From Higby Road to Maromas: 5 Hours of Planning and Zoning

The Planning and Zoning commissioners on Wednesday evening started their meeting with a long discussion on the topic of Higby, lingered extensively on Maromas, approved several site plans, and then bickered like lawyers in the back seat of a mini-van for an hour.

Higby Road environment (7:00 - 8:00PM)

The meeting started with a discussion with the public on items not on the agenda. Eleanor Kelsie, of Higby Road, gave the Commission a thorough 'show and tell' on the problems on a property also on Higby Road, owned by John Kolman. This property, which straddles the Middlefield town line and extends from Higby Road back towards the Higby Reservoir, has been used since at least 1993 for a leaf composting business. Kolman's major client is the City of Middletown, which has a contract to dump leaves on his property. The property was also used by Empire Paving, which crushed and mixed debris for re-use during the expansion of Route 66. Kelsie brought 4 different poster boards with maps and aerial photographs sh0wing what appears to be dramatic erosion and landfilling on the property. Donna White, who keeps horses on several acres of land that she leases from Kolman, showed dozens of pictures of trash and cement on the property, and trucks using the property after the time that the city had given a cease and desist order which stopped Mr. Kolman from accepting anything other than the leaves under the city contract. Mrs. Kelsie expressed her concern at the proximity of the leaves and other piles of material to the Higby reservoir, which provides potable water to much of Middletown.

The commissioners were universally alarmed at what they learned about the property from the neighbors. Commissioner Ron Borelli expressed his dismay that the city had not tested the ground water around the site, as had been expected in the approval of the leaf composting business in 1993. Towards the end of the meeting, the commissioners voted unanimously to request funds from the Common Council to contract for detailed ground water testing in the land between the composting piles and Higby reservoir. They agreed to hold a public hearing after the results of the testing came back.

Protecting Natural Resources and Preserving Rural Character (8:00 - 10:00 PM)
About 50 members of the public came to give and hear comments on chapters 7 and 10 of the proposed Plan of Conservation and Development. At this week's meeting, members of the Conservation Commission eloquently presented the rationales for protecting the Middletown environment. Katchen Coley spoke of the richness of the animal and plant diversity in Middletown, including pileated woodpeckers, two nesting pairs of bald eagles, a peregrine falcon, the endangered short-nosed sturgeon, threatened alewives, and the American eel. She pointed to the importance of preserving all of the species, both plant and animal, saying, "It's like a pie, you have to have all of it for any of it to exist." Kate Miller spoke to the importance of adding air quality issues to zoning decisions, and of educating the public about alternatives that reduce pollution. She also emphasized the importance of monitoring air pollution to identify the problems and to assess the effect of any changes. Eric Mosher explained that the Conservation Commission chooses open space based on three criteria: it should be 1o acres or more (with some exceptions), it should be continuous or abutting to existing open space, and it should not be industrially zoned. The POCD calls for an increase of 2931 acres, a 25% increase from the 1990 plan.

Erin O'Hare, an environmental consultant hired by the group AMP (Advocates for a Maromas Plan), used her considerable experience with other town plans in Connecticut to make several points. There should be a Natural Resources Inventory that catalogs all of the components of this green infrastructure. The POCD should state clear goals for the environment and give strategies for achieving them. Barrett Robbins-Pianka expressed her support for the POCD and said that Middletown should think of the environment as the "green infrastructure for the city". She urged the commissioners to add sections on sound and light pollution, and to write rules for streets that would include protection for amphibians and reptiles (e.g. Salamander Crossings).
Because of the length and number of the comments, the hearing on both chapters was continued until the next meeting.

Application reviews (11:00 - 12:00)

After the spirited discussions of the environment, the commissioners dispatched a number of applications for releasing of cash bonds, approval of modifications to originally approved plans, and site plan reviews. Two new commercial/industrial developments are noteworthy.

Centerpoint, Industrial Park Road
This development, located adjacent to I91 and near Route 372 at the Cromwell town line, will create 96,000 square feet of office space, to be sold as office condominiums to small business owners. The architect, Michael Tyre, said that he was aiming to achieve a certification of gold under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™. A gold rating is not easy to achieve, it requires attention to all the details of construction and design and although that attention pays off in a reduction of long-term operating expenses, the initial construction costs are often higher. The only building in Middletown that has achieved LEED certification is a dormitory at Wesleyan, which received the lowest LEED rating (see HERE for the details on that certification). Gold is the 2nd highest of the 5 LEED rating levels.

Tyre has designed the parking, walkways and buildings to give a campus feel, encouraging occupants to walk through the complex. Solar panels are proposed for the roof of every building. The landscape engineer, Stephen Wing, has designed a shaded parking lot with 1 tree for every 7 cars. Storm water runoff will be collected and filtered in two large infiltration galleries. Several commissioners had comments, mostly favorable, about the plan. Ron Borelli called it a gorgeous building, Carl Bolz liked the pedestrian linkages between buildings, and Ron Pelletier applauded the use of the land topology to create easy handicap access to both floors. Only Catherine Johnson demurred, saying bluntly, "This is a cookie cutter building, it's just suburbia over and over." Despite her misgivings, this environmentally responsible and aesthetically attractive development plan (that's just my opinion) received unanimous approval from the commissioners.

Price Chopper coming to town
The long under-used shopping plaza on Washington Street will be the site of a new supermarket. The existing building adjacent to the Home Depot will be demolished and replaced by a slightly larger Price Chopper supermarket. The design and construction of Price Choppers has changed from what it used to be (this is not your mother's Price Chopper), both to build in a more environmentally responsible manner and to change the appearance of the buildings. The architects of this building are also aiming for LEED certification, according to Michiel Wackers in the Planning Department.Precast concrete incorporating fly ash (a waste product from power plants) will be used to create panels, with insulation sandwiched within, which will form the building envelope. Skylights will be used to bring natural light into the building, and the indoor lighting will automatically dim according to natural light levels. A German-made refrigeration system using carbon dioxide instead of fluorocarbons will be used throughout the store. Price Chopper is working with UTC on the possibility of powering the building with a fuel cell. This proposal was unanimously approved.

Commission business (12:00 - 1:07AM, but who's counting)

Maybe it was simply fatigue driven irritability, or maybe like Cinderella there is a bewitching hour when the horses turn back into rodents, but the bonhomie disappeared when commissioners turned their attention from the public and the developers to their own affairs.

First, commissioner Johnson requested that a subcommittee be created to re-write the draft Plan of Conservation and Development. The current draft, written by Director Bill Warner, has been presented for public comment at neighborhood and advocacy groups, not to mention Planning and Zoning Commission meetings, during the past year. Ms. Johnson suggested that based on this work the commissioners could approve the basic principles of Warner's draft, but she called for a committee to be formed that would meet weekly to re-write the language of the POCD. She did not articulate what she felt the universally acceptable principles would be, and how those could be clearly distinct from the language. No other commissioner volunteered to be on this committee, but Johnson said she has a list of 24 volunteers from the community who would be willing to participate in the writing. Chairwoman Barbara Plum objected, "Will we just do it [POCD meetings] all over again?" Johnson referred obliquely to difficulties that the commission has in working together, saying, "Because of the personalities on the commission, we need to outline principles [of the POCD]. ... Clearly Bill knows it needs to be re-written. I believe we could re-write this by May 1st." Discussion on forming a committee was tabled until the January meeting.

The commissioners then turned to their next topic of bickering, namely the selection of appointments to Midstate Regional Planning Agency, the Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC), and the Parking Authority Commission. Chairwoman Plum's announcement that she was appointing herself to all three bodies was not met with universal happiness. After a healthy discussion (in this case a euphemism for a silly and dysfunctional discussion which Warner said takes place every year on the appointment to the CAC), over what these posts were, whether there were openings, and how those openings should be filled, Johnson was appointed to Midstate Planning, Plum to Parking Authority, and the commissioners agreed that Plum's service on the CAC was already mandated to be 4 years.

All of this was just the warm-up act for the main event under commission business, which was the election of officers. The election of chair was so close that one vote switch would have altered the outcome. Depending on your mood, this could be seen as the white-knuckled excitement of real democracy, or as the bare-knuckled grotesquery of a cockfight. After nearly 5 hours in City Hall, and having endured hours (days, if you count all the previous meetings I've attended) of sniping by commissioners at each other and at architects, I was inclined to view it as something close to the latter. It appeared last night that the commissioners might not disagree with me. Two commissioners were nominated for chair, Barbara Plum and Deborah Kleckowski. By city charter, all commission actions require a super-majority of 5 votes. In combination with the rule that no party can have more than 4 seats on the 7-member commission, this prevents party-line approval of anything. Voting was by secret ballot, each commissioner writing their selection on a piece of paper. With great suspense, Warner pulled the votes from an envelope, and announced: Kleckowski 4 and Plum 3; neither candidate received the necessary 5 votes. The commissioners then commenced into a contentious discussion over whether this meant that Plum would remain chair for the next year. They decided to vote again, which was puzzling to me as it did not look to me that anybody was winning any friends up there. However the vote did change, and this time it was Plum 4 and Kleckowski 3. Alas, it was a distinction without a difference, and more discussion ensued. Talk of Bylaws, Charters, and Roberts Rules of Order filled the late night air, a gripping (and griping) time was had by all. In the end, the gavel came down firmly in the hand of Barbara Plum, who announced that because nobody was elected she would continue as chair for the next year. Richard Pelletier was elected vice-chair by acclamation. There was another deadlock for secretary: Les Adams 4 and James Fortuna 3. Fortuna will continue as Secretary.