The Legislative Council has already taken some heat for its decision last week to reconsider the town’s oft-state plans to resell some of the homes and properties along Queen Street that it purchased from the state last year for $1.2 million. Critics are pointing out that at the time voters appropriated the funds for the purchase, they were told the town would turn around and sell the properties, probably at a profit, with deed restrictions that would preclude high density development made possible by water and sewer lines on Queen Street. Now the council’s number crunchers have concluded that it will be cheaper in the long run for the town to tear down the houses and hang on to the land.

The calculations that led to this change of heart showed that the children who might be expected to live in such houses would cost more to educate than the tax revenue their homes would produce for the town. The savings over time was calculated to be $809,000. The fiscal analysis, performed by accountant and council member Donald Studley, is sound and convincing; the council, which seemed to be on track to approve the property re-sale plan, balked.

It is true that the prevailing rationale for purchasing the properties at the time the $1.2 million expenditure was being sold to the town was to block the possibility of condominiums on Queen Street through deed restrictions and to make a little profit for the town on the resale of the houses. However, town officials always made it clear that there was no specific plan for what would happen on Queen Street, which was the main rallying point for the few opponents to the purchase at the time. Still, a town meeting approved the purchase 155-8. Clearly, the bait-and-switch criticism now leveled at the council is undeserved. We are concerned, however, about some of the implications of the financial analysis that has caused the council to rethink the issue.

The five houses on Queen Street that would have been sold under the town’s original plan would be expected to sell in the $150,000 to $250,000 range, except for one that was to be sold for $20,000 to Habitat for Humanity for renovation. The final valuation on that house was estimated to be $112,000. The houses, if they ever make it to the market, will be moderately priced relative to the other homes currently being built and sold in Newtown. In helping to make the case for demolishing the houses and keeping the land, the chairman of the council’s finance committee pointed out that these are not $750,000 homes and therefore are not desirable from a cost/benefit perspective.

If the council actually bases its decision on this kind of analysis, it will become the de facto policy of Newtown that moderately priced housing is not only to be discouraged, but torn down, when the town has the opportunity to do that. This does not square with the town’s official Plan of Development, which encourages a range of housing stock for the town’s citizens. The town plan specifically notes that “Much of the existing supply is financially beyond the reach of older and younger households,” and it concludes that the “economic well-being of the community is partially dependent on a diverse range of housing opportunities.”

The rationale currently driving the council’s consideration of this issue implicitly encourages more mega-mansions for Newtown and, incredibly, the destruction of the ordinary, modest house. We don’t think it is a good idea for the town to recast even a single established neighborhood based on bottom-line number crunching. We hope at some point the council takes a moment to reflect that the issues before them are not just about numbers. The work they do is ultimately about people.