Time For New Leadership

To the Editor:

$490,700 is the proposed amount for the operating budget for Fairfield Hills in 2009-2010 budgets. To save money, the Board of Finance recommended that town employees administer Fairfield Hills rather than a Hartford-based firm and reduced the sum to $434,480. The Legislative Council bowed to the pleas of the selectmen and restored the $56,220 amount to line item 01870. The selectmen stated that eventually the “common charges” each leaseholder must pay would cover this yearly expenditure.

What are common charges? To date the only paid up leaseholder is the Newtown Youth Academy. In their lease agreement with the town, it agreed to pay common charges of $31,000 per year for the first three years and in return the town would maintain the roads, “including snow removal and clean up of the shared parking…(Section 1A.3)… parking lot lighting and lawn care…Thereafter the tenant shall pay 12 percent of the actual common charges.” Who will pay the other 88 percent? To date, the veterinary hospital proposed for Woodbury Hall has made no payments to the Fairfield Hills Authority.

How much money has the town already spent trying to be the developer for Fairfield Hills? The town purchased Fairfield Hills 10/30/03 for $3.9 million and agreed to assume all the costs of abatement and demolition, an obligation that all three of the professional developers refused to assume. The yearly operating budgets were: 2003-04 $495,800, 2004-05 $750,000; 2005-06 $550,000; 2006-07 $598,500; 2007-08 $498,500; 2008-09 $525,000; 2009-10 $490,700. Total $3,908,500. How many years will it take the town to recover this $3,908,500 from Fairfield Hills taxation?

Former Assessor Tom DeNoto calculated the anticipated tax revenue from Newtown Hall would be $33,880 and Woodbury Hall $62,062 in 2008 at a mill rate of 22. However, the Newtown Hall lease was abandoned, and the Woodbury Hall renovation has not begun. Only the property taxes will be used as town revenue because all the lease payments go the Fairfield Hills Authority to use as it wishes.

Creative thinkers in our town have urged the leadership to begin long range planning now. The 2008 Planimetrics report predicted a school population increase to 6,551 from the present 5,668 by 2030. A larger high school with adequate parking and capable of adding new courses, such as renewable energy, will need 80–85 acres. We already know we need a much larger police station and senior center. If not at Fairfield Hills, where will we find the land?

However, nothing will change without new voices in the Legislative Council, selectmen and every board and commission. The longtime occupants of these positions will not abandon the folly of spending money for a Fairfield Hills corporate park that we cannot afford and that will not lower taxes as reputable research shows. New visionary leaders are needed in every elected office. Now is the time to step forward and agree to run for an elected office. Don’t leave this task to others. Volunteer today!

Ruby Johnson

16 Chestnut Hill Road, Sandy Hook                            April 15, 2009