Newtown officials got an interesting proposition this week from The Harrison Group, a Waterbury marketing and research firm founded by two Newtown men. The firm offered its services, pro bono, to survey at least 1,000 Newtowners to assess public sentiment about the town in general and about specific areas of interest that may help the town’s leaders direct local policies and resources to better realize Newtown’s most widely supported goals.

It was a generous offer, and one we hope the Board of Selectmen and Legislative Council will embrace. If information is power, then a professional independent survey may give town leaders a useful tool in setting a course for the future with confidence and, if they are lucky, a consensus. That would be the best-case scenario. In reality, a survey may reveal what has been revealed before when local residents have been asked to express their preferences: most Newtowners want many different things that sometimes suggest conflicting priorities.

For example, when the town tried to sample public opinion about its priorities for Fairfield Hills in 2004, a survey conducted by the UConn Center for Survey Research and Analysis showed that most respondents preferred renovating existing buildings at Fairfield Hills over building new ones. Yet a majority also supported an architect’s study to explore the feasibility to constructing new buildings on the campus. Perhaps the most revealing numbers to come out of that survey showed that the town was closely divided on the master plan for Fairfield Hills that was rejected in a referendum the year before. Roughly a third of the people opposed the plan, a third favored it, and a third said they didn’t know enough about it to make an informed decision.

If the selectmen and the council go ahead with this survey, it will add to the confluence of events that may make 2007 a watershed year for Newtown. It will invite citizens to get specific about what they like and dislike about their town at a time when the community is launching a long-range planning effort and electing its leaders.  We have high hopes for all three initiatives. But of the three, the election campaign will be the key to success.

Surveys are about determining the public’s point of view. Planning is about realizing commonly held goals. Elections are about leadership. If candidates in this year’s election, incumbents and challengers alike, sit around with their fingers in the wind, trying to figure how best to finesse the public mood to their advantage, we’ve got a problem. As we have learned from previous surveys, the public mood can be muddled and hard to decipher — especially in the absence of vigorous debate. The Bee can present the town with all the facts, but it is still possible for people to be both informed and confused. There is a deep need in every democratic system to organize the facts of public life in the context of ideas, vision, and direction. This is the job of our political leaders: to transform our varied and individual opinions into a community with a clear sense of its identity and purpose. It takes more than mere survey analysis; it takes leadership.

This year various citizens’ groups have raised concerns and criticisms about Newtown’s priorities at Fairfield Hills, in the schools, and for its youngest and oldest citizens. Consequently, the political pot has come to a simmer early in this election year. We would encourage those who would lead this town over the next two years and beyond not to hold back, not to await survey results, or for the stately but stilted candidates’ forum in October. Newtown needs for them to start talking now, specifically and in detail, about what they think is best for the town — and why. Leadership implies direction. Our political leaders need to give us a better sense of where they intend to lead us.