Still No Action By Council On Fairfield Hills

By Steve Bigham

The Board of Selectmen and Legislative Council met jointly in executive session Wednesday night in the continuing effort to nail down the issue of Fairfield Hills and the 5/6 school. When they came out, they took no action and had little to report.

For the second straight week, all major decisions were put on hold due to a lack of information.

“People are probably wondering if this is ever going to end, but it is a very complicated issue and it takes time,” explained council chairman Pierre Rochman Thursday morning.

The two boards met behind closed doors with a battery of attorneys to discuss how best to word the bonding issue that has been tentatively scheduled to go before the public for approval in early June.

“We talked a lot about the negotiations with the state and the environmental issues,” explained First Selectman Herb Rosenthal.

At its May 16 meeting, the council is expected to approve a bonding resolution for funding for the school. However, many council members feel there may not be enough information to do the same for Fairfield Hills.

Right now, the plan is to hold a June 6 town meeting to vote on both the construction of the 5/6 school and the purchase of Fairfield Hills (with estimated costs of $21 million each). However, with so much information on Fairfield Hills still “up in the air,” some council members fear a town decision on that may have to be pushed off. Mr Rosenthal supports resolving the two issues in June, but this week said he would not recommend going forward with Fairfield Hills unless he has several questions answered. He outlined those conditions in a letter to The Bee this week.

Council Chairman Pierre Rochman is one of many council members who hope to avoid splitting up the two issues. While he supports two separate votes, he favors one town meeting and believes both projects have a better chance of being approved if approved that way. And, he reminded residents, approving a bonding resolution at a June 6 town meeting does not necessarily mean the town is going to buy Fairfield Hills.

“It just authorizes us to bond if we do decide to buy it,” Mr Rochman said.

Buying Fairfield Hills, Mr Rochman pointed out, is not as simple as building a school, which has four walls and has all costs up front and easy to see. That should not scare us away, he said.

“People should not get blindsided with what we have to do at Fairfield Hills. We also have to think of the ramifications of a developer buying Fairfield Hills. If we lost control of it, there stands to be lots of residential development and it will end up costing us more in the long run because we’ll need to build more schools. In order to prevent that, you have to be able to control it, and you can’t control development just with land use regulations. You have to own it,” Mr Rochman said.

Council member Peggy Baiad this week reiterated her support for buying Fairfield Hills and reminded people that 135 of the 185 acres at Fairfield Hills is open space.

“I think people think it is just a bunch of buildings up there,” she said.

Newtown residents have the right under the town charter to petition a bonding issue to a referendum. If that occurs, a referendum has been tentatively set for June 21.

Last week, the Board of Selectmen voted unanimously to recommend a $21 million spending plan for Fairfield Hills and municipal facilities to be considered by the council. The plan is a conceptual one. In the interest of time, the selectmen were asked to recommend a plan that lacked specifics but provided a general outline with best cost estimates. So far, council members appear to be on board with the plan, although some appear apprehensive about asking the town for such a large sum of money without having all the details

A week ago, Newtown resident Gary Tannenbaum spoke to the council about his frustrations over the town’s handling of Fairfield Hills. He sees Newtown continuing to move along slowly while the “world keeps moving ahead.”

“We’re not going to make [Fairfield Hills] a one million square foot facility. It should be lots of small businesses. We should get real and get it going little by little,” he said. “To try to do something with that all at once is just spinning our wheels. You’re asking us to vote on a project that you studied for four years and we still don’t have a master plan. If I have a project, I need to know my plans and how much it costs. I need to know what the annual costs are to operate and then I can go out and bond the project. This council is asking us to bond some number which so far the choices given don’t even represent the total project. They don’t tell us what they’re doing with the master plan. It seems inappropriate that we as a town are being asked to vote on a plan that hasn’t been formulated.”

This week, the Board of Education was slated to open sealed bids for the proposed 5/6 school along Mile Hill Road (Wasserman Way). However, the opening was rescheduled for next Monday after an addendum to the bid process forced the town to give contractors more time.