Date: Fri 20-Mar-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

edink-planning-zoning-task

Full Text:

Ed Ink: Gaining A New Perspective For P&Z

Everyone feels it at one time or another: the sense of being overwhelmed, of

simply reacting, of not always acting in a reasoned, well-considered way. In

the local election campaign last year, then-candidate Herb Rosenthal suggested

that Newtown's Planning and Zoning Commission was feeling this kind of

frustration on an institutional level. It was processing so many applications

for zone changes and subdivisions that it had little time to look up and take

the long view of its mission to manage the town's growth.

Fast forward five months. Mr Rosenthal is now first selectman, and in

consultation with leaders of the Planning and Zoning Commission, he and his

Board of Selectmen have just appointed an ad hoc task force composed of

representatives of P&Z, the Board of Selectmen, and ordinary citizens

representing both real estate and building interests and the interests of the

Newtown Neighborhoods Coalition, which has been critical of the way Newtown

has been developing in recent years.

So far, the task force, which came into being this week, has no specific task.

Its charge will come from the Planning and Zoning Commission. It has no

specific powers, other than to think about things and to offer insights and

suggestions to the P&Z. "They're not going to have any authority, so they

won't go far astray," the first selectman noted.

This approach could be useful, or it could be a total waste of the time and

efforts of the new panel's members. It could help reconcile the differing

views on development in Newtown, or it could simply draw those difference into

sharp contention. A lot depends on the openess, flexibility, and dedication of

both the task force and the commission it will serve.

The building boom in town is far from over. More residential development all

over town and industrial development on the margins of Fairfield Hills and in

Hawleyville lie ahead. Questions of development design, open-space

preservation, traffic flow, public safety, and the overall quality of life in

Newtown will arise again and again. The Planning and Zoning Commission will

have to come up with the right answers, even as it slogs through a full

schedule of hearings and deliberations, with their attendant distractions. We

hope the task force will help frame the questions and point the way to the

answers.

Should this arrangement actually work, then the town should seriously consider

formalizing the working relationship between those on the commission wrestling

with specific zoning questions and those on the task force sketching out

broader perspectives for planning Newtown's growth. The current membership of

the new task force has been appointed for one year. At the end of that year,

if the panel has brought focus and direction to the planning process, the town

should consider formally splitting planning and zoning functions into separate

commissions, closely linked in consultation and review, but taking up the

separate but equally important tasks of conceiving a vision for Newtown's

future and implementing it today. The work of the ad hoc task force could be

critical to the future of Newtown -- too critical for it to remain ad hoc for

very long.