EDITED: This article has been edited to clarify the upcoming process at the July 15 Board of Selectmen meeting.

EDIT 2: The location of the July 15 Board of Selectmen meeting was changed to the Community Center Multipurpose Room 3.

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One thing that often gets forgotten in controversies over new developments is the simple fact that everyone has the right to develop their property. Just as current homeowners had the rights to build their houses on their property, owners of properties that are yet to be developed also have that right. Those same rights that benefited current residents are always available to future developments.

As nice as it would be to see all the green spaces in Newtown stay forever green spaces, the fact is that can only be accomplished in two ways: Someone must be willing (and financially able) to purchase all those green spaces and deed restrict them for conservation, or fundamentally change how land property rights work in our country.

Neither is a particularly workable short-term solution.

You cannot tell a property owner they cannot build and you cannot tell a property owner what they can build. If their proposal fits the town’s regulations, a commission such as Planning & Zoning has little choice but to approve. If a proposal is attempting to use regulations that fit under special exceptions, there is more room for local commissions to maneuver and decide whether a development fits the town. If, however, a special exception use is turned down, there are plenty of as of right uses for the property that fit under zoning regulations. For the Borough of Newtown, that is one home per acre of property. Also possible is to build under state 8-30 regulations for affordable housing, which allows a developer to completely disregard local zoning.

So the consideration becomes, when a new development is proposed, whether said development is better or worse than other developments that could be proposed at that site. A proposal with a substantial amount of forest conserved in most cases should be seen as better than a sprawling development that eats up every inch of developable land. A sprawling development, while it may contain fewer houses, would require more impermeable space — in the form of an extensive latticework of roads and driveways to connect those homes — as well as potentially causing more clear cutting to build large yards for each home. Rather than have a territory where the houses are and a territory that is still wooded, animals find their habitats drastically shrunken and surrounded with unwooded lawns, dangerous roadways, and homes.

Opponents of the controversial 20-60 Castle Hill development have expressed valid concerns — runoff could be an issue onto lower elevation properties, some of the homes may be closer to historic Reservoir Road than would be absolutely ideal (75 feet at the closest is a decent distance, but could be worked with to move the homes a bit further away), and the current plan calls for 117 homes clustered together, which may cause some traffic problems and be a few too many for the 136-acre property that will have its main access via Johnny Cake Lane at Mt Pleasant Road.

However, the current all-or-nothing gambit of opposing the discontinuation of Reservoir Road — as if the discontinuation would mean it would be bulldozed over and lost forever — may backfire. As mentioned, other potential developments could be worse, whether they are put together by the current developer or a future one. A more nuanced, and likely to succeed, plan would be to push the Board of Selectmen to make sure to condition their approval of a road discontinuation not only on the approval of the subdivision by Borough of Newtown Zoning Commission, but on the preservation of the Rochambeau Trail area within a certain distance as well as placing an expiration condition on the completion of the development, so that if the development is not constructed in say, five years, Reservoir Road would revert to being a paper street once again. A hypothetical future developer would not be able to take advantage of the discontinuance for an entirely different development.

With the 8-24 referral coming before the BOS at its meeting at 7:30 pm Monday, July 15, in the Community Center Multipurpose Room 3, a large turning point in the development is coming. An 8-24 referral is a state-mandated process where a town's zoning commission approves whether a road discontinuation or property sale fits with the town’s Plan of Conservation and Development. With the Planning & Zoning's approval of the 8-24 referral, the BOS now decides on the discontinuance under statute 13a-49. The BOS can condition the road discontinuance as they please. It is their motion and in their discretion.

If the discontinuance is approved, as much as many opponents will be disappointed, they should realize that they still have adequate leverage in seeing some or all of their goals realized. The cluster development is a special exception in the borough’s zoning regulations — Borough officials could conceivably push for the amount of homes to be reduced, the 14 homes located closest to Reservoir Road to be removed, among a number of potential changes they could ask for. Turning down the development entirely is also an option - the zoning commission's negotiation power is strong here because this is a special exception.

The developer would not have to implement all the changes, but their only recourse would be to withdraw the application or appeal it, and an appeal would be unlikely to go favorably for the developer in the case of those changes to the plan.

In cases like this, a development is a negotiation. Those who oppose the development should ask themselves whether refusing to negotiate at all is in the best interests of the property and of the town.