Not So Fast

PROVIDENCE – The former owners of Johnson’s Pond in Coventry filed a federal lawsuit Friday that paints the picture of an orchestrated – and illegal – effort by the town to take the nearly 1,000-acre freshwater reservoir last year by eminent domain.

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And it asks the court to return ownership to Soscia Holdings LLC, which bought the property in 2020 for $1.7 million, only to have the town take it for $157,000 a year ago.

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The 55-page complaint, supported by 30 exhibits, was filed in U.S. District Court in Providence by Attorney Michael A. Kelly on behalf of Soscia. “I’ve been practicing law for 46 years and I’ve done an enormous amount of litigation with municipalities,” Kelly said in an interview with The Hummel Report. “I’ve never seen such outrageous conduct, motivated with such animus, as this situation.”

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The lawsuit seeks to hold each member of the Town Council legally liable for their decisions and outlines a detailed pattern of elected officials making statements in public about the process that they contradicted behind closed doors.

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“Although (the town) professed this was for recreational purposes, the plan was to create an economic redevelopment commission, and the town would develop the area around the pond for a profit,” Kelly said. “But they never disclosed this. From Day One this was a scheme to take the property.”

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One exhibit includes minutes from a closed council session in late 2023 – usually sealed from public view but inexplicably posted online, during which council members asked the town solicitor if they could be held individually liable for their decisions. That link was still active Friday morning.

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“Behind closed doors, as exemplified by the executive session, the Town, through the Town Council and (Solicitor Stephen) Angell, was quietly conspiring to develop a comprehensive plan to take control of Johnson’s Pond for the purpose of redevelopment and economic gain for the Town, themselves, and the property owners on the Pond,” the complaint states.

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“The Defendants later changed the public narrative to focus on conservation and recreation, only to return to the original economic redevelopment agenda after the (eminent domain) was complete,” the complaint continues.

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One councilman said the town could turn the property into a “profit machine.”

 

The lawsuit is the latest twist in an ugly, years-long battle between Socia Holdings LLC, which bought the pond, dam and water-flow rights in 2020 from Quidneck Reservoir Company, which had owned it for more than 250 years.

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Over the next several years, owners of hundreds of homes surrounding the largest freshwater reservoir in Rhode Island were upset by water levels that alternated between what they said were too high and too low. The pond, which is a popular boating and fishing destination, was unusable in some parts when the Soscia’s lowered the flow, with boats unable to leave their docks.

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The lawsuit said that because Johnson’s Pond is artificial, manmade and non-navigable, people who live on the water have no natural rights to use the water, and that Soscia has exclusive control over the recreational uses.

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For many years, people who lived along the pond had recreational access to the water and Coventry had a lease with Quidneck (then Soscia) to maintain the dam that controlled the water levels. But the dam deteriorated and Soscia eventually told town officials that all boats, docks and moorings had to be removed.

Town officials portrayed the Soscias as holding them hostage, manipulating the water levels, so they could sell the property and water rights for exorbitant amounts. Behind the scenes they were negotiating a deal to buy the property.

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Concurrently, town officials successfully lobbied for a law that mandated the owners seek permission from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management to alter water levels. Soscia lost an appeal after it was passed.

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Meanwhile, according to the lawsuit, town officials were plotting a way to take the property through eminent domain, even though it was not legally sound to do so.

“The solicitor tells them that the town is on shaky ground, the state law doesn’t quite fit, but they can rely on their charter,” Kelly said.

 

Doug Soscia, who runs Soscia Holdings with his father and brother, had approached Council President Hillary V. Lima through an intermediary in late 2023, saying he wanted to develop a low- or moderate-income housing project for people 55 years and older, noting that Coventry only had half of the state-mandated 10% affordable housing stock.

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Soscia hired engineers to develop plans for a 55-year-old plus community of 500 two-bedroom mobile homes along the way - something that was not reported publicly at the time. Part of his pitch is that housing for older residents would not put a burden on the town’s school system.

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The development would feature a beach, a boat launch and boat slip ownership for each mobile home, offering “low- or moderate-income buyers amenities that are unavailable elsewhere in Rhode Island.”

That proposal went nowhere.

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In 2023, before Socia’s lease with the town expired, officials began commissioning appraisals, with the intent of taking the property, according to the lawsuit.

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Council members and their solicitor, Stephen J. Angell, talked about creating a local redevelopment agency to facilitate the condemnation, a plan the solicitor had been developing for months.

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According to the minutes of the Dec. 19, 2023 closed session, then-Council Vice President James E. LeBlanc asked if council members could be held liable for their actions.

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“Angell said no,” the lawsuit says. “But then qualified the answer by explaining that ‘you would be liable in an instance where the council, in his opinion, was reckless by saying the hell with it and said let’s just take the place by eminent domain and then we will fight about the price. That would be the type of reckless action that would expose the council.’” Ultimately, the lawsuit continues, “that is exactly what the town did at Angell’s direction.”

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The lawsuit also offers a detailed window into what was going on behind the scenes between the town and the Soscias, claiming that in April 2024 Angell, the solicitor, presented an  offer from the town to purchase the property from Soscia for $1.527 million.

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A month earlier Angell told a reporter from WPRI TV, “There’s one reason and one reason only for someone to find themselves in an ownership position of this Dam, other than a governmental entity, and that is to put a gun to the head of this municipality to get them to pay some ransom price for it. That’s not going to happen that way.”

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The lawsuit also says the decision to go ahead with the eminent domain proceeding was illegal, because the council did not have a quorum. The complaint noted that Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha had previously found the council violated provisions of the state’s Open Meetings Act in late 2022 when two members of the council, and one that has just been elected, had “substantive conversations” about hiring Angell and solicitor and a candidate for town manager. The attorney general ordered the vote to hire be posted, and retaken.

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The federal complaint says that despite the assertion that the pond was being taken for “public purposes,” right after the eminent domain decision was announced, Coventry Police issued “No Trespass Orders” to the Soscias.

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It also says the town doesn’t know exactly what property has been taken since no surveys have been completed.

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Meanwhile, the Rhode Island Ethics Commission voted unanimously to investigate a 24-page complaint that Doug Soscia filed against Councilman Jonathan J. Pascua. It alleges that Pascua ran for council – and then specifically used his office – to personally benefit himself.

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Pascua owns a 1,344square-foot house on Johnston’s Pond assessed at $521,100 that he’s owned since 2016. Soscia wrote in his complaint: “Pascua did not merely cross ethical boundaries in isolated instances. He systematically used his public office to secure private gain, manipulated legislative processes to serve his own financial interests, and actively concealed his intent and involvement until challenged by public scrutiny.”

 

The ethics complaint includes the screenshot of a Facebook post by Pascua before he was elected:

“I am going after Eminent Domain if I get into Council. I already have a proposal for an appraisal to do it in, in my possession, that will save me some time. That's what's needed to solve this. I'm sick of my own summers ruined as well. Awful situation for all of us.”

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The complaint has a picture, which is also included in the federal lawsuit, of Pascua paddleboarding on Johnson’s Pond with a sign that says: Vote Pascua…Save the Pond.”

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Pascua told The Hummel Report Thursday that he’s done nothing wrong. “If (The Ethics Commission) had dismissed (Soscia’s complaint) off the bat initially, I would have asked for an investigation,” the councilman said. “I have a clear conscience, I don’t believe there was any issue here. I’m totally okay with them looking in whatever they have to look into.”

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In a response to the complaint, Pascua’s lawyer claimed “the class exception” – saying that any action Pascua took as a member of the council did not benefit him to any greater extent as others would.

As for the federal lawsuit, the defendants, which include the town, six council members, the finance director, the town manager and the solicitor Angell, have 20 days to respond in court.

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The Hummel Report is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that relies, in part, on donations. For more information, go to HummelReport.org. Reach Jim at Jim@HummelReport.org.