Big Plans Have Big Consequences

While we do not yet feel the full sun of an economic recovery, there is a sense that the great recession is well into its final thaw. The first tentative stirrings of economic activity have reawakened investors and entrepreneurs to possibilities that have been on hold for years. So as the clouds of the economic downturn slowly move toward the horizon, they are taking a few silver linings with them. Notably, the period of reflection and planning afforded Newtown’s land use agencies by a hibernating real estate market may be nearing its end, and the town may once again face the kind of developmental pressures that fostered its remarkable spurt of grown in the 1990s and early 2000s. Perhaps that explains the recent increased level of discussion of age-old two topics: economic development and housing.

Over the past two weeks, the Board of Selectmen and public works and economic development officials have been reexamining the purpose and potential of the sewer system in Hawleyville, asking themselves whether it should remain as a lure for economic development as it was originally conceived, or repurposed as a hedge against groundwater pollution, which is the intended purpose of the sewer system that serves the center of town. Meanwhile, the Planning and Zoning Commission has been considering a possible expansion of this regulations governing multifamily housing projects in town. Both lines of inquiry anticipate the possibility, at least, of renewed large-scale development of the kind that Newtown has not seen in years.

Their discussions are important because large-scale development, as opposed to the more organic incrementally creeping kind that shaped the town over three centuries, has the potential to quickly and permanently change the quality of life here. Economic development is essential to local efforts to control property taxes for residential property owners, yet it also urbanizes rural landscapes and fills the roads with cars. And multifamily housing projects thrive or fail on economies of scale; the investment pays developers most handsomely for those projects with the most units — and people. In those multifamily housing zones that are not age restricted (P&Z is considering adding a third zone in this category to the two that already exist), more people means more schoolchildren. At a cost of $12,000+ per pupil, it is easy to see that the deal is not so handsome for local taxpayers.

If we are indeed at the dawn of a new economic day, we as a community need to meet its challenges with a resolve to be smart about how we grow both our economic base and our residential neighborhoods. We all need places to work and shop, and we all need places to live that we can afford, and development on both fronts can meet those needs in ways that enhance our lives without clogging our roads, spoiling our environment and vistas, or exploding our tax rate. We should shape our policies and regulations to address those needs. But we should also be wary of enabling or sanctioning large-scale solutions that may generate large-scale unintended consequences and may be with us for generations.