How Did This Become One Issue?

To the Editor:

Our family relocated to Newtown six months ago from a wonderful community in Northeast Ohio and have found our new community, neighbors and home and to be everything we could hope for and more.

When selecting our new home, we were attracted to Newtown for many reasons, one of the most important being the excellent schools and educational values shared by the community, as reflected in the district’s high academic performance level.

As parents of two school-age children, we were very aware of the need to add a new 5/6 school and totally prepared to pay for it in our property taxes. We recognize that the great schools of Newtown contribute to our strong property values. We knew that we could have owned a comparable home for less money with lower taxes in a neighboring community. We also understood that one reason for this was those communities’ recent history of shortchanging their school systems with predictable results.

Now our town officials, led by First Selectman Rosenthal in his desire to have a legacy larger than that which continued excellence in education can bring, are planning to limit our ability to vote separately on issues of importance to each household by contriving a ridiculous connection between our schools and Fairfield Hills. Excuse me for feeling hustled and confused. How did this become one issue?

Oh and on the subject of Fairfield Hills, why in the world are the people of Newtown being railroaded into the landlord business and being asked to incur additional property taxes for a parcel of land that has potentially limitless environmental liability? What do you call purchasing contaminated land and granting total indemnification to the seller? I call it bad business. And who will benefit? The developers. Reality check: Who gets to pay for the cleanup of whatever is eventually found in the ground? That’s right! Taxpayers.

Like our board of selectmen and all residents of Newtown, we too are concerned with having Fairfield Hills developed in a responsible and beneficial way. That’s why we have zoning laws. It seems the most responsible course of action might be to simply revise the zoning of Fairfield Hills, allowing its development to benefit our needs and those of the developers, avoiding the risk of having town government stumble into the unknown, possibly mortgaging the future of our community.

Check your ego at the door Mr Rosenthal. The school issue and Fairfield Hills are not one. The voting constituency of Newtown knows this and deserves to vote on these issues for their own merits. You know this. How dare you propose to hold the 5/6 school and educational values hostage to your ego? I agree with The Bee’s editorial staff. This is pork barrel politics at its worst.

Mitch Bolinsky

3 Wiley Lane, Newtown                                      February 17, 2001