To the Editor:

Apartments are not economic development. In fact they can cost the taxpayers far more than the tax revenue received. Apartments are not allowed to discriminate  based on such things as children.

The plan  before us is to have apartments up to 1,200 square feet, sufficient size to have  two and even three bedrooms. We should expect families to rent some of these apartments and we will incur educational costs in addition to municipal services expenses. Newtown will incur expenses at Fairfield Hills to support infrastructure for commercial development. These cost will far outweigh the revenue received.

We will have to provide street upkeep, parking lots, utility infrastructure,  sewer capacity and so on. These costs would have been normally born by the developer, but in this case Newtown is in fact the developer.

Housing used to support commercial buildings being billed as economic development is an illusion.  This has and will cost Newtown far more than it will ever receive in return and in the end we will change forever the character of the campus, a Newtown jewel.  

Bruce Walczak

Glover Avenue, Newtown                 December 3, 2014