The Best Plan Starts Right Now

This time last year, Newtown’s local election campaign was in full swing with candidates of all three parties in contention for dozens of elected positions up and down the ballot. On one point, however, there was no contention: Newtown needed to sharpen its long-range planning skills across all areas of governmental responsibility — finances, capital spending, growth and development, and even in its bureaucratic coordination of planning and policy implementation.

Election campaigns, however, are the easier said part of the process. Now that we are a year into the than done phase, long-range planning is still percolating, but very slowly and deliberately. The Planning and Zoning Commission, which has more experience with long-range planning than any other local board or commission, moved up its decennial review of the Town Plan of Conservation and Development by a couple of years in response to the political emphasis on planning in 2009. The town plan was last updated in 2004 by P&Z; the new revision is due to be complete in 2012.

Mindful of promises made last year, both the Board of Selectmen and Legislative Council have expressed interest in supporting and assisting P&Z in the process, leading to philosophical discussions about the appropriate roles of administrators and legislators in planning and priority setting. Clearly, the Town Plan of Conservation and Development is going through a critical point in its evolution from staid land use reference document to dynamic pattern for progress.

Anyone who has taken the time to read the 2004 update of the town plan can see just how much work and supporting data goes into the document. During the election campaign last year, we wondered how many people were aware of the existing data and plans on Newtown’s development patterns and trends, conservation and natural resources, open space, community facilities, parks and recreation resources, the local transportation infrastructure, housing and population trends, and economic development policy. The information is clearly useful; we just are not sure how much of it has ever been used.

As the Planning and Zoning Commission, Board of Selectmen, and the Legislative Council sort out their respective roles in the current exercise in long-range planning, we would like them to consider taking data collection and plan formulation one step further. With all the Town of Newtown’s technological upgrades in recent years, it should now be within the town’s ability to collate data — demographic, financial, and political — in a real-time database that literally keeps all branches of our municipal government on the same page and up to date. (Much work in this area has already been done in establishing the town’s geographic information system [GIS].) Getting it all online would be even better, so citizens could assess the progress of their elected officials in meeting goals and objectives in terms real data and not just election campaign spin.

Legitimate planning is not simply an exercise in expressing collective hopes and aspirations. Every journey to a new place, a better place, starts from the field of existing conditions. In mapping the way forward, it is essential to know where we are right now, not just in 2004, 2009, or some other receding point of reference. For any town plan to become a living document, we need to have the discipline to discuss our future not just once every ten years, but every day with the best information we have right now.