Existing Development Plan Anchors Long-Range Planning Effort

By John Voket

(This is the second part in a series examining Newtown’s efforts at strategic and long-term planning.)

Are Newtown residents paying the price because the community has failed to adopt a comprehensive program of long-range or strategic planning?

Newtown’s Finance Director Robert Tait weighed in this week about whether the lack of a unified long-range or strategic plan to date has been costly to taxpayers, saying it would be “difficult if not impossible to determine.”

At the same time, Mr Tait said he does not know of any towns in the state that maintains a long-term or strategic plan beyond a five-year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) similar to Newtown’s. The finance director says he does not doubt there are towns in the state that do have such initiatives, but he believes they are few and far between.

Some officials say Newtown’s various department-based long-range and strategic planning programs have already successfully served their purposes, and the community’s needs for decades. But a number of political candidates seeking office or reelection this November say that Newtown is either not doing it, or approaching planning in an unorganized or ineffective fashion.

Albert Roznicki, a Legislative Council candidate with the Independent Party of Newtown (IPN) recently argued in a letter to The Newtown Bee, that “It goes without saying that in order for a CIP to be effective it should be in accordance with some form of longer-range plan. Not having such a plan makes a difficult task even more difficult.”

Bill McNerney, an IPN candidate for Board of Finance, added in a recent release that without a true long-range plan for what Newtown will look like in 15 to 20 years, the community will never be able to grow and develop in a cohesive manner.

“Most of the time as Newtown residents, we see the Band-Aid approach to emergency situations and pet projects pushed through the budget,” Mr McNerney said. “We as a community have no idea if or how a project fits into the overall plan for our town.” His concerns were echoed by IPN school board candidate Bill Hart.

“Waiting until a need becomes critical, as we did with the high school expansion, only increases the cost and hurts the quality of our education system,” Mr Hart said. “There is no rational reason for most capital projects to be surprises. Any good CIP system, as now being implemented by the school district, can bring order to our planning, and the root of a good CIP system is a good strategic plan.”

Mr Hart also suggested in a separate letter that, “It is also time to take a look at modifying the capital approval process to make it more transparent to the voters.”

No Lack Of Planning

Despite the assertion that Newtown’s capital planning process lacks transparency, the openness of Newtown’s most comprehensive long-range planning initiative was defended by Lilla Dean, chairman of Newtown’s Planning & Zoning Commission, who is also seeking reelection this fall. In a recent letter to The Bee, Ms Dean stated, “While town boards are often accused of lack of planning, that is far from the truth.”

She said “plans are arrived at after exhaustive work with ample time and opportunity for public input. The hard work done by both the volunteers and staff in all areas are evident in the Plan Of Conservation and Development (POCD).”

Ms Dean explained that the while the POCD does not address all issues facing the town, “it is a vital underpinning for its forward movement.” The P&Z chair said the town’s 2004 POCD follows the same model as the ten-year plans “each town in the state must produce to assist the region and the state in the overall vision for Connecticut residents.”

“The Planning and Zoning Commission has spent almost two years preparing the present report,” with “considerable help from all involved departments, commissions, staff, and the public,” Ms Dean continued. “The relevant groups meet annually to review the progress made in each area. The document is continuously reviewed and has been revised as a result of these meetings.”

At the same time, various town departments from the Economic Development Commission to Board of Education to the Police Commission remain engaged in smaller-scale long-range planning.

During the administration of former first selectman Herb Rosenthal, the town also seated an ad-hoc Strategic Long-Range Planning Commission that would become involved in municipal strategic planning, and, when appropriate, reviewing capital projects as far out as 20 years or more.

That committee, which included resident volunteers Geoffrey Dent, Kathy Fetchick, Michael Floros, Peter Marshall, Gerald Robilotti, Anna Wiedemann, and former representative Julia Wasserman, conducted meetings, fact-finding and interviews, and completed its charge, turning its findings over to Joe Borst after he defeated Mr Rosenthal to become first selectman in 2007.

The ad-hoc planning committee’s co-chairs expressed growing concerns about the practice of some candidates to freely conflate long-range and capital improvement planning in their political statements.

Ms Wiedemann, a Democrat, and Ms Fetchick, a Republican, both current school board members, issued a statement to The Bee that took issue with the IPN chairman and first selectman candidate Bruce Walczak’s recent statement, claiming to be “the first candidate for first selectman to openly support strategic long-range planning” as part of his campaign.

“Mr Walczak is not the first candidate or public official to support strategic long-range planning,” the pair stated. “In addition to the IPN repackaging strategic long-range planning as their own original idea, the IPN has misunderstood and misrepresented the function of the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP).”

Ms Fetchick and Ms Wiedemann say the CIP was never intended to be a strategic plan.

“The CIP is a financial tool used to fund capital projects,” the statement continues. “The Board of Finance uses the tool to ensure that the town can afford projects requested by both the Board of Selectman and the Board of Education.”

The Board of Finance advises the Legislative Council as to what is affordable for the community. Then, the Legislative Council, and finally the public make the final decision to fund that final spending plan as part of the town’s annual budget referendum.

“The strategic planning process needs to take place in each department and then roll up to a townwide plan that is aligned with our long-range vision of Newtown,” Ms Fetchick and Ms Wiedemann said. The pair believe a long-range vision and strategic plan would be beneficial to the town.

“However, it may not be the all-encompassing panacea as we’ve been led to believe...,” they said. “We will always have to balance projects based on affordability. There are no simple solutions.”

Backup Data

Republican first selectman candidate and current council member Patricia Llodra has been engaged in long-term and strategic planning both in a professional capacity and locally. She and former council member Stacie Doyle and finance board members John Kortze and Harry Waterbury were engaged in a separate committee providing data support for the long-range ad-hoc panel.

Among that second committee’s charges were:

*Understand Newtown’s demographics to include the population trends, transience, and growth.

*Understand the potential buildout of the town within the current regulations.

*Understand the impact of the buildout on town services such as education, public works, police and fire, recreational facilities etc.

*Understand the geographic distribution of the population consistent with municipal services to help plan effectively for concentrated areas or future areas of need.

*Employ a strategic approach to the process so as to ensure more frequent and consistent updating of information and, in turn, more timely data.

*Understand, more comprehensively, the geographic and financial implications of municipal planning, municipal needs and open space.

*Endeavor to quantify the timeframe and impact of any such buildout.

In a recent release, Ms Llodra referred to the town’s POCD as a way to help integrate and focus long-range planning details that have come from, or been produced, by various town departments and initiatives. But Ms Llodra also recognized that, “It is difficult to integrate and prioritize all the existing planning information into a meaningful whole and form a vision for our community’s future without first agreeing on a common, central planning platform.

“The Plan of Conservation and Development is one possible platform,” she continued. “Integrating the separate plans will help create a comprehensive whole and address, in part, the perception that decisions are ad hoc and unrelated to each other or not connected to an overall vision for our town.”

Mr Tait said he is not familiar with the specifics of the POCD, but he said the town’s five-year CIP overlaid by a long range plan could help departments better prepare for capital projects in the five- to ten-year window and beyond.

“You can’t plan enough,” the town finance director said this week. He said if and when an “executive decision” is made to concurrently maintain a long-range ten- to 20-year plan, residents should understand it will still be a constantly changing document.

“[And] it’s not going to dictate the CIP process,” Mr Tait said.