Last summer, Newtown’s Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously rejected a proposal by a Danbury developer, Dauti Construction, LLC, for 23 condominium units on lower Church Hill Road in Sandy Hook. The plan drew sharp and sustained criticism from a coalition of Sandy Hook residents who were concerned about the impact the condos would have on the character and environment of Sandy Hook Center just as the area is trying to nurture its economic resurgence based largely on those characteristics. The Police Commission, the Water and Sewer Authority, and ultimately P&Z itself officially echoed their concerns.

It was the third time Dauti Construction had failed to get a condo plan approved, and now, in addition to a lawsuit designed to overturn the latest rejection, the firm is back with a new 26-condo plan for a fourth try.

Over the decades, Newtown’s land use agencies have done a commendable job of regulating the town’s growth in accordance with the Plan of Conservation and Development. There are some residential and commercial developments we wish had never been built, but for the most part the land use regulations that have grown out of the town plan have put the interests of people and the integrity of places before the profit margins of developers. Those regulations anticipate many contingencies, including the need by many families in our community for affordable housing.

A favored tactic for developers, however, is to introduce proposed regulations of their own, often tailored to apply precisely to their own private purposes, to address a purported public need, such as affordable housing. The current and rejected condo plans for Sandy Hook, for example, have been predicated on the creation of a new Mixed Income Housing District (MIHD), largely because the proposals fail to meet the requirements of the town’s existing Affordable Housing Development regulations. The idea, apparently, is to keep ramming an unsuitable proposal into the same wall of resistance imposed by legitimate regulations that reflect public, not private, priorities until something gives way.

We encourage the Planning and Zoning Commission, along with the other public agencies and officials who advise and support them, not to give way but to continue to foster and enforce regulations that serve the general good, not a specific advantage.