To the Editor:

If you didn’t attend the March [5] P&Z meeting, you missed quite a show. It was Newtown’s own version of My Cousin Vinny. No metallic green Pontiac Tempest, but plenty of talk about cars.

This was the fifth meeting for this land use — a fuel station/convenience store [at 13 Hawleyville road]. An attorney guided the applicant’s agenda. He clarified testimony and opinion are different than evidence, which comes with credentials. Past court cases were cited. A parade of experts was there, including an engineer and a traffic analyst. These experts were recalled when necessary to respond to public comments. There was a closing argument, and even a plead for “justice.” At a P&Z public hearing. Really.

So, about the traffic evidence. The study and the complex models used meet state regulations and guidelines. No shortcuts whatsoever were taken. It’s been done thousands of times. Never has an expert been precluded from testifying before this Commission. I imagine every traffic expert in the state will recognize this as tried and true.

Now I am not one of those traffic experts. I am a member of the Newtown public with 25 years in market research and competitive analysis. I know bad data and flawed conclusions when I see them. So, humbly, I do come with some credentials. And I deliver evidence, not feelings or opinion.

And here it is. A lot of the secondary data set is obsolete. The primary data was collected over just 2-3 days in May — in some cases, over just a few hours. The word “typical” is used but the label is undefined and unsupported.

And, there is a complete omission of real-world qualitative data, even though it’s out there. It’s current. It’s collected over a much longer period of time.

That evidence is us. Years, if not decades, of traffic observations. Long wait times. Dangerous turns with near misses. The applicant says this is just opinion. It’s not. It is more than anecdotal, more than feelings. It’s fact-based, informed opinion, based on the real world. It’s solid qualitative data. It is evidence.

Perhaps most significant of all is that the underlying foundation of the application cannot be supported. The developer wants you to believe a smaller footprint will result in a lower increase in traffic as compared to the larger one that was denied. That would mean I-84 vehicles are aware of how many pumps are at the smaller station, and make a conscious decision to not exit. The applicant can’t possibly know this.

Thankfully, Commission members Ms Cox, Ms Manville, and Mr Smith questioned some of the conclusions. And there were other bona fide subject matter experts from the public that were heard.

You don’t have to be Joe Pesci to know that Newtown deserves more than a lowest common denominator approach to analytics. There is nothing in the latest data refresh that supports this land use. This application should be denied.

Respectfully submitted,

Michael Giudice

4 Whippoorwill Road, Newtown March 11, 2020