To The Editor:

My name is Peter Schwarz, and I’m running for the Planning and Zoning Commission. For the past two years, I’ve been an Alternate Member of the Commission, involved in all its activities, including our public hearings, but only called on to vote when required by an absence or a conflict of interest. In my day job, I’m a corporate lawyer for a local environmental engineering firm. Planning and Zoning can be a pretty technical environment, both in terms of the applicable regulations and state policies, so serving as an Alternate Member is a great way to learn the ropes while also moving the business of the Commission forward.

Newtown faces many potential changes in the next few years. Our community is aging and we need to make sure our seniors have good, affordable homes to live in if they want to stay. I’m the Vice President of Friends of Newtown Seniors (FONS) and I try to keep their needs at the front of my mind.

We also need to look out for our younger neighbors, and make sure that they aren’t priced out of the community where they have chosen to raise their families. I’ve been a part of a Subcommittee looking at ways to reform our zoning regulations to make building modest single-family homes less expensive and more affordable.

Building housing that doesn’t take so much of a family’s disposable income is a top priority, and allowing developers to dictate where we build apartments that resemble stacked boxes with windows isn’t a responsible housing policy. State policy limits what we can do, and we have to work with our representatives to restore some measure of local control.

It’s a difficult problem, but we have to keep in mind we’re building homes, not just counting residences to comply with a state program. This is a tough balance to strike, and it takes vision and experience and a willingness to talk to our neighbors. Good planning decisions don’t come easy.

Once again, we are faced with questions about the development of the Fairfield Hills campus. For the past year I have served on the Fairfield Hills Authority, an appointed town commission that’s the first stop for public discussion of activities on the campus. For twenty years Newtown has grappled with various plans for its development and preservation.

Good progress has been made, and small businesses are starting to populate some of the smaller buildings, but restoration of the larger buildings, and their use as residences with some commercial activity, has reached a tipping point. Proposals for those buildings have to be developed and finalized in a way that benefits the town and its residents over the long term, and Planning and Zoning will review and approve those plans. I want to be part of that discussion.

On November 4, I’d appreciate one of your two votes for Planning and Zoning. Thank you.

Peter Schwarz

Newtown