If you are like us, you have had just about all you can take of politics. Fortunately, the World Series managed to divert our collective attention enough this week so we just may make it through Election Day on November 7 with our sanity intact. So we hate to be the first to tell you, but the debate on the big issues of the 2001 local election campaign is just now getting under way.

Consider this. Negotiations between the state and the town over the sale of Fairfield Hills to Newtown are expected to conclude within the next few weeks. The town has all but decided already to go ahead with the purchase, which will finally loose a log jam of related issues that have the potential to affect the town’s quality of life and its tax rate for decades to come.

First there is the development of Fairfield Hills itself. Then there is the disposition of the town-owned Queen Street properties, which has been on hold pending the Fairfield Hills deal. The Fairfield Hills purchase will also precipitate action on the construction of ball fields and the future of Edmond Town Hall, both issues that have been held in abeyance while the details of the Fairfield Hills deal have been worked out. Given all the local politicking we saw this week, it may be hard to believe that this just may be the calm before a real political storm in Newtown.

We will shortly see First Selectman Herb Rosenthal and the Legislative Council standing in the eye of this swirl of issues, trying to influence the direction of each. The degree of their success will be tied to the degree of their cooperation. To date, so much effort has been put by the selectmen into the negotiations with the state over Fairfield Hills, little of their public discussion has been about how to organize the fallout of the success of those negotiations. Who will create the town’s “master plan” for the development of Fairfield Hills, and what will be included in that plan? Which projects will take priority, and which will have to wait? How will the townspeople themselves be drawn into the process?

Mr Rosenthal said this week that the selectmen have been addressing some of these questions among themselves. Moving these talks from the relatively benign inquiry of the three members of the Board of Selectmen to the sometimes fractious forum of the Legislative Council will test all of Mr Rosenthal’s political skills. You can be sure all his potential opponents in the 2001 local election will be watching his every move.

The same goes for the members of the Legislative Council. All of these issues, plus the potentially tricky issues associated with charter revision, are certain to cycle through the agendas of the council and its subcommittees. How it handles or mishandles each will surely be fodder for election year 2001.

So voters shouldn’t let their attention flag after the polls close on November 7. From Newtown’s perspective, an even bigger political show is just now getting started.