issues that deeply trouble me. I want to address them now to help the BOS, and the Democratic Town Committee (DTC) start the 2026 year with an improved direction, and before they miss the vital opportunity to course correct and improve several of the vital Town Housing and Zoning functions at the very outset of 2026.

Largely, I think we have a substantial mismatch between what Town leaders are doing and what town residents want. The observation that Democrats in town only won by a handful of votes in the context of both an overwhelming majority of Democrats in town and an overwhelming blue wave across the State and Country should tell the BOS and the DTC how disliked their policies are.

1. So-Called “Growth” Policy. It’s an anodyne enough slogan but what’s the reason and strategy behind the slogan? Why are the BOS/DTC pushing residential growth? It’s not for more work force since it’s nowhere near places of work. It’s not for more customers for town business growth since it’s nowhere near the business center. It’s not for taxes since as we observed with the Fountain Street Fiasco, it will net cost us more. It can’t be because the BOS consultant told the Town leaders last April that large apartment buildings will count as commercial on the grand list — because that would be offensively deceptive. I don’t think that there are as many as 100 people in town who actually favor this policy. Please stop.
2. Sane-Zoning. Has every select person and the responsible leaders of the Democratic Town Committee watched the 3.5hr video of the December 1 TPZ meeting? I point my finger largely at the DTC since they appointed the vast majority of the TPZ members. Like in the old movie A Clockwork Orange, the DTC members should be forced to watch the TPZ meeting as both punishment and to incentivize them to change their behavior. The TPZ appeared leaderless and uninformed — a bit like a tragic version of the Keystone Cops. It’s not hard to see how this bumbling crew got us into a town-wide 4-story zoning change. Democratic Town leaders — what could you possibly be thinking? That being said, I give enormous credit and respect to the ONE TPZ member who said he made a mistake in earlier agreeing with the town wide zoning change. Courage in political life is rare, and I applaud him for reversing himself. Are there any Town leaders that will STAND UP NOW and show the same character to immediately reverse this poorly conceived and virtually non-deliberated, poorly noticed, and seemingly arbitrarily arrived at huge change in vital zoning policy?
3. Housing Policy. The BOS/DTC Plan of Conservation and Development (POCD) draft policy that specifically calls for higher density housing in our town is ill conceived. I also understand that the Housing Committee has at one point advocated for 1,500 more housing units in town — it’s unclear whether this is total units or only affordable housing units. In either case, this is nuts and should be disavowed. Similarly, the Democratic Town leaders should admit that they are wrong and withdraw these ill-conceived housing policies. We need to separate affordable housing from housing policy.
4. Affordable Housing. The Town’s misguided approach to affordable housing is, at best, symptomatic of poor strategic decision-making. Instead of overbuilding 100 units with only 10-12 affordable housing units, let’s build the 10-12 units we want and not waste taxpayer resources on the other 90 extraneous units. Let’s innovate to achieve our social equity goals and not fall prey to overbuilding 4 story monstrosities. Let’s focus and do the proper diligence to consider partnering with an experienced nonprofit developer to help build affordable housing — AND ONLY AFFORDABLE HOUSING — in town. While this approach was presented at a Town-sponsored public forum last April, attended by Town leaders, what has the BOS/DTC done since then to put it in place? Let’s take a small bite and move forward on a rational approach to affordable housing.
5. Broken and/or Non-Existent Strategic Decision-Making and Policy Process. There needs to be a real strategic decision-making process for Town policy. This is a vital change in the way the Town government currently “works”: (1) Identify and vet your specific policy objectives, (2) Identify and describe all of the adjacent risks as well as secondary and tertiary risks, (3) Create a tailored plan around achieving desired outcome and also limiting identified risks, (4) Implement a process to make sure that policy execution is monitored to align with objectives and risk, then (5) Execute. ALL TOWN DECISIONS SHOULD THEN ALIGN WITH THIS STRATEGY.
6. Town Legal Expertise and Advocacy. Last, as an experienced consumer of high-quality legal service, and much less so of low-quality legal service, I am appalled by the quality of legal service that the Town obtains. When I watched over 3.5 hrs of the December 1 TPZ video — restricted to only what I could see and hear on the video — I was certain that I was watching the applicant’s attorney provide legal advice to the TPZ members without the Town attorney being present. Turns out the Town attorney was there — he likely has skid marks from being run over so many times. As I hope to see the BOS move forward immediately on corrected housing and zoning policies, they will almost certainly NEED new and better counsel NOW.

Those are my comments, and I hope that the BOS and DTC take these comments as they are meant — constructively — so we can all see the required immediate and drastic course change in Town strategy, policy, and operations.

— Leonard Bell, MD

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The writer was a member of the Woodbridge Board of Finance from 2001 to 2002. He was subsequently appointed to fill a vacancy on the Amity Board of Education where he served as one of three members of the Amity Special Review Committee (2002-2003), an ad hoc ABOE committee that examined and presented to the Towns regarding the District’s financial operations associated with the 2000-2001 fiscal year. He was principally responsible for leading the creation of the Amity Finance Committee in 2003.