The Fairfield Hills Authority (FHA) found itself at a pivot point this month, turning from the initial phase of planning and development of the town-owned Fairfield Hills campus toward the future. The eight years since a 2001 town meeting approved a $21.8 million bonding package to cover the purchase of the site from the state and to finance a vague and ill-defined list of “associated projects” has been characterized by both dogged progress by the FHA and dogged opposition to that progress.

Opponents have questioned the legitimacy of the entire process ever since a legally nonbinding referendum in the summer of 2003 showed that 53 percent of those voting opposed the master plan for the development of the campus. The main magnet for that opposition has been the construction of a new town hall in the gutted shell of Bridgeport Hall. Town officials are looking forward to a ribbon cutting at the new town hall in September. The opposition is looking forward to using the facility as its poster child for its political campaign for changes in the town’s leadership in local elections this fall. The important question is: What do the people of Newtown have to look forward to at Fairfield Hills?

One member of the FHA gave his answer to that question in the form of an initial report projecting $30 million in projects at Fairfield Hills paid for through additional bonding and the capital and operating budgets of various town departments. Much of the money is earmarked for demolition and infrastructure, extending and refining the work that has been done so far.

This period of taking stock, both bureaucratically and politically, is an opportune time to again raise the issue of the Fairfield Hills master plan. Like the town’s Plan of Conservation and Development, which guides the Planning and Zoning Commission in regulating all the other parts of town that are not Fairfield Hills, it is a planning document and not a political manifesto. Unfortunately, it became politicized when former First Selectman Herb Rosenthal agreed to schedule a public vote on the plan as an incentive to voters on the fence about the original bonding package. The vote wasn’t required by law; it was a political vehicle that backfired in the face of those who were pushing it. Now that the FHA is at a point where it is changing its focus, both in its conceptualizing and in its action plan, a good first step would be to reread the master plan and recast those initial assumptions that aren’t panning out and consider additions that did not occur to us eight years ago.

This time around, however, let us treat the document like the planning tool it is. The town’s Plan of Conservation and Development, which is arguably even more important to the future of the town than the Fairfield Hills plan, manages to go through successful revisions without all the storm and stress that attended the first iteration of the Fairfield Hills Master Plan. The key is to assess public support for the principles of development in the plan before it is printed and bound, not after. That means hearings, and lots of them. It requires a good faith effort to reflect consensus in the final document. It also requires that those who may have to accept a difficult compromise along the way let go of resentments and recriminations, understanding that every revised plan is a precursor to yet another revision down the road. Ultimately, a development plan is a continuing process of engagement and not a political product to be sold or discarded with associated candidates in the next local election. Now is a good time to restart that process of planning for Fairfield Hills.