It started Friday with a phone call from a potential legal representative for CCB. Who would have thought my years as a Sea Scout would potentially save the Day some 20 years later?
I received a call from a Lawyer who grew up sailing with my Sea Scout ship 101 out of Stratford, a ship I have so much tried to keep alive with my efforts at CCB, but seemingly never able to make it happen over the last 7 years due in no small part to the stutter step success I have had in creating a facility in the Park City.
She stated that she had heard of our woes with the City and thought what was happening was as she put it, "such a shame". We talked about how we became friends on Facebook and she explained that we had missed each other by months in Ship 101 as I had left to go to the Academy, while she remained part of the ship during her high school years. She had heard of me and I of her, but yet we never really became friends as youngsters.
And so as Friday closed, I sent a letter to the State, City and Newspapers of Record that we would be willing to strike a deal to resolve this matter.
Well 24 hours later, I see a Connecticut Post article where I learn that the City, knowing it's efforts to be illegal, would not be seeking to seize our fleet, by Bill Coleman saying, "I am not at all interested in being punitive with Chris; I just want his stuff out of there".
Hey Bill- NEWS FLASH- IT's NOT MY STUFF.
As Wikipedia puts it,
501(c)(3)
501(c)(3) exemptions apply to corporations, and any community chest, fund, cooperating association or foundation, organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable,scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, to foster national or international amateur sports competition, to promote the arts, or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals
CCB is no more mine than the Shehan Center belongs to Terry O'Connor or the City belongs to Bill Finch.
CCB is there for you to use, the boats belong to all of us and the pier they are attached to is a public thoroughfare to access the water and the "stuff" that is parked there belongs to a charity in good standing with the State and Federal Government.
Oh you say, what about that Notice of Violation for an UNAUTHORIZED DOCK? Doesn't that put us in Non-compliance with the State.
Well maybe, if it was a dock and if we had some place to move it to, but refused to. The very reason it is sitting on the dock is because the City yanked the permits to our moorings. We dont want to be on that dock, we dont want to have a single boat on that dock. We want to be able to go to sea the way all good sailors want to leave harbor. You know what they say, a ship may be safe in harbor, but that is not what a ship is built for.
The Floating Boathouse is designed to sail from Harbor to Harbor sharing the sport of boating with everyone. The reason it is stuck on a dock is because we have had our hands tied and were told we would be fined $1000 a day if we touched it. So The State and City have tied our hands and now have said swim fast or we'll kick you out of Long Island Sound. Really? Is that what a Government is supposed to do? And you call me unreasonable for fighting you on your merit-less persecution of a charity whose soul purpose is to share the art of boating with a generation of kids and families you have locked out of the water?
There are a number of mischaracterizations and unanswered questions in that article that our Board will be addressing one by one. The CT Post and I never quite agree on how to write a story. But the best part is the editor of the Post called me last week and asked if I would take her and her friends sailing. I told her I couldn't because the City had shut us down. Irony right?
All in all though, I can't blame Brian Lockhart of the Connecticut Post for what feels like a half-done story- after all the Hearst Corporation has eviscerated the staff of the Post and Brian was in charge of reporting on the September Revolt in the Polls for City Council last week. One man can't be the watch dog of a City Administration out to ruin the world on multitude of fronts. But then again, one man can't run a charity dedicated to opening Long Island Sound to everyone without funding, without support and with the full weight of the State and City governments weighing down on him.
So we need a boat house to do what we do. Is that too much to ask when we have given all we own and all we are to The City of Bridgeport for the last seven years? Am I really that unreasonable to make such a grievous request? Could we have asked for permission to build it? Yes. I did. Sue Jacobson of the DEEP made it clear to me in 2009 when I was working on the permit for the Landfill what I would be allowed to do and what I would not be allowed to do. She said then and there- that if I ever appealed a DEEP (it was only DEP back then) decision, I would never be granted another permit in this State as long as I lived. And so when she inadvertently told me that a Boat House would never be permitted in the Boat Basin when I was filing the second permit I wrote for CCB, I did the one thing every self-respecting American should do, I found the exception and ran with it. The USCG says it's fine. The DMV says its fine. The DEEP says, we recognize that the USCG and the DMV have no problem with what your doing and that it should be legal, we just choose not to follow the law.
Well that's not how things work in this Country and we wont stand by and let you wipe your nose with the US Constitution in the name of Environmental Protection. We no more hurt the environment with our boat house than any barge, any dry dock, the Port Jeff Ferry or the Coal Belching Power Plant- so if your gonna lay down the gauntlet for us because you don't like what we're doing, then so be it. We'll see how far we can get before the ship sinks from under us. But rest assured, we're not backing down, will not quit and will not give up the ship. And this Captain, is fully prepared to go down with it.
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