Public Survey Is Essential For

A New Master Plan For Fairfield Hills

After the holiday ribbons and wrappings have been gathered up, after the New Year’s streamers have been swept from the dance floor, and after Twelfth Night marks our return to the regular post-holiday routine, Newtown’s selectmen intend to start discussing the Fairfield Hills master plan once again.

This issue, which came to a head last August when the town voted to reject a proposed master plan for the 189-acre campus, has lain dormant in the intervening months while Newtown’s elected officials first got themselves reelected and then celebrated the holidays along with the rest of us. Now, with the new year at hand and the impending transfer of the campus from the state to the town, everyone seems ready to move on to the next chapter in the never-ending saga of Fairfield Hills. In its eagerness to get on with it, however, the Board of Selectmen appeared last week to back away from a plan to survey town residents on their preferred uses of the campus. On the issue of master planning for Fairfield Hills, the prevailing sense on the board underwent a perceptible shift from letting the people decide to letting elected officials do the job they were elected to do: make decisions on important community issues.

In June of 2001, when a town meeting authorized the purchase of Fairfield Hills, First Selectman Herb Rosenthal won support from pig-in-a-poke skeptics by pledging that townspeople would have an opportunity to vote on a proposed master plan before it was implemented. The vote last August fulfilled that pledge. Since that vote repudiated at least some of the elements of that plan, the onus once again fell to the first selectman to be responsive to the electorate on this issue in some way. During the election campaign, Mr Rosenthal did not try to hide his opposition to another town vote on the master plan, but he justified that position by repeatedly saying that a public survey on master plan options would make it possible for the town to formulate a revised plan that would reflect the public’s preferences without having another vote.

We don’t know how many votes that argument won for Mr Rosenthal in November –– probably not enough to have changed the outcome of the election. But he did lead people to believe that there would be a conscientious attempt to assess the will of the town before going ahead with a revised master plan. The first selectman noted last week that he has heard from many people since the defeat of the initial master plan last August and he has developed a sense of what people want and don’t want. Maybe. But we don’t think random conversations with an unspecified number of townspeople on the subject constitute a conscientious attempt to assess the will of the town on this issue. We urge the Board of Selectmen not to drop plans for a public survey on this issue. In June of 2001 and last August, townspeople made it clear that on when it comes to Fairfield Hills, they do not want their elected officials making all their decisions for them.