Top Priority For Walczak, IPN:

Long-Term Strategic Planning

By John Voket

Using the local school district’s long-term strategic planning initiative as a model, the Independent Party of Newtown’s chairman and first selectman candidate, along with most of the IPN candidates up for election this November, weighed in on the need to establish a long view to ensure the successful initiation and completion of capital projects.

And it appears from candidate comments dispatched in a press release this week, the local political group is continuing to target Fairfield Hills as its poster child for poor planning. Bruce Walczak, the IPN’s top of ticket candidate pledged to create such a process and plan if elected

“As part of this planning process, I pledge to undertake a full review of the current Fairfield Hills Master Plan,” he said in the release. “It’s time someone demonstrated leadership on the issue of planning for our longer-term future. I will provide that leadership as first selectman.”

Mr Walczak, who claims to be the first candidate for first selectman to openly support strategic long-range planning as part of his campaign, outlined the steps he and his IPN running mate for Board of Selectman, Bill Furrier, would take to start such a process:

*Convene a planning group comprised of public officials and citizens to organize a process for developing a strategic long-range planning process for Newtown that will result in a usable plan and on-going process. We will keep in mind the model that has been used by the Board of Education in developing a long-range plan for the school district.

*As part of this process, evaluate next steps for Fairfield Hills.

*Consider the town’s current Plan of Development and Conservation, and how that document can be integrated into a strategic long-range planning process.

*Reinvolve the community in setting priorities and timelines based on this strategic long-range planning initiative.

*Establish a consensus for moving forward.

*Review the Fairfield Hills ordinance to evaluate the benefit of making it more consistent and compatible with the Newtown Charter.

In regard to the latter point, Mr Walczak told The Newtown Bee that based on testimony prior to the legislative enactment of a Public Act Creating the Fairfield Hills Authority, he was left with an impression that management of the town-owned campus would revert back to local government control once a charter change disabled a stringent and counterproductive process for leasing town property.

In regard to the authority, which was created by legislation but is enabled by a local ordinance, Mr Walczak said he wanted to see consistency with other town boards and commissions in terms of when the authority members are appointed or reappointed to serve.

“The public act creating the authority needed to have the terms of the members in the ordinance — which identifies the number of members and lengths of terms,” he said. “The charter was recently changed to direct all appointed terms to start and end on the same day.

Mr Walczak said it was his impression from reviewing testimony on the public act that legislators anticipated a charter revision would align the appointment process for authority members with other boards and commissions as outlined in the town’s constitutional document.

“The state anticipated a charter revision to permit the management of Fairfield Hills,” Mr Walczak said. “The authority was set up specifically to get around the stipulations [for leasing public buildings] in the charter. A charter change would incorporate the management for Fairfield Hills.”

The IPN candidate observed that there are “lots of provisions in the charter and ordinances to help manage town departments and facilities.

“Maybe it’s not a good idea to have authority operating outside the charter,” he said. “Maybe it’s time to have [Fairfield Hills’] management come under the purview of the charter.”

Mr Walczak said in the bigger picture, the community has the opportunity to move forward with a meaningful plan, and that an “IPN-led Board of Selectman and Legislative Council will ensure that a strategic long-range planning process will be put in place.”

Mr Furrier was quoted in the release saying that Newtown “citizens need to be part of planning for our future.”

Mike Mossbarger, an IPN candidate for Legislative Council in District 2, observed that Newtown has struggled for the last several years with key decisions such as the development of a town hall and the expansion of the high school.

“Why is that?” Mr Mossbarger asked. “My belief is that it is due in large part to a town without a long-range, strategic vision for itself.”

Robert Hennessy, an IPN candidate for Legislative Council in District 1, said town-side capital requests have increased more than three-fold over the previous year’s Capital Improvement Plan.

“This does not include the educational side,” Mr Hennessy said. “We are in dire need of a strategic long-range planning process.”

Bob Duero, an IPN candidate for Legislative Council for District 3, noted that a key element in any business’s success is the development, communication, and execution of a strategic plan.

“The implementation of a long-range planning process, such as Bruce Walczak and Bill Furrier are proposing to employ as members of the Board of Selectmen, is critical to ensuring Newtown understands its future and reaches its defined goals at minimum cost,” Mr Duero added.

Bill McNerney, an IPN candidate for Board of Finance, thinks without a true long-range plan for what Newtown will look like in 15 to 20 years, the community will never be able to grow and develop in a cohesive manner.

“Most of the time as Newtown residents, we see the Band-Aid approach to emergency situations and pet projects pushed through the budget. We as a community have no idea if or how a project fits into the overall plan for our town,” Mr McNerney said. “A fine example is Fairfield Hills. A long-range plan will give us an objective to shoot for and the ability to use our tax dollars in the most efficient manner.”

Interim Board of Education appointee Bill Hart, who is seeking a four-year term with the IPN, said the quality of the town’s and the school district’s Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) process is severely hurt by the lack of a strategic long-range plan for the town.

“Waiting until a need becomes critical, as we did with the high school expansion, only increases the cost and hurts the quality of our education system,” Mr Hart said. “There is no rational reason for most capital projects to be surprises. Any good CIP system, as now being implemented by the school district, can bring order to our planning, and the root of a good CIP system is a good strategic plan.”