Heigel Talks Planning—

Petitioning First Selectman Candidate Outlines Long-Range Views, Goals

By John Voket

When petitioning First Selectman Candidate Patrick Heigel looks at Newtown, he sees long stretches of road with varying degrees of thick and modest commercial development, but no cohesive plan to tie it all together.

What he hopes to see, if he becomes elected to the town’s top seat come November, is a more carefully crafted plan of development concentrating commercial traffic to appropriate neighborhood or village centers.

The candidate recently published his first position paper, falling into line behind Democratic, Republican, and Independent Party of Newtown candidates who have all taken their best shots at addressing long-range planning initiatives for the community. In his paper, Mr Heigel acknowledged the town already has solid foundational financial and logistical planning tools in place.

“The Plan of Conservation and Development (POCD) and the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) are probably the ones that most town residents are familiar with,” Mr Heigel said in his release. “Both affect everyone in town, but in very different ways.

“The CIP covers the town’s major expenditures on facilities, infrastructure and equipment — things we are likely to pay for through borrowing,” he continued, “the POCD covers how the town will look in the future, what we would like to see, what others might build.”

The petitioning candidate said he generally favors making plans, but any plan Newtown makes must be detailed and clear.

“Yet, they must also be flexible to allow for external events and unforeseen conditions,” he said. “We must update them regularly to reflect current realities and changing priorities. They must also offer a vision of what this town could become.”

Mr Heigel sees the current recession as an opportunity to reassess the kind of future Newtowners want.

“We can look at what other towns in the area, around the country and around the world have done,” the candidate said. “We take what works and what doesn’t work learn from that and apply it to our situation.”

Mr Heigel sees rapidly growing commercial density along Route 25 and Route 6 as a series of destinations requiring an auto trip between each. Long-term, he believes the increasing development will create debilitating traffic and sprawl “with an endless need to widen roads to accommodate ever-increasing traffic.”

“Other towns have a downtown area for commercial activity,” Mr Heigel observed. “Newtown’s center is residential and should stay that way. We do however have a series of villages in Newtown with centers of commercial activity. If we focus our efforts on the village centers, we would create single destinations for people to do their business. It would reduce traffic and sprawl and improve the quality of life for our residents by getting them out of their cars and walking around meeting others.”

Four of the five local village centers of Sandy Hook, Hawleyville, Botsford, Dodgingtown, and Fairfield Hills happen to be along a rail line. Mr Heigel thinks the town should piggyback on a recent state plan of economic and community development that suggests targeting enhanced commuter rail service in parts of the state where it is currently lacking or underutilized.

“The rail line in Newtown passes through Stevenson, downtown Shelton and merges with the New Haven line of Metro North in Stratford,” Mr Heigel said. “More than a few people in Newtown commute to lower Fairfield County or New York on a daily basis. If commuter rail service were to be offered in Newtown, a fair number of those people would use it regularly. It should be a long-term goal of the town to bring back commuter rail service.”

Mr Heigel also favors reducing or alleviating residential property taxes by enticing more small- to medium-sized businesses to Newtown.

“Big businesses generally only move when offered a big tax break, defeating the purpose of bringing them here,” the petitioning candidate said. “A better approach is to foster the creation of small businesses. In Fairfield County, 32 percent of the workers are self-employed. That is by far the highest in the state. People here are willing to take a risk and go into business.”

If elected first selectman, Mr Heigel would work to create an environment where smaller businesses can succeed.

“Not every business will succeed, but if they have access to many potential customers their chances improve,” he said. “Choosing the proper location can provide exposure to those customers. If we build on the village center idea, we can supply locations with access to available customers.”

Mr Heigel thinks another reason to encourage locally owned business development is that any money spent there would stay in the local economy.

“If the money stays local it promotes stability, and stability is what we are after,” he said. “The stronger things are locally, the less susceptible we are to external events. A thriving local economy is good for the local government as well. It provides a steady revenue stream and we may be able to avoid our annual budget battles.”

Mr Heigel shares the idea that Newtown should take advantage of more opportunities to promote tourism.

“We have a long history, great scenery, two state parks, a state forest, and two large lakes. People from the city would probably enjoy a weekend in Newtown. It would provide additional revenue locally and reduce the burden a little on the rest of us,” he said.

 Mr Heigel says he also favors influencing decisions that make long-term sense.

“An example is the much needed [flat] roof replacement at the middle school [which] only last about ten years,” he observed. “What if we changed the design of the roof to a pitched roof? How much more would it cost? A pitched roof with metal roofing would last 50 years.”

He believes the extra investment today in longer-term solutions like the middle school roof project will yield greater potential savings to Newtown taxpayers in the long-run.

“Plans are just ideas on paper,” Mr Heigel said, echoing the sentiment of another one of his competitors. “It takes strong leadership to bring plans to fruition. Newtown needs some strong leadership.”