Wading into the alphabet soup of Newtown’s zoning regulations can be hazardous to your wakefulness. But as the Planning and Zoning Commission seeks to move beyond its legally precarious AHD with a MUMI-10 as a buffer against the state’s AHAA, which ultimately led to a court-ordered approval in 2011 of an MIHD in Sandy Hook Center, one distinct message emerges from the accumulating jumble of acronyms: Newtown is trying very hard to stay alert to its obligations to provide a wider variety of affordable housing stock to its residents.

(Bonus glossary for insomniacs: AHD = Affordable Housing Development Overlay Zone; MUMI-10 = Mixed-Use, Mixed-Income Overlay Zone; AHAA = Affordable Housing Appeals Act; MIHD = Mixed Income Housing District.)

Most people do not wake up to the importance of the work of the Planning and Zoning Commission until the land use panel starts deliberations on the future of their particular neighborhood. Consequently, the commission’s discussions and continuing hearings on the MUNI-10 proposal for a 35-acre parcel adjacent to I-84 off Church Hill and Walnut Tree Hill roads have drawn mostly neighbors of the site, who are alarmed by the prospect of a large-scale commercial/housing project moving in. What is happening at this parcel near Exit 10 and possibly at three other eligible sites in Hawleyville may mark a turning point in the development of Newtown.

Whether it is a turn for better or worse depends on your point of view. If you are waiting in traffic near the key I-84 interchanges at Exits 9 and 10, high density residential and commercial development allowed under the proposed MUNI-10 regulations may become the bane of your existence. If you are priced out of the local real estate market, the availability of a required percentage of affordable housing units in these housing developments may be just what you have been waiting for.

MUNI-10, with all its boring complexity and freighted consequence for the town, is emblematic of a new phase in Newtown’s development and its regulation under the auspices of home rule. The universally acknowledged and ill-defined “character” of Newtown has thus far evolved under a system of restrictive standards that have fostered a lovely town largely devoid of unsightly development — and, sadly, of affordable places to live for people of modest means. State law (AHAA!) addressing this de facto social sorting of rich towns and poor towns throughout the state has set limits for home rule on this issue. The MUNI-10 response in Newtown has loosened restrictions on density and thrown in some incentives in the form of allowances for commercial/residential mixed uses.

Whatever your reason for loving or hating MUNI-10, there is still a chance to be heard on the topic at a public hearing at 7:30 pm on January 15 in the Council Chamber at Newtown Municipal Center. Have some coffee before you go. The issue deserves your full attention.