Public Hearing Was Premature, Incomplete And Disheartening
To the Editor:
The proposal brought to the P&Z board on January 4th 2024 was prematurely approved without proper due diligence by some of the board members to fully understand the final plans. In terms of health and safety to the local residents and wildlife, 42 Hawleyville Road LLC presented a site plan that was incomplete. Furthermore this presentation came at a time where many residents were unaware of the hearing and/or unable to attend the hearing due to the holidays. When the town’s people spoke up to express their dismay about the time line and transparency surrounding the project, the P&Z board voted against revisiting this matter at a later date. Immediately the P&Z board voted to allow the project to proceed. It’s extremely disheartening that concerns expressed by local residents are falling on deaf ears, especially when allowing a development in a location that could lead to long-standing and irreversible effects to the all inhabitants of Newtown.
Dan Knize
Newtown
The residents are being heard, the local NIMBY has already driven out one Amazon warehouse and a housing development from the Hawleyville district. I think there should be a limit. Specifically, the town spent millions of dollars to improve the district with the goal of bringing in commercial business and increasing residential density. The time to object was when the improvements were voted on. The measure passed. I don’t think the residents of Hawleyville can vote yes for the improvements and then vote no on any changes. The limit should come when say 10 projects get railroaded out of town because of the NIMBY crowd then the rest of the town should no longer have to foot the bill for the improvements. Place a special, borough-like improvement tax on everyone in Hawleyville to pay off the infrastructure improvements.
Its amazing that the local Newtown paper still has not published an article on the January 4th P&Z hearing where this application was discussed. Yet the News-Times published an article on this yesterday. The quality and timeliness of stories available via the Bee has gone down hill after Mr. Voket leaving.
The Bee primarily covers public interest stories. It is what it is. Lots of good stories though.
The proposal was brought as an 830G project. 830G overides local zoning, there was very little P&Z could do accept approve it.