To The Editor:fact that the master plan was to be reviewed and updated every five years to reflect changing community needs, and thus the High Meadow was designated as open space, again after much community input. Mr Harrall also left out the fact that much of the original master plan was never done, such as the overwhelming community desire for additional baseball fields. So the entire plan was in fact flexible, and subject to change over the years.

Mr Harrall's letter to the editor entitled "The Tyranny of Special Interest" is full of his own opinions and distorted facts, in his attempt to disparage others in our community.

Take Fact 2 where he says it was not the desire of the community for the High Meadow to be open space. He left out the

Take Fact 4 where he blames a delay in approving the plan for the total failure of the Fairfield Hills financial plan. The fact is the plan was pure fantasy and the projections for revenue were so far off almost no revenue has been realized at Fairfield Hills. And when the negative lease of $3.5 million for the parking lot is considered, we are many millions in the hole. That is a fact.

Mr Harrall, when quoting de Tocqueville, failed to mention that Alexis de Tocqueville also devoted, in the same book, a chapter entitled "Unlimited Power Of Majority, And Its Consequences - Part II Tyranny Of The Majority."

Mr Harrall's willingness to speak as if he was elected to speak for the majority of the community in 2016, 11 years after his involvement with the original master plan, is interesting at best.

Mr Harrall's suggestion that small groups, he calls them special interest groups, have no legitimate role in our society is incorrect. They are not the tyranny of special interests. The exact opposite is the truth. Small groups of individuals and their opinions are what fuels democracy and provides for everyone to be heard. They are the innovators, the watchdogs, the visionaries, they are the young and old, the new and old residents; they are simply the combined mosaic voice of Newtown.

It would be best to end this letter with a quote from de Tocqueville, from the same published book of 1835 and 1840 that Mr Harrall selected to quote from: "A majority taken collectively may be regarded as a being whose opinions, and most frequently whose interests, are opposed to those of another being, which is styled a minority. If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their characters by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow-creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them."

Bruce Walczak

12 Glover Avenue, Newtown                                             May 24, 2016