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Health & Fitness

YET ANOTHER 830(g) APPLICATION

    2014 wasn’t eight days old before Bethany had it’s 2nd 830(g) application. At the corner of Peck Rd and Route 63 is a 1½ acre lot. Proposal 2014-002 is asking to put a 3-unit apartment building, classed as affordable housing on that same piece of ground. Under present zoning regulations, building apartment houses or exceeding the housing density as this applicant proposes, is not permitted. Acceding to this request sets a very dangerous precedent. Once this sort of application is permitted, Planning & Zoning will have to permit practically any other type of building or development, 830(g) or not. The housing market is heating up. If P&Z allows this exception, a 6-unit or 12-unit apartment complex will not be far behind. Pretty soon, some developer will be petitioning to allow the construction of Bethany Towers. 830(g) is such a trump card that it means if an application has an affordable housing component, it resets zoning to the 1950s. Essentially, this means that Bethany will have NO zoning regulations. The public hearing on this matter been continued to April  2nd, 7:15 at Town Hall. 

   I grew up in Hamden. I was in the 5th grade when they put up the Hamden Plaza. It used to be an apple orchard. By the time I graduated from high school, there were 3 more shopping centers plus high rise apartment buildings on top of the hill all along Mix Ave, behind the shopping centers. All of the mountain that stands between Hamden and Bethany, once farms, fields and woods, was under development. It started just like this. Once you open that zoning door a crack, the wave of building will blow that door in.

     By the time I graduated, the decline had not yet hit the school system. Hamden had one the finest public education systems in the country and I got an exemplary education. A few years after college, I had the opportunity to substitute teach in the Hamden system. By then, Hamden was a city. I have personal experience that there were policemen in the schools, metal detectors at the doors and drugs, riots and fights in the high school. The quality of education had sunk precipitously. I’m not saying that development caused the decline - there were a myriad of social changes that occurred at the time, but unchecked development was certainly the reason those problems were in Hamden.

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    Those developments got their start when Hamden had few zoning regulations and so growth proceeded uncontrolled. 830(g) essentially resets zoning to that era. If it is an 830(g) application, it supercedes all zoning considerations. It is zoning ordinances and only zoning ordinances that allow a town to modulate its growth and to preserve property values, the town skyline, the air & water purity and hundreds of other quality-of-life issues that belong to its citizens and only its citizens to decide upon. 830(g) was legislation that was written by developers and for developers. Bethany is under no obligation, legal or ethical, to accept this oppression.

    Bethany citizens, I urge you to write to the Planning and Zoning Commission, telling them to use every legal means available to stem the 830(g) tide. In the near future, we are certainly going to see more and more of these types of applications. If Bethany does not display a strong defense, developers will smell blood in the water. They will swarm Bethany and destroy it.

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    2379 people, 60% of Bethany’s voting population have signed petitions against this kind of zoning exception. Most Commission members owe their seats to Bethany citizens who elected them last spring on a very similar issue (Green Haven). Bethany citizens are telling the Commission in no uncertain terms that they like Bethany the way it is. They are telling Planning & Zoning they are against Bethany becoming a city. This application, like Green Haven Inc.'s application, must be defeated. Other developers must see that Bethany is an expensive and difficult place to stage an 830(g) fight.

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