To the Editor:

If you attended the June 2nd P&Z meeting you probably walked away with some of the same additional questions that I have:

1. In the P&Z minutes of May 5th, which are published on the Newtown government website, Wharton Capital presented the 24 hour distribution of traffic that they were projecting on slide 12 of their power point presentation. The attorney for Wharton said you can’t call this a truck terminal, which the property isn’t zoned for or eligible for an exception. Yet when you look at the volume of vehicles that will be coming and going based on their own presentation ... well if it looks like a duck. So my first question is why are they still calling it a warehouse and not a truck terminal?

2. Wharton’s traffic expert said the heavy traffic in and out of the facility will use I-84 75% of the time, 10% Mt Pleasant Rd and 15% Route 25. Wharton also said they don’t know who the proposed tenant will be. One member of the P&Z asked if you don’t know who the tenant is going to be how can you tell where and what direction they will send or receive daily shipments to or from? My question is even if Wharton is correct that 75% of the trucks will use I-84, what exit will they use? Exit 8, 9, 10 or 11? Since Wharton’s traffic experts have studied this so closely shouldn’t they be able to tell P&Z which exits will be used off I-84 and how often based on I-84 traffic patterns?

3. New information about the grade and steep decline of Mt Pleasant Rd was brought up at the meeting and questions raised on how that would affect the sound studies conducted by Wharton’s sound experts. Shouldn’t the P&Z commission have asked for a study about what the noise levels would be with trucks braking as they came down Mt Pleasant Rd? Rather than asking for that study the P&Z abruptly closed the meeting not allowing further public comment or even closing arguments for those opposed to the project.

4. Wharton Capital was given all the time they wanted to present their proposal yet the residents that were opposed were only given 3 minutes each to address the Commission. The Director of Planning kept on telling the audience this was a public hearing yet had little interest in hearing from the public. Is giving a 3 minute limit to only one side of a proposal in front of the Commission actually legal?

5. It seemed there were times during the meeting when the attorney for Wharton was instructing the P&Z Commission on what they should do and how to conduct the meeting. I also got the sense that the commission turned to Newtown’s Director of Planning on how to run the meeting. Shouldn’t the Chair of the Commission be in charge of the meeting, not the Director of Planning?

Joseph Skrzypczak

Newtown