Passed by reference notices in legacy php code

I have inherited some legacy code that is throwing some php notices which I would like to fix.  Here is the current notice:

PHP Notice:  Only variable references should be returned by reference in \wwwroot\classes\model\DatabasePeer.php on line 40

Select allOpen in new window

and here is the code in DatabasePeer.php around line 40 (line 40 is line 2 here):

public static function &connect($host,$user,$pass) {        			
        		return @mssql_connect($host, $user, $pass);
        		return 1;
        }

Select allOpen in new window

This function is called with the following code:

$conn = DatabasePeer::connect($CONFIG_DATABASE_HOST, $CONFIG_DATABASE_USERNAME, $CONFIG_DATABASE_PASSWORD);
try{
	$sqldb = DatabasePeer::select_db($CONFIG_DATABASE_NAME, $conn);
}catch(Exception $e){
	die("Couldn't open database $CONFIG_DATABASE_NAME".$e);
	exit();
}

Select allOpen in new window

Any thoughts how I can change this code to prevent the notice?