To The Editor:

After reading last week’s letter to the editor on this subject I am feeling the need to clarify a few points of fact.

When a property gains recognition on the National Register of Historic Places it does not become a public asset that a town can sell. There are countless private properties and homes that have such a designation, and we do not have title to them.

The town does however own its roadways and therefore owns Reservoir Road and a few feet on either side of it. Only about 700 feet of it is paved and maintained by the town. The town owns the full length of Reservoir Road (from Mount Pleasant to Castle Hill) only by virtue of it being drawn as a dotted line on a map published in 1854. It does not appear full length anywhere else.

The “March Route of Rochambeau’s Army: Reservoir Road Newtown” that the National Park Service recognized in 2003 does not extend the full length of Reservoir Road but only about two-thirds of it (specifically 1,800 feet) starting at Mt Pleasant. This is so because, according to the NPS: “The Castle Hill Road alignment . . . in place from the middle 19th century onward, diverges significantly from the French map of 1781 which shows West Street ... intersecting with what is now Reservoir Road.”

There are only a couple of roads on that 1854 map that are dotted (unimproved) instead of solid lines one other being The Old Road. The Old Road has paved sections at each end of it (Mount Pleasant and Currituck) but has an impassible streambed in between. The town still technically owns that stretch and could feasibly reconnect the road like it did with the two ends of Butterfield a couple of decades ago. When they decide to discontinue a road, they lose that option.

The decision by the Board of Selectmen to discontinue Reservoir Road was made because leaving it intact bisected the property meaning each side would be developed individually. There have been other development ideas over the past decade for those two parcels that would have been far more disruptive than what was proposed/approved after connecting the two parcels by discontinuing the road. The initial decision last year did not follow the proper procedures in that there was no proper public notice given in advance of deliberations. Therefore, the decision was negated, notice was given, and a new vote confirmed the discontinuation.

New England’s oldest towns were incorporated with a town meeting type of government (direct democracy) and many of them, like Newtown, retained that style well into the 20th century. However, Newtown transitioned to a representative government many decades ago, and that is why the decision to discontinue a road lies with our Board of Selectmen, our elected representatives.

Randi Kiely

Newtown