A first-order differential equation is provided for a one-form, spin-s connection valued in the two-row, width-(s − 1) Young tableau of GL(5). The connection is glued to a zero-form identified with the spin-s Cotton tensor. The usual zero-Cotton equation for a symmetric, conformal spin-s tensor gauge field in 3D is the flatness condition for the sum of the GL(5) spin-s and background connections. This presentation of the equations allows to reformulate in a compact way the cohomological problem studied in arXiv:1511.07389 , featuring the spin-s Schouten tensor. We provide full computational details for spin 3 and 4 and present the general spin-s case in a compact way.