First Selectman Bruce Walczak responded to questions on multiple topics during the latest Brews With Bruce program at Newtown Senior Center.

The town’s top elected official was at 8 Simpson Street on September 22, when he sat down with 17 people who were ready to talk about housing plans at Fairfield Hills and related traffic, the status of the former police headquarters, updated public access tools within a Town building, Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) and other camera systems, and Town budgets, among other topics.

Walczak sat in the front of the room, facing those seated among five nearby tables. He thanked those who were in attendance, and outlined his plan for the next hour.

“I’d like to offer a few updates before opening the floor to questions,” he said. “That’s my favorite part of these visits — answering your questions.”

Despite the loose outline, much of the time was instead spent with Walczak fielding questions. It was midway through his first update, in fact, concerning the plans for Kent House and Shelton House on the Fairfield Hills campus, that the first question was tossed toward him. Walczak shared that leases for both buildings have been signed, with 125 apartments to be built into Kent and another 50 to be built into Shelton.

“Those will be ready in about five years,” he cautioned, “because it takes that long for all schematics, inspections, etc to be taken care of.”

The first question from the floor came then, with a senior center member asking about parking.

“Parking will be laid out around each building,” Walczak said.

A second question followed quickly: where will the entrances be? In response, Walczak reminded those present that the two buildings were among those to receive state and federal historic recognition.

“Requirements at both levels say they have to keep buildings looking as similar as they did originally,” he said. “They may have a few doors added for safety, but the doors that are already in place will remain as entrances.”

Campus parking was the next concern raised. Walczak said he does not think the addition of 175 apartments — most to be one bedroom apartments, with some two bedroom offerings, he later noted — will have a huge impact on parking.

Tenants “will go in and out at different times, through different exits and entrances,” he said. “They won’t be moving all at the same time.”

He asked the audience to think about Exit 9 from I-84.

“That area is used a lot, but you don’t see a lot of traffic at the same time,” he said.

Adding more parking within Fairfield Hills is a long-term goal, he also said.

“Funding is in place for additional parking around Newtown Youth Academy and Newtown Municipal Center,” Walczak said. Plans call for “permeable parking,” he added, using a gravel mixture over former grassy areas that will keep an area flat for parking, without creating potholes, while allowing rain to go through. A recent study shows the campus has more than enough parking during the week, but special events on the weekends create additional challenges, he said. Future special events will be able to use that expanded space when it is there, he also said.

“Until then events will rely more on shuttle buses and using adjacent lots like Reed School, which many people can walk from. It’s a constraint and something we worry about all the time,” he admitted.

Parking came up yet again later in the program when one man asked about shared parking for visitors to Newtown Community Center and Newtown Senior Center, both of which are housed within 8 Simpson Street.

“The trouble is, many seniors have trouble walking and there just isn’t enough parking available for them during the week,” the man said.

Walczak admitted shared parking for the building is not working. One woman suggested senior center members be given special stickers for their vehicles to indicate they have preference for the spaces closest to the senior center entrance.

“Community center visitors and members could have other stickers,” she added.

Walczak said the parking is indeed “something that needs to be talked about, but here’s the challenge: how do you monitor and enforce it? The problem is, there’s just not enough parking.”

One long-term plan, he said, is to demo Plymouth Hall, the long empty building to the immediate west of 8 Simpson Street, to create more parking or another green space.

“But that’s big bucks,” the first selectman said.

Spot paving may also happen at other locations on the Town-owned campus, including more paved parking near NewSylum brewery, he said.

Returning to Shelton and Kent houses, another attendee asked about retail plans they thought were voted on for the lower floors of those buildings. Walczak explained the referendum proposed mixed use to include “some commercial space.”

The ground floor of Shelton House will be more challenging to adapt into that use, he said. Both buildings will also be restricted by the historic designations mentioned earlier when it comes to commercial use, he added.

“We can’t tear out small windows and put in big windows, the kind of windows most people think of for retail space,” he said. In answer to another question from the floor, Walczak said the space may be more popular for medical and other office uses.

The properties will generate personal property tax through the commercial use, he said. The tenants in the apartments will be paying vehicle taxes to the towns, and the builders will be paying real estate tax, he added. Walczak said current discussions have the apartments at 900-950 square feet.

“These are not going to be huge,” he said. “There probably will not be a lot of kids in the apartments, due to their size,” he added.

3 Main Street

Walczak announced the Town has received “two attractive offers” for 3 Main Street. He could not give much detail about either offer concerning the building that formerly housed Newtown Police Department and some Town departments, he said. He did share that both are cash offers.

“The building is being sold as is, and if either of the proposals go through,” he said, “the building will be a multi-tenant commercial location.

“The building will be adapted, not demolished,” he also noted.

Walczak said he believes the funds received through the sale will go into the Town’s general fund.

Community Center Audio Update

The large multi-purpose room at Newtown Community Center has been upgraded with new audio-visual equipment, Walczak also announced.

“This will complement what we already have in the Council Chamber” of Newtown Municipal Center, he said. “It means better public access for virtual events, among other things.

“I think we’ll see a lot of creative uses of that space that we haven’t even thought of yet,” he added.

License Plate Readers & Other Cameras

The first selectman opened discussion of Flock cameras. He explained first that Flock is the name of the company creating Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) being used by many police departments.

For years, he noted, Newtown has been utilizing the service of a company that relies on ALPRs to scan license plates on personal vehicles.

“Those scanners can be used to find people who have out-of-state plates, to check if they’re registered to vote locally or to see if they’ve registered to pay car taxes,” he said. “Those are incident-driven. They need a person to push a button to take a photo of a license plate, to run the check on the registration. They do not record continuously.”

Flock cameras mounted atop poles record vehicles as they go by, he said.

“They’re not incident driven,” he said. “It’s a continuous monitoring.”

Newtown Police Department recently announced it would turn off Flock cameras installed in town, he reminded the audience.

“They did this voluntarily, to give the state more time to try to work on requirements that address things like data storage, data security, who can use that information and who can’t,” he said.

Flock cameras, he said, are different from the recent announcement that local school buses will have cameras that will catch vehicles as they illegally pass a stopped bus.

Speed cameras, used by some municipalities, are still another type of camera, he said.

Returning to Flock cameras, Walczak said while those license plate readers have a place for use by police departments, he is not a fan.

“Flock cameras can be very helpful to the PD, especially in the case of a stolen vehicle,” he said. “They have some very legitimate applications for the public, but there is the flip side, as with every application.

“There has been abuse of the information collected. There are still a lot of questions,” he added.

“Personally, I don’t think the continuous recording is a good idea. There are too many questions about the data, and I don’t like the idea of constant surveillance.”

Cameras are everywhere, he did note.

“There are 650 cameras in Newtown at the school and municipal level,” he said. “Retailers use cameras, and there are Ring cameras all over the place,” he added.

One woman had had enough at that point.

“That’s a whole different kind of camera,” she said. “Give me a break!

“My Ring camera is seen only by me,” she continued. “Businesses have cameras to protect themselves. But Flock cameras are recording your every movement, as soon as you leave the house, everywhere you go.”

Transportation, Road Projects & E-Bikes

In response to another question from the floor, Walczak said the Town’s Easy Transit program has received funding to continue. Newtown Senior Center Director Natalie Griffith confirmed the program is funded through June 2027.

A Legislative Council ad hoc committee is working on that program, “to model experiences and options for residents,” he said.

Griffith noted additional local transportation options include Newtown Rides through Friends of Newtown Seniors and Hart service.

Walczak said while the big question is how the Town program will continue, “it’s not going away,” he promised.

One woman asked about the bridge over Stony Brook, which was washed out during the August 2024 flood. Walczak said that bridge was “at the engineering stage … and I wish I had a better answer for you.”

A bridge on Brushy Hill Road, which also washed out during the same storm two years ago, was higher on the priority list and is still being worked on, he said. A shortage of concrete, and then the need to restart certain steps, led to continued work on that bridge, he said.

“It’s now looking like the end of October before that one is fully done, although we’re hoping to have at least some access sooner,” Walczak said.

The proposed replacement of the Schoolhouse Hill Road bridge that carries traffic over I-84 was also raised, with one woman saying it will only make local traffic worse when something happens on the highway.

“The Town is already talking with the state because the local thinking is the state’s plan is too excessive,” Walczak said. “A full replacement is not needed,” he added.

The growing use of E-bikes on local roads was also asked about. One man said he was passed recently by a young E-bike rider while traveling on Queen Street. Another person said she watched, astounded, when another young E-bike operator disobeyed the crossing guard at Newtown Middle School and a school bus with its red lights flashing.

“He went right past the crossing guard, that bus and another vehicle, ignoring everyone including the crossing guard, who had his hands raised and was telling everyone to stop,” she said. “Between things like that and kids walking from the middle school to all the businesses in town after school every day, it’s dangerous.”

Concerns were also raised for traffic leaving the new businesses being built on Church Hill Road immediately east of the railroad bridge.

“There’s one business already there, and more are going to be opening, and you can’t see anything when you’re trying to turn left,” the same woman mentioned.

The Town’s SafeStreets4All program will help increase safety on some local roads, Walczak said, “including temporary work at the flagpole, but we don’t have full funding for this year.”

He also cautioned that solutions for issues sometimes lead to new problems.

The SafeStreets plan calls for the prohibition of drivers traveling south on Main Street from using the shoulder, particularly near Newtown Meeting House near the flagpole, to pass vehicles waiting to make the turn onto Church Hill Road.

“That’s going to lead to longer lines at the flagpole,” he said. “This is what I mean: solution, problem.”

Budget Cycle, New Middle School

Walczak said he and others have already begun talking about the next municipal budget. He will begin meeting with department heads in a few months to begin reviewing their budgetary requests, he said.

“It’s been just a few months since the referendum — we have about a four-month break, and then we spend the next eight months working,” he said. “It’s important, though. The Town’s full budget is approximately $140 million between the municipal and Board of Ed sides, and you have to see value in it.”

The Board of Education’s recent suggestion to replace Newtown Middle School with a new building was also raised Tuesday morning. After one woman called the current building at 11 Queen Street “beautiful,” another said “the interior is awful.”

Walczak said it would take an estimated $40 million to repair the 75-year-old building. He compared trying to repair the current middle school with having an older vehicle that looks great on the outside, but being told by a mechanic that it needs a new engine in order to continue running.

The Board of Education is also recommending a reconfiguration of the grades in different schools, he said. Fourth grade would move out of the current elementary schools into the new building along with students in grades five through six.

“This will address not only the need for a new building, but also alleviate approaching enrollment increases,” he said.

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Managing Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.