Castle Hill Victory Lap Costs Borough Residents 13% More
To The Editor:
Everything costs more. Gas. Groceries. Your mortgage. And now, your Borough tax — up 13%.
Why: Castle Hill lawsuits. $75,000 in legal fees this year alone. Over $90,000 since the fighting started. The meters are still running.
Here's what that money bought: Zero new homes. Zero new tax revenue. Just lawyers.
The people who packed those hearings to stop Castle Hill got what they wanted. Everyone else got the bill. Meanwhile, 117 homes that would have generated nearly $1 million in annual property taxes sit unbuilt. And our taxes keep going up.
At some point, organized opposition to housing isn't civic engagement. It's an expensive hobby that everyone else gets to pay for.
Not everyone can afford a 13% tax hike. But those fighting Castle Hill think we can.
Samuel S. Grummons
Newtown
First of all, if those 117 luxury homes get built, everyone’s taxes will increase even more. According to the American Farmland Trust Cost of Community Services studies, on average, for every $1.00 of new tax revenue generated after converting wild spaces into housing, the cost of community services increase by $1.16. If you want to play the blame game for this year’s Borough’s tax increase, you oughtta be looking at the Borough Zoning Commission Chairman. He’s the one who violated the Freedom of Information Act, and spent $21k fighting and losing that violation. And he’s the one who ignored not one, but two protest petitions, signed by hundreds of abutters, which could have ended this before it cost Borough taxpayers a dime defending his actions.
That may have been true in 1995-2008 when every new unit of housing had 1.5 kids, but with an aging population and declining birth rates, our demographics have stabilized and our enrolment has been decreasing for 20 years while population has remained relatively flat at 28k. Less people in the homes. Not all households use the same amount of services as 2/3rds of our budget is for education. For example, Senior housing uses very little services relative to the taxes they pay, and we recognize that with a Senior Tax Credit to keep them here. It is the same for one bedroom units. Age diversity distributes the costs of education, and housing diversity supports age diversity, allowing young people to live in town and seniors to downsize (freeing up their colonials for new families.) Newtown and R-2 zoning pushes a type of building geared towards families with kids, but 4,000 sq ft 4 br homes with big lawns to mow are not what young people or empty nesters are looking for or can justify at those phases of their lives. There is also a commercial aspect as CT business associations routinely support housing so their employees can afford to live close to their jobs. Commercial tax payers need employees, be it manufacturing, medical, retail, services or our restaurants. Without a workforce, commercial property is less desirable, the commercial assessments decline and more of the tax burden gets shifted onto residential at revaluation. Housing supports the school district too. Where can a bus driver afford to live in Newtown? Why would a bus driver commute to our community to drive a bus when the municipalities they can afford to live in also need bus drivers? Newtown schools would have to pay more to incentivize them to commute further (increasing traffic on the highways.) Its no wonder we have had a chronic a bus driver shortage.
I’m not sure I would call this a victory lap.
The contentious relationship between the NIMBY crowd and local builders has not served Newtown well. In fact, this kind of obstructionist approach is part of what leaves us with worse outcomes. We have already seen projects like the cinder block row housing on Oakview pushed through in ways many residents were unhappy with, and it is only a matter of time before a company like Vessel Technologies decides to block up an area like Castle Hill if we continue down this path.
We need to learn how to work with builders, not meet every proposal with lawsuits, angry Facebook groups, and organized opposition. That does not mean residents should stay silent or accept every plan as presented. It means we should engage constructively, negotiate for better outcomes, and work toward development that fits Newtown rather than spending everyone’s money fighting until there are no good options left.
Let’s learn to work together.