NewCanaanite.com recently received the following letter. Email letters to editor@newcanaanite.com to have them published here.
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I’m writing to you all as a concerned mother, neighbor, and resident of New Canaan. Allowing a parking garage to be constructed in a residential wetlands zone in new Canaan is opening Pandora’s box for further development and expansion. This structure goes against all of what the New Canaan POCD stands for. If you need to ask for a rewriting of the rules to allow for such a large and aggressive structure you have to wonder what implications and problems will stem from this; why it wasn’t allowed in the first place. This structure will not serve new Canaan, it’s catering to the needs of St. Luke’s school and those children traveling from other towns and states. This massive and risky new structure is being built upon well and septic, partially in wetlands. There are no parking structures that I can find or know of built on well and septic in a residential zone within Fairfield county. Other towns would not entertain this idea. I understand St.Luke’s needs and there is a better way to accomplish this without such a structure being built. They have caused substantial traffic problems for years and a parking garage is not going to alleviate this problem. It encourages more drivers, allows for more people on campus, and therefore more congestion on a residential road. This area of new Canaan is stunningly beautiful with so much peace and tranquility with its natural environment. A parking structure just simply doesn’t belong and will affect the ecosystem. Thank you for hearing my thoughts.
Beth Uhlein
The lack of concern shown by commission members for the hazards of flooding our neighborhood with the construction vehicles required to build a 1.4 acre structure is appalling. This has never been done before in the state, it will require construction far beyond what’s necessary for an academic building. Our children don’t have street lights like in town and are not tall enough to be seen by these kinds of vehicles. This is why no other municipality allows buildings like this to be built in residential zones. Greenwich, Westport, Bridgeport, Darian, ALL of our neighbors have deemed structures like this to be against the best interests of residents but New Canaan has decided to stand alone and make us the first town anywhere to build stadium sized parking garages in residential zones. What was absolutely clear by their statements in deliberation was that commission members driving this decision didn’t have time to absorb the many hours of expert testimony, they misstated and misquoted testimony, none of them read from notes or presented evidence accurately. The most generous thing I can say is that some of them serve on three commissions and it’s clear they don’t have the bandwidth to handle the workload.
This is nothing new. Commissioners generally don’t read all of what they’re given and rely only on what they remember from the meetings. And the fact that the applicant gets to rebut and recharacterize what the neighbors objections represent only adds to the ability of the commissioners to ignore relevant facts. And unfortunately the courts are exceedingly deferential to the actions of the commission, whether they’ve paid attention to the facts or not. It’s rare that any public servant (particularly a volunteer) is nearly as diligent as the position requires. And that all assumes that the process is conducted in good faith.
None of us benefit from categorical derision, not based in fact, directed at those who volunteer to do the work we all need done if our system of self-government is going to function.
Town Council is volunteer. Appointed or elected, no one in a position of power is beyond criticism. 🇺🇸
I agree, the ability to criticize our representatives is an essential liberty that also is fundamental to self-government. But we do ourselves a disservice when making sweeping, critical assertions about those who serve that have no apparent basis in fact, such as “Commissioners generally don’t read all of what they’re given,” “rely only on what they remember,” and “ignore relevant facts.”