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And welcome back to Power and Politics. I'm Mark Suto. We're talking again about the upcoming special election in Fairfield for for selectperson Tony Wong and Christine Vitale. You're both here with us. Uh, Tony, I kind of cut you off there before you can finish up. Well, I think the critical aspect is, do we want Fairfield to remain as a town that's engaged and affordable or become a city that is cost prohibitive and fraught. With challenges of infrastructure and increased taxation, here's the challenge when you talk about increased density, you're not only talking about change in the very landscape and the nature of communities and neighborhoods, you're talking about increased infrastructure demands, sewage capacity, environmental impact, but also increase in services, schools becoming more, uh, packed, challenges in regards to transport. It is not in a vacuum when you look at increased density housing. We have nearly 30 projects even before a moratorium, and ultimately it impacts people on taxes. All right, let me ask you about controlling the growth in. I think we got a little bit extra time on that one and I want to to clarify for our residents that affordable, accessible housing does not necessarily mean high rise. You know, uh, development going on our residential areas and that's where it comes down to leadership right now that is what we're doing. We're looking at only 4.5% of our land mass is zoned for commercial, so we're looking at accessible housing, diversified housing stock outside of our established residential areas and those in the areas where. We can have mixed use housing, middle housing, that's what's lacking. And right now, now is the time to do that. These 830G, many of them are in appeals. They may or may not even get built, but right now we are looking to the future, and that takes planning. It takes leadership, smart revitalization of aging commercial infrastructures, building housing near our downtowns where people work, keeping Fairfield vibrant. It's good for our economy, good for the future. Tony, what about controlling growth in town spending? Well, I think the key phrase, as I said, do we want Fairfield to remain as a village, a town that engages and have neighborhoods and communities, or do we become a city with high rises? I think the first selectwoman said that that she looks at middle housing, but the problem at hand is we have nearly 30 projects even before the moratorium set in of high rises, high density, creating incredible. Impact on infrastructure, taxation and services. So plain and simple, what have we done to challenge those projects as we took a victory lap on the UI monopole, I have seen nothing. I have heard silence in regards to the various other projects and in fact we've even supported using town funds to be able to allocate a project that was vehemently opposed by neighborhoods. Bottom line is this we have projects that are ongoing right now. That this town's leadership has been silent on in supporting the community. How do you respond to that? We have projects that are going on that are going through the proper board that is reviewing those projects. The community was able to engage with that. Um, right now my focus is looking to, to plan for the future. As I said, many of these projects are in appeals. Some of them were in litigation. They may or may not be moving forward. My priority is looking to the future, making sure that we keep that for that moratorium. Right now we are well on our way, halfway there to getting our second moratorium that will. Give us another 5 years. That'll give us almost 9 years to control our destiny. Now is the time to take local control, be smart about our development. It's in our control right now. I can't go back and change state legislation, and it's really easy now to, to be out saying, where was the advocacy, um, for years to change this legislation at the state level and. You know, having places for people to live that is accessible and diversified, that needs to be a priority for our, our nation, for our state, and for Fairfield. We want to keep Fairfield a place that is accessible to young families, to our seniors, and the people that serve us each day. You want to respond to that? Yes, I do very much so. The silence for those 30 communities that are impacted is deafening. So we may move forward to the moratorium, but to those communities that will forever be changed. The silence from town hall has been deafening. Secondly, we have a supermajority of Democrats in the state legislature, and in 2017 when it was tied and balanced, this is the challenge with one party rule. When it was balanced, I was the architect of the only major change in 30G legislation in its entire history. History. So yes ma'am, with leadership we can make changes, but when you say we're going to move forward and leave behind many of the communities that will be irrevocably changed, then that is not leadership. That is unfortunately the plight that we're dealing with that the residents of this town in regards to revaluation and increased taxation and not missing, not understanding that we could have been proactive and the legislation. Well, I think the. Being proactive, Fairfield has been proactive, and the war has landed us. It's landed us in court, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting projects that per the statute we know we're not going to be able in many cases to win. We've wasted a lot of time over the last decade saying no to projects that we knew per the statute we're going to move forward. If we had reached the moratorium earlier, think about all the projects that. Would not be moving forward now. Stand up for those residents in terms of, um, we don't want high rises, 5-story, 6 story development in our residential areas. Our plan of conserve conservation development outlines that we are not looking to become a city like Stanford or Norwalk. No offense against Norwalk, but we wanna keep that small town feel, have places for people to live, build, um, build for the future. So families can keep on coming to Fearful, and that takes leadership. It takes being willing to engage the community, make tough decisions, and that's what I've been doing and hope to do for the remainder of Bill Gerber's term. I think the vision of leadership is a contrast here. I think the key word I heard from the first selectwoman is to fight for neighborhoods, to engage in that debate is a waste of money, and to me that is a, a, a, a absolutely inappropriate statement. We overcame the UI monopole because it mattered, and town leadership needs to effectuate that. Thank you so much.

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Well, we've seen speed cameras popping up in towns and cities across the state lately, and in a few months, it'll be Stanford's turn. News 12 Connecticut's Greg Thompson has the details. Thanks to a green light from the state 0.14 speed cameras are officially coming to Stanford. It's another tool in our toolbox. Speeding is the number one determiner of fatalities or serious injuries in a crash. So if we're able to bring that speed down, we're automatically making the whole system safer. The plan is to put one in each direction near the entrances to seven different schools, including at Stanford High School, where a student was hit and killed in 2016. I used to walk to school my freshman year because I don't live too far and like it definitely was a hazard and people do speed a lot. People will speed up, even when children are crossing the street. I almost wrote a letter to the city asking for them. The city says that the schools they chose are all places where at least 50% of the students walk to class. At least 15% of the drivers go 6 MPH or more over the speed limit, and in most of the cases are also on a road where there's been an above average number of serious crashes. There's a break-even number we're able to find around 6700 violations. Um, which, you know, I think based on other municipalities we'll probably get to, so the program does pay for itself. The tickets won't be reported or count towards points on your license, but after a 30 day warning period, anyone who's going more than 10 miles an hour over the speed limit will get hit with a $50 fine plus a $15 processing fee for the first violation, then a $75 fine and the processing fee for every violation after that. The whole point of this is not just For you know collecting revenue and be secretive about everything, there are signs saying speed limit, photo enforced. The key thing is we want to have people slow down in front of our schools. Any extra money will be reinvested back into roadway safety improvements. When there's implications with it, I believe it will do something. There's a few things that people will be more worried about than having to pay a ticket, so I think. Like in context, it's a good idea. The city is hoping to have the cameras up and running by the start of next school year. In Stamford, Greg Thompson, News 12, Connecticut. That's all our time. I'm Mark Sudall. Thanks for watching.

https://vod.prod.alticeustech.com/transcode/216b34bc-78b7-47c5-8bdd-13c8de98455f/216b34bc-78b7-47c5-8bdd-13c8de98455f.transcribe

Fairfield First Selectperson Christine Vitale and Republican state Sen. Tony Hwang join the show.

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