This post is about politics. If, like me, you’ve been trying to limit your exposure to politics to shield your sanity, I totally understand; read no further.This post is about politics, and it’s unpleasant. If, like me, you’ve been trying to limit your exposure to politics to shield your sanity, I totally understand; read no further.
The recent doxxing of our mayor is not an isolated incident. It is part of a pattern of lying, political intimidation and bad faith discourse that has characterized the Broad Street debate. A pervading sense of misplaced anger, entitlement, and suspicion of the most basic processes of civil society has seeped from MAGA Republican politics into our town. The way to banish this kind of toxic politics is to vote against it, to show definitively that Windsor won’t be intimidated by lying and bullying.
I still believe that the Broad Street project should not be partisan, or even political. We are trying to address a safety issue. The first Council votes on the project were, in fact, bi-partisan in favor. Unfortunately, however, projects like this have officially been added to the list of Culture War issues, as detailed in Council member Naeem’s recent piece. True to form, the local Republican Party’s response to the Broad Street project in Windsor has been, in a word, strange. A recent exchange in the Town Council Chambers encapsulates the party’s approach:
Council Member Will Pelkey, “I object to the motion.”
Mayor Black-Burke, “What is your objection?”
Mr. Pelkey, “I just object.”
This would have been a good opportunity for Mr. Pelkey to raise his apparent concern that town meetings are inconvenient for many voters due to the busy schedules we all face, and perhaps offer an alternative date. Instead, he and the Republican caucus waited until spring break, when they knew their Democratic colleagues would be out of town with their families, to call an emergency meeting with no public comment, adamant that the Special Town Meeting vote from a Tuesday to a Saturday.
The actual point of all of this, of course, was to distract from the safety problem at the core of this project, inject confusion into the process, and score cheap political points through parliamentary antics. And so, rather than a discussion of how to improve safety for Windsor Center’s residents, or the impracticalities imposed on voters by Windsor’s charter, we had four confused members of the Town Council staring at each other, without a quorum, and not sure what the rules were for the stunt they were trying to pull off.
In the end, Republicans wanted the question to be on the same ballot as the budget referendum, which takes place on a Tuesday.
The entire Broad Street debate has been like this; residents asking for help, voters trying to understand what is being proposed and what the prescribed process is, while the Republican caucus and their allies throw a series of temper tantrums and ignore residents’ description of the dangers they face walking in their own neighborhood. The recent Special Town Meeting was true to form as local residents described the harrowing experience of being hit by cars and many close calls, while opponents offered impractical alternatives, conspiracy theories of their neighbors’ motives, and complaints about the theoretical possibility of non-citizen voters.
The first inkling of how strange this debate would be occurred in January of last year during the first Town Council meeting on the Broad Street project, when Council Member Pelkey went on a 15-minute rant about how the project’s scope was, get this, TOO SMALL! According to Mr. Pelkey, we should move the curbs to expand the sidewalks, get rid of on-street parking, close every driveway on Broad Street, and close the library parking lot. And, of course, we should delay accepting outside grants for the project because these BIG ideas would require years of additional study and discussion.
Mr. Pelkey’s expansive view changed dramatically when it came time to actually vote. In one of the more despicable acts I’ve ever seen from a public figure, Mr. Pelkey used parliamentary antics to bully a man fighting cancer. Mr. Pelkey repeatedly called for roll call votes, trying to catch a fellow Council member unconscious when he was forced to zoom into the meeting from a hospital bed due to the Town Charter’s voting rules.
Mr. Pelkey went on to lie about police records on Broad Street, claiming in writing on March 6th, 2025, “According to data received from Windsor PD, these same streets recorded only 4 accidents since 2017, and zero deaths.” In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Windsor Police Department revealed that there were, in fact, 85 collisions in that area during the time period Mr. Pelkey specified, 16 of which resulted in injuries. Furthermore, the Police Department confirmed that it had not provided any data of this kind to elected officials or members of the public in the six months preceding the referendum. To be clear, this is a public servant knowingly lying about police records to make a political point. In many places in the US, this is grounds for removal from office. Unfortunately, Windsor’s Board of Ethics has no oversight over Council Members.
An even more exaggerated version of this claim was repeated by the political action committee Concerned Windsor Citizens in paid ads in the Windsor Journal the following day, “The fact is: No Pedestrian involved in accidents in the last 10 years! 4 Motor Vehicle accidents only in the last 10 years! […] Data provided by Windsor Police Department Records Office, 10 yr. data available.” The same ad was posted once as “Paid for by James Durant / Jeffrey Carter, Concerned Citizens,” and separately as “Paid for by Concerned Windsor Citizens” without proper attribution of the group’s treasurer. James Durant was subsequently elected to the Town Council on the Republican ticket along with Mr. Pelkey.
I wish I could tell you more about the relationship between these gentlemen and Concerned Windsor Citizens, but the PAC has never filed their legally required financial statements for this time period. What documentation does exist never mentions Mr. Durant or Mr. Carter as a treasurer, and does not show any donations to the group except for a donation in 2024 from the group’s president, Keith Samolyk. The only time I’ve ever seen Mr. Samolyk’s thoughts on the issue was a comment on a YouTube video that PACs should stay out of Windsor politics. Despite fines from the State Elections Enforcement Commission, we still don’t know who is funding Concerned Windsor Citizens or who paid for these ads in March of 2025.
Adding to the sense of paranoia and menace in local politics, Concerned Windsor Citizens also paid for an typo-laden ad in the run-up to the budget referendum last year that reads more like a ransom note than political messaging, “(Make Note of who has those Yes Signs as they are the One’s)”
The actual debate on the Broad Street project was (and remains) strange. We get lectures on budget discipline from public officials claiming agricultural exemptions for their financial services businesses. We get PAC presidents saying PACs are illegitimate. We get the political party run by a developer saying all developers are corrupt and can’t be trusted. We get Board of Education members calling for DOGE to scuttle the project. We get politicians saying politicians shouldn’t be involved in the political process. We get statements of “protecting democracy” while circumventing the town Charter to undermine our New England style town meeting: the very origin of American democracy.
We also get increasingly ludicrous claims about the project: The problem is both empty storefronts and ugly new store fronts. They’re turning the Center into North Hartford (yes, someone actually said that out loud). Broad Street is fine and we shouldn’t spend any money on it, but it’s not fine and we should spend more time and money researching the problem that doesn’t exist. We can’t risk drivers being inconvenienced by I-91 backing up 1-2 times a year, so we should remove the crosswalks that residents and visitors use 365 days of the year. Our multi-million dollar fire trucks can’t mount 3″ granite curbs. The bike lanes will kill the Shad Derby (which also causes traffic delays in the Center, by the waw). Just do enforcement, because paying more police officers out of our property taxes will (somehow? magically?) be cheaper than accepting grant money to pay for an infrastructure project. Also, don’t pass the budget so the police department has fewer resources to do the enforcement that we want them to do!
If this all sounds irrational, it is. The intensity of the debate on Broad Street spilled onto the street itself. Volunteer “YES” sign holders were regularly cursed at from passing vehicles, treatment especially directed at female volunteers. I had to file a police report when a truck brushed me as I was putting signs up in the Center and then ran three red lights as the driver sped up Poquonock Ave. Later, a spouse of a local elected Republican explained to me, in all seriousness, why someone might feel justified in attempting vehicular assault in the context of the referendum. When I raised these incidents in the Journal, then Republican Chair Len Walker accused me of “tone policing.”
More recently, opponents have taken to online harassment as an intimidation tactic. In addition to doxxing our mayor on Facebook, opponents have been combing through my LinkedIn pages and speaking engagements with Connecticut Main Street, publishing screenshots online, circling my name in red as if they’re getting to “the real story.” Sam Savelli, a former Republican candidate for constable, was one of the people posting this information about me in public forums.
In another unseemly episode, Mr. Savelli, a volunteer firefighter, posted a video of himself in official Fire Department uniform, lining up town-owned vehicles telling voters “this won’t work” and to “bear this in mind” when residents vote on the project, even though the video shows a clear path through the area he had marked out for the truck to get through. Not only did this show a profound lack of judgement, his presentation reaffirmed the pattern of public officials intentionally misleading voters. He does not say “fire trucks won’t fit”, because the demonstration clearly illustrates that fire trucks can get through the area even in less-than-ideal conditions. He offers no evidence of actual affected response times or vehicle damage on Route 187 in Bloomfield, Route 218 in West Hartford, Windsor Ave. in Wilson, Route 195 in Mansfield, or any of the numerous three-lane configurations in the state for a very simple reason: road diets do not affect emergency vehicle response times.
Frankly, as someone who has witnessed my child nearly being hit by a speeding car in a Broad Street crosswalk, fear mongering over the possibility of scratched truck tires is a bit much to swallow.
Fire trucks are public property, not playthings or props for political messaging. Mr. Savelli does not speak for the fire department, and it was yet another breach of public trust to use taxpayer resources for a ham-fisted attempt at electioneering.
Will Pelkey was aat it again recently, lying about the referendum results in a Town Council meeting while claiming a “a slight majority” had spoken against the project at the meeting, despite multiple people noting that, in fact, residents had spoken more than 2-1 in favor. Even in today’s climate of “alternative facts,” it is still breath-taking to experience a public official lying straight to your face about something you, and they, just witnessed first-hand.
Compare all of this noise to the simple solution. Windsor Center recognized a problem, organized, and spent years developing a plan; reduce the road from four lanes to two with a turn lane to reduce chaotic lane changes and slow down traffic.
To opponents of this project, we are not your enemy. We are your neighbors. We are asking for your help. We have nothing to gain but a safer street so that you, your neighbors, and visitors can safely enjoy our beautiful Center.
I appreciate not wanting a historic district to change visually. The stability of visual similarity over decades is reassuring and worth striving for. I can also appreciate that some residents are accustomed to using Broad Street as an alternative to I-91 and don’t want to be inconvenienced. That’s all fair, it just doesn’t override local residents’ desire for physical safety in their own neighborhood, and it certainly doesn’t excuse the pattern of lying, parliamentary antics, and intimidation opponents of the project have engaged in to make their point.
As strange as this all is, it’s a familiar playbook: claim to be the victim of some nebulous conspiratorial force while avoiding accountability for yourself, complain that the system is unfair while benefiting from it, complain about taxes and fiscal responsibility while engaging in “creative” tax reduction strategies, use the political system to bully anyone perceived as vulnerable, claim to be protecting elections by causing confusion, ignore campaign finance laws, use public resources as political props, wear ignorance as a badge of honor, and challenge anything that even hints that the 1950’s might not have been the apex of American civilization, even if people are hurt or killed by your policy choices.
Who does that remind you of?