Newtown’s perennial arguments about Fairfield Hills suggest some good things about the town. First, the sprawling campus of the former state mental hospital is a resource well worth fighting over; nobody would care one way or the other if it were just another piece of surplus land with a few eyesore buildings. But it is a spectacular property with extraordinary potential. The contention over its future is also evidence of an even greater local resource: an engaged electorate. The combination of the place itself and the great number of people interested in it guarantees that the property and the policies governing its use and development will never suffer from neglect. But six years into the transition of Fairfield Hills from an unwanted state liability to a prized municipal asset has not been without its lessons.

Newtown learned, for example, that in making plans for the foreseeable future, as it did in 2005 when it set up the apparatus for the administration of Fairfield Hills, the foreseeable part of the future is often measured in days, or maybe weeks and months, but definitely not in years. Six years ago, the town went to extraordinary lengths, including enlisting the legislature to produce a public act that applied only to Newtown, to establish an appointed municipal development agency — now known as the Fairfield Hills Authority. The FHA was charged with administering a master plan for the site, overseeing site improvements and infrastructure projects, and negotiating leases for the anticipated demand for private development on the campus — all under the aegis of its appointing authority, the Board of Selectmen.

The idea at the time was that the Board of Selectmen and Legislative Council did not want to get bogged down with the quotidian responsibilities of a busy landlord when they already had a full complement of municipal duties to attend to. The part of the future everyone did not foresee was the sagging real estate market and the economic downturn of the past three years. Just one lease has been executed at Fairfield Hills since 2005.

Now a shift of administrative responsibility for the campus back to elected leaders is on the table for discussion and gaining currency. It joins a confluence of Fairfield Hills-related issues — the master plan, housing development, and the future of the Fairfield Hills Authority itself — sluicing their way into the summer of 2011, when the local election campaign will start to simmer. We can all count on a lot more arguing about Fairfield Hills before this year is out.

The challenge will be to conduct those arguments in a way that keeps the electorate engaged, rather than letting the competition of ideas devolve into competition of personalities, allegations, political posturing, which for most people is a turn-off. Nothing clouds the foreseeable future quite so effectively as a big political dust-up, and to let it happen just when we most need a little vision would be a mistake.