Hartford is pushing concrete, but Fairfield is pushing back
A First-Person Account of CMDA’s presentation at the RTM meeting
At the 7/10 RTM “special” session in Fairfield, the Connecticut Municipal Development Authority (CMDA) came to advance its pro-developer agenda. This initiative is effectively the brother of the just-defeated HB 5002 bill. It represents yet another attempt by Hartford to impose a construction-first agenda on local communities. The CMDA is using state-borrowed money to rewrite local zoning codes on a town-by-town basis to allow for more density and bigger buildings. The plan is to then introduce their preferred developers and pre-approve projects, bypassing local oversight. Buildings will just go up. It shows a blatant disregard for what the residents of towns want, not to mention willful negligence over the world’s current environmental crises.
However, Google has ushered in a new era of access to information, communication, and transparency. Times have changed, and unless the State un-invents Google, the days of such unchecked overreach are over.
It’s Just Baloney
It was 6:30 PM, half an hour before the RTM’s “special” meeting was set to begin. I was in the lobby of 501 Kings Highway, with a platter of baloney sandwiches.
I had to fill my fridge with the sandwiches to keep them fresh before the meeting, which didn’t help my marriage.
It was a joke with a serious punchline, meant for the state agents from the Connecticut Municipal Development Authority (CMDA) who were there to sell their latest build, baby, build agenda.
A well-dressed man was one of the first to arrive. I offered a slider, referring to all the baloney that’s coming tonight from the state. He laughed, declined and went up to the meeting. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the head of the CMDA. And that smile revealed the confidence he had in the state’s plan. This meeting was a formality as the machine rolled into town and public response was not even measured.
Act 2: The Problem Isn’t the Agent; It’s the Agency
The meeting room was full of Fairfield VIPs. A Fairfield RTM member declared himself the sponsor of the CMDA’s initiative. The takeaway was that CMDA had been busy.
They had already called upon alliances in various departments and gained access to town leadership. Presumably, everyone on the RTM had already reviewed the plans, talked, maybe been cajoled to follow the party line, and probably made up their minds. There is even a Resolution of Approval already drafted and posted on the Fairfield website.
The CMDA already lists Fairfield as a Partner on their website.
The CMDA representative repeatedly referred to his agency’s plan as just another tool in the toolbox for Fairfield, the “tool” being money to subsidize building costs. They had gone through the town code in detail; the CMDA commented that “some” of the code met their expectations, but the rest would have to be looked at again, which means changed to allow high-density, multifamily construction. Buildings. And then they would hook us up with their developers and projects, making Fairfield underwrite its own demise.
Participation is voluntary, but our taxes aren’t, so if Fairfield doesn’t participate then we are just paying for buildings in somebody else’s town.
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Residents speak
I was the first member of the public allocated three minutes to speak. This is a summary of the key points I made:
The Victory: I reminded them that Fairfield’s Bill Gerber (who would pass away less than a week later) and a team of almost exclusively women from our town, New Canaan and Greenwich (Gov. Lamont’s hometown) had just dealt a stunning gut punch that the overconfident construction industry and politicians didn’t see coming: the governor veto and defeat of the dystopic HB 5002 bill. The CMDA’s plan is from the same seed of that failed legislation.
The Flawed Maps: I pointed out that Fairfield’s key maps were highly inaccurate, that the flood zone maps are fiction and our town cannot approve uninsurable buildings in these high-risk areas. The Fairfield flood zone map shows just a small area and none of Route 1 in the flood zone. And even there it’s only 1% chance of flooding.
It would seem to the reasonable man that all six+ miles of US 1 in Fairfield is in the flood zone, from Sasco Creek on the Westport border to Ash Creek on the Bridgeport line. On top of which, in Greenwich they ruled that certain portions of US 1 could apply Historic development rules. Who is to say what is the most Historic section of US 1 in Fairfield? You have to start with downtown and then of course the second town center, Tunxis Hill, on the totally opposite side of Fairfield. It would seem like any developer would have to clear the hurdles of the entirety of US 1 being not only in a flood zone but with historic preservation status. Good luck building in that.
This natural disaster gerrymandering exposes Fairfield to uninsurable liabilities. Even the 2015 FEMA map shows a much greater flood zone risk than the town map, and that is before 11 years in a row of rising temperatures and seas. And there is no FEMA and NFIP money now to cover after a storm, anyway.
I pointed out that the State had replaced on the maps the historic Black Rock neighborhood with the “fake” Commerce Drive district and called for the restoration of Black Rock.
The System: I talked of their model for what it is: a state-bonded “corporate welfare” scheme where they use our tax dollars to subsidize their hand-picked developers. What about our standards? Fairfield is trying to run a clean ship. What if Fairfield wants to know who the officers of a company are, or their financing sources?
Dark-money LLC’s are prevalent in real estate, as this article explains Fairfield has the right to know who the principals are for companies doing business here.
The Secretary of State of CT forwarded an email without commentary from the U.S. Government earlier this year that it would not prosecute cases involving cloaked principals and ownership. Conceivably, every malefactor now knows that CT is open for business, and with the state’s model, Fairfield won’t be able to say no to them setting up shop here.
The Call for Affordable Homes: I noted that the neighborhood where we now stood, Tunxis, was in a flood zone, as was all over six miles of U.S. 1 in Fairfield, from Southport to Bridgeport. And that Tunxis is really the heart and soul of Fairfield. Starting in the 1800’s, people could work in the mills in Bridgeport and own homes in the “country” of Fairfield. I contrasted their developer-friendly “housing” agenda that was heavy with luxury apartments for rent, compared to our plan for real, affordable homes to help people realize the American Dream of ownership.
A System of Willful Negligence
The head of the CMDA replied. He correctly stated that his agency did not pull the flawed flood maps that our entire town’s development plan is based on. He is right; his agency had nothing to do with that. But the CMDA is morally, ethically, and professionally wrong to look the other way. This is a play from the game plan of a broken system: plausible deniability. To know that the maps are wrong, to know that we are at risk of having massive liabilities all over town with uninsurable buildings, and to proceed anyway by saying “it isn’t our department” is willful negligence.
It’s a system where there can be claims of public input while making it nearly impossible to know what’s going on, for that input to be heard, and most importantly for that input to have an impact. This is the vacuum of silence where deals with groups like the CMDA are made. This is how a plan that affects every resident of our town gets to the goal line before the public even knows the game has started. There is an RTM vote on it on July 28 and maybe 1% awareness of it in town.
How is this possible?
The confident smile from the head of the CMDA, the pre-written resolutions, the offline meetings, the dismissal of public concern—these are not isolated incidents. It was the smile of an agent who knows that his agency, the CMDA, and the entire state system it represents, hold all the cards.
The agent is a diligent professional. The problem is that he is reporting to the wrong people. His agency is not accountable to the residents of Fairfield; it answers to the pro-builder, Hartford-centric axis. The deeper disease is governance that operates on the model developed after WWII. For decades, the system has operated on a simple, brutish principle – control everything: the information, the process, the people, and especially the money. Deals are made in back rooms, plans are buried, and the public is treated as an annoyance to be managed.
This is why we must insist on real reform. It’s not too much to ask for accountability. We must have a system where “I don’t know [and it doesn’t matter]” is replaced with “I didn’t know but we can fix it.” And we must have leaders who are willing to walk the walk. This is not just about one bad project or one flawed meeting. This is about believing in the individual rights of liberty that this country was built on.
Times have changed; Fairfield must as well.
We see it right here in our own RTM. You can’t call, text, chat or email with your rep anymore. It’s replaced with a one-way communication system because they “got too much spam.” This is not a reason; it is a mask for someone’s benefit. Whose? Of course not the public, and by throwing up barriers between elected reps and their constituents, the state is denying our reps the ability to do what they very much want to do: serve. It seems like a deliberate choice by leadership to control the party to advance their agenda and sideline the public. And when other leaders know of a problem and do nothing, they are complicit.
The areas of improvement for RTM are an opportunity. In an age of instant communication, there is no excuse for a system that silences its citizens. The people who run for the RTM do so because they want to serve their community. We need to give them the modern tools to do so.
In 2000, the state gerrymandered Fairfield’s neighborhoods into 10 districts. This is not Fairfield.
Replace the 10 RTM districts with true, neighborhood-based representation. Every one of the 24 major and minor neighborhoods in Fairfield deserves a voice. This ensures every resident knows exactly who their gladiators are in their town government.
Create a digital town hall Now, to reach your RTM, you have to go to the town’s website, navigate to RTM, look up your district, find the rep, then send a one-way form and hope for a response (I have not received a reply after using it three times). Imagine a new, transparent, and accessible communication platform – a simple system, powered by tools like Google’s Gemini, that acts as a “Digital Assistant” for every RTM member.
For Residents: Any resident could ask a question or voice a concern, and the system would instantly route it to the correct neighborhood representative and log it for the public record. It would follow up, find best practices, empathize with the constituent and try to find answers.
For Representatives: It would provide them with a direct, organized, and transparent way to have a real dialogue with the people they were elected to serve, both on individual levels and to their whole neighborhood
This isn’t science fiction; it is a practical solution that we can build ourselves. It’s time to bring the public sector out of 1975 and into the 21st century and join the rest of us in the real world.
Google changed everything
The revolution is here, and it is brought to you by Google. In this new era of radical transparency, we no longer have to guess what everyone is doing. We can see the flawed maps for ourselves. We can read their developer-friendly legislation. We can connect the dots. The “information” is no longer their private property; it belongs to the people. And there’s really no reason to keep info offline or everyone in the dark unless you’re hiding something.
This is the principle that guides our work at The-Voice.com, and it’s why we proudly ascribe to the standards of the Google News Initiative, which works to strengthen quality journalism and empower people through technological innovation. Our mission is to use this new era of transparency to not only regain some power for citizens, but all the power, as it should be.
The Day After – Where the Baloney Really Belonged
Left with sandwiches and a clear understanding of our state’s priorities, we took the baloney, the symbols of builders run amok, and brought them somewhere they could do some real good: Operation Hope. We donated the platter to the food kitchen to help feed our neighbors. It wasn’t a big deal but it helped the metaphor ring true. While the powerful in Hartford serve up deals that benefit a select few, we believe our first duty is to take care of each other in our community. See it here, then order lunch.
