The Sherman Lantern
February 5th 2026
By The ShermanCT Editorial Board
Malice, Hypocrisy, and the Weaponization of Municipal Power
Sherman, Connecticut, sells a carefully curated dream. To the outsider, and to the wealthy few who pay the premium to live within its borders, it is the "Best Small Town in Connecticut"—a sanctuary of ink-black skies, pristine waters, and a silence so deep you can hear it. Here, the Planning and Zoning Commission operates less like a municipal board and more like a high priesthood, rigorously interrogating any homeowner who dares to move a stone or cut a sapling. Residents are told that this vigilance is the price of admission. They are told that the rigid land-use laws are the only ramparts standing between Sherman’s "rural character" and the creeping sprawl of Danbury.
But just off Route 37, at the home of Frank Washabaugh, the curtain has been pulled back. What lies behind it is not stewardship. It is a darker machinery of administrative indifference and alleged punitive retaliation. For years, Washabaugh, a resident of the subdivision adjacent to the Sherman School, has lived under a siege of negligence that would bankrupt a private developer. His experience is not just a grievance; it is an indictment of a double standard where strict conservation rules bind the taxpayers, while the Town itself operates with absolute immunity.
The crisis on Sawmill Road didn’t start with a shout; it started with a light switch. In 2020, Washabaugh began raising concerns about high-intensity floodlights at the Sherman School that were blasting into his home long after the facility was vacant. For a brief window, it seemed a detente had been reached. The administration acknowledged the nuisance. The lights were dimmed. The neighborhood slept.
Then, the dynamic shifted.
Washabaugh is not a passive observer. As a vocal participant in civic life, he has frequently challenged the decisions of the current Town Administration, demanding transparency in budgets and accountability in operations. In a town where political circles are small and memories are long, dissent is rarely treated as democracy; it is treated as an insult. Suddenly, without operational justification, the lights returned. But they didn’t just return, they mutated.
According to reports filed with the town, the school, currently undergoing renovation, has stripped the gymnasium walls and replaced them with translucent plastic sheeting. Inside, high-intensity 5000K industrial fixtures burn through the night. The result is what neighbors call "The White Lantern." From 500 feet away, Washabaugh doesn't just see a glow; he sees the individual filaments of a lighting system that turns the gymnasium into a radiant reactor, broadcasting harsh, daylight-spectrum glare directly into his bedroom.
When Washabaugh confronted the First Selectman, the response was a classic deflection: "Insurance requirements." It is a defense that evaporates under scrutiny. There is no known insurance rider in the State of Connecticut that mandates unshielded, 5000K light be blasted through plastic walls into a residential neighborhood twenty-four hours a day. A simple, opaque blackout tarp, costing pennies on the dollar, would solve the issue instantly. The administration knows this. They have "considered" it. And yet, the lights remain on. The conclusion is stark: the light is the point. It is a spite fence made of photons, a blinding reminder that in Sherman, if you cross the administration, you don’t just get the cold shoulder. You get the floodlight.
If the lighting is a symptom of malice, the environmental hypocrisy runs into the very soil of the town. Washabaugh does not make this claim as a disgruntled neighbor, but as a former insider. For two years, he served on the Sherman Inland Wetlands Commission, sitting in the room where the sausage was made.
"I watched the double standard in real time," Washabaugh recalls. The "Crown Jewel" of Sherman is Candlewood Lake, a body of water currently besieged by toxic blue-green algae blooms. The Town lectures residents on fertilizer runoff and mandates expensive septic upgrades to stop nutrient loading. Yet, Washabaugh witnessed the town repeatedly approve parking lot drainage systems for local institutions, specifically the Church and the School, designed to funnel runoff directly into the wetlands feeding the lake.
Impervious surfaces like these lots are the primary vectors for the phosphorus and nitrogen that feed the algae. When a private developer proposes such a plan, they face a gauntlet of engineering reviews. But when the Town is the applicant? The scrutiny vanishes. "They consider it acceptable to allow the runoff that contributes to poisoning the very resource they claim to protect," Washabaugh says, "as long as it's a municipal project."
This institutional arrogance extends to the housing market itself. Washabaugh points to the town's aggressive use of the "75-Foot Septic Rule" as a weapon of economic exclusion. While modern engineering standards deem a 25-foot clearance from wetlands sufficient, Sherman enforces an extreme 75-foot setback. It is a tool designed not to save the land, but to stop the "wrong" kind of development.
During his tenure between 2022 and 2024, Washabaugh watched this weapon be deployed against a property owner who had held land since the 1980s. The engineers testified the plan was sound. The science was valid. But the town used the 75-foot rule to render the project technically impossible, preventing a landowner of modest means from building a home.
It was during this case that the mask slipped. The First Selectman, who has no seat on the Wetlands Commission and no legal role in its judicial votes, became "extremely passionate" about killing the project.
"He stopped me on the street," Washabaugh alleges, describing an encounter regarding the pending application. "He tried to 'encourage' me to vote against it." To Washabaugh, this felt like a direct attempt to influence a seated Commissioner outside the protective bounds of the public hearing process.
When Washabaugh refused to bend, indicating he would vote based on the law, not the political agenda, the atmosphere turned glacial. "His attitude shifted overnight," Washabaugh says. "He became combative. He became hostile." Shortly thereafter, Washabaugh resigned in protest. It is his belief that the situation on Sawmill Road, the blinding lights, the ignored emails, the sudden inability to fix a simple tarp, is the direct kinetic continuation of that conflict. "I refused to help him deny a resident their property rights," Washabaugh says. "And now, he is refusing to protect mine."
The retaliation has since spilled into the streets, literally. Recently, the School District unilaterally altered its traffic logistics, diverting the pick-up queue off school grounds and onto Sawmill Road. For the residents, this was not a traffic change; it was a blockade. Sawmill Road is the sole exit for the subdivision. Yet, on multiple occasions, residents have found themselves physically trapped, blocked by a wall of idling vehicles.
When Washabaugh pointed out that blocking a single-egress neighborhood is a massive safety hazard, impeding emergency vehicles, he was met with silence. Legal experts note that this likely constitutes an unpermitted modification of a "Major Traffic Generator," effectively commandeering a public road as a private overflow lot. But in Sherman, where the administration acts as both the developer and the enforcer, who is left to hold them to account?
Why does this persist? Because "Conservation" in Sherman is often just a cover for Control. The administration uses zoning laws to artificially restrict housing stock, driving up property values for the established elite under the guise of "Green Virtue." They claim they are stopping development to "save the trees," but as the parking lot runoff proves, they don't care about the trees. They care about the gatekeeping.
As night falls, the lights at the school will come on again. The "White Lantern" will glow, casting its industrial pallor over the neighborhood, ruining the dark skies the town claims to cherish. It stands as a monument to the current administration, bright, intrusive, and built on a foundation of hypocrisy.
Frank Washabaugh is not asking for special treatment. He is asking for the Town of Sherman to obey its own rules. He is asking for the lights to be shielded, a requirement for any other business. He is asking for the road to be open, a fundamental right of any taxpayer. He is asking for the administration to stop hiding behind "insurance" excuses and start acting like a fiduciary.
"We are still here," Washabaugh says, looking out at the glowing gymnasium. "We pay the taxes that fund their salaries and their lawsuits. We own that school, and we own the roads they are blocking."
The question now is whether the voters of Sherman are willing to accept an administration that operates with such blatant disregard for its own constituents. Today, the target is Frank Washabaugh. But given the precedent being set, where the Town is immune to its own regulations, tomorrow, it could be your road, your view, and your property value on the line. The administration may believe that if they shine the light bright enough, the dissenters will fade away. But as Washabaugh’s story proves, the glare only serves to illuminate the cracks in the foundation. The town sees it now. And they aren't looking away.
