Planning A Better Town

One of the primary themes in the 2009 local election was Newtown’s need for long-range planning across the board — in its finances, its capital spending, its growth and development, and in its bureaucratic coordination in addressing all the above. Everybody was for it. Nobody was against it. And we suspect nearly everyone had a slightly different idea of what such a planning process would entail. A year has elapsed, and though Newtown still does not have comprehensive long-term planning policies and processes, local selectmen are now planning such planning.

It is the town’s good fortune that it does not have to start from scratch. The state requires towns to maintain a plan of conservation and development and to revise it every ten years. Newtown’s Plan of Conservation and Development (POCD) was created by its Planning and Zoning Commission and was last revised in 2004. Given the emphasis on planning in the 2009 election, the P&Z decided not to wait until 2014, expediting the process to meet a 2012 deadline for the next update. With that revision under way, the selectmen are exploring ways to use the POCD as a platform from which to work toward a list of local goals, just not in terms of land use and zoning, but in ways that satisfy the town’s broader hopes for a more prosperous, secure, and fulfilling community life. It’s a tall order.

The current 2004 version of the Plan of Conservation and Development actually makes an attempt to define Newtown’s intangible “community character” in terms of rural landscapes, lakes and rivers, and “image corridors,” including business areas, gathering places, and other “visual reference points.” These concepts were formulated with the help of a planning consultant, which may account for the jargon, but it was a good faith effort to quantify some indigenous qualities to be preserved and some possible threats to avoid. For the most part, however, the planning document was the work of the consultants and the Planning and Zoning Commission members — a relative handful of people relying on what they could glean from their attempts to assess the public will.

The selectmen clearly hope to move beyond the limited land use applications of a comprehensive town plan to include coordinated policymaking and enforcement across a range of boards, commissions, and public agencies. And if the POCD is to become the basis for this initiative, the selectmen, Legislative Council, and other agencies integral to that effort need to work with the Planning and Zoning Commission to define community goals, and identify the ways in which government might help achieve them.

Equally important, however, is to acknowledge the limits of government in the context of a free society. There is no one vision for a better Newtown; one needs look no further than The Bee’s Letter Hive on any given week to confirm that. And we suspect Newtown’s leaders already know that the idea of having the various components of a government, even a local government, marching in lockstep toward a unified vision for the future is anathema to the freewheeling political tradition of our democratic system.

The key, as always, is to encourage the community as a whole to become vested in the planning process, understanding that disagreement and conflicting ideas about what is best for a town is the rich medium from which a truly useful long-range plan will grow.