Questions

About Upzoning

To the Editor:

This letter is a response to your editorial dated January 7, 2000, regarding the P&Z upzoning hearing.

As a recent resident of Newtown, I have found the workings of our appointed officials to be “enlightening.” I attended the first upzoning hearing and found out that the premise for the upzoning and its justification by the P&Z seemed to be lacking in content and substance.

There are many serious issues at work here, and I would like to have them addressed by an open and indepth debate by the residents of the town. With 2,315 properties at issue and assuming that each has an individual owner, this represents about ten percent of the Newtown population.

Since we don’t live in Serbia where a select few tell the majority how they will live, I would like to think that the principles of the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Laws of the State of Connecticut would prevail regarding property owners and their right to be treated fairly.

Here are the issues I have questions about:

1. The process of upzoning a parcel from ½ to 1 or 2 acres or 1 to 2 acres will destroy its market value as it no longer is a buildable lot. If this ½-acre lot cannot be improved, nobody would want to buy it, since it is practically unusable. The owner will be forced to abandon it and the town will end up taking it for taxes.

Assuming that the current owners are paying their taxes for these affected parcels, there is no incentive for the owner to continue to pay taxes. The net result is that the cumulative tax loss for Newtown on all these unimprovable parcels will be substantial. Has the P&Z taken this into consideration?

2. The issue of protecting the aquifer is most important and every effort to insure the safety of our water quality should be taken. In this light, I am aware of an abundance of solid information on the capacity of soil to filter household waste.

This information takes into consideration the type of soil, percolation rate, depth of the aquifer and other pertinent details. The major concerns of water quality are bacteria count, chemicals, turbidity, color, odor, pH and the presence of unacceptable quantities of dissolved solids (hardness).

With many existing working wells with adjacent septic systems located throughout Newtown, if there was a problem with ground contamination, we would be made aware of it and its deleterious effect on the aquifer.

Before we adversely affect 2,315 property owners, why not conduct a survey of existing well and septic systems and where there is high density, and assess the environmental impact?

3. The question of slowing down the rate of population growth by upzoning seems to have been answered by the articles in The Bee of January 14, 2000, on the 5/6 school. The fact of overcrowding and the need for more classroom space is already with us.

With the major developers saying that the easy parcels of land to develop have all been used and Newtown reporting that the filing of new building permits has decreased from 1998 to 1999, is the rush to upzone an overreaction to old news?

Newtown currently has a tax surplus of over $2 million. Since there is no foreseeable need to raise taxes due to the surplus, the pressure for building new classrooms is manageable as the funds apparently are available.

4. Affordable housing has been a Federal issue for many years. There are numerous examples of towns being sued by the government to provide affordable housing for the elderly and our children.

If we want to force our grown children to move out of Newtown to find a house they can afford, the best way is to push the cost of a starter house up over $300,000. By enacting this upzoning, the P&Z will effectively raise the cost of a building lot to a price where an affordable home cannot be built.

This is not Greenwich. There are areas where expensive homes exist or are currently being built. The targeted areas are mostly in Sandy Hook which is still affordable. I would think that the goal of the P&Z would be to keep this range of values intact to make the town of Newtown more diverse.

As a property owner in Sandy Hook, I would not object to my property value increasing. I do object if it is at the expense of my neighbors and their losing the equity in the land that they worked and slaved for years to acquire. What has happened to the concept of the American dream?

Barry Piesner

34 Alpine Drive, Sandy Hook                                      January 19, 2000