Who Wants to Build What

We know. We haven’t had much to say since the local elections last November. It looks like we have been honoring the Writers Guild strike. But the truth is work and holiday travel kept us from this blog.

But something happened over the holidays that demand comment: Amy Ancel (RTM member from district 3) set off a virtual firestorm on December 21, when she used a car crash as an excuse to bang her anti-Mahackeno drum.

She even used the accident – which slightly injured a woman from Shelton – as an excuse to attack First Selectman Gordon Joseloff.

Further, if Mr. Joseloff is truly committed to public safety, the last thing he should be doing is sanctioning the Y’s proposal at Mahackeno. He’s made it quite clear that he wants the Y at Mahackeno – and we are guaranteed to see more Exit 41 and Rt. 33 traffic backups, delays and accidents like this one as a result.

Ms. Ancel’s comment started a thread that led to a further 36 comments, including one from the First Selectman and four more from Ms. Ancel herself. At one point during this surreal conversation – which lasted two days – Ms. Ancel admitted that she would rather see houses built at the Westport Weston Family Y Mahackeno campground.

And even if they were several homes built at Mahackeno, they would at least conform with the current AAA residential zoning and result in less deforestation, less pollution, fewer cars, fewer people and fewer adverse impacts on neighboring property values and the residents’ quality of life than if the new Y were built there. Since they would undoubtedly be multi-million dollar homes, they would, in fact, enhance neighboring property values – something which the new Y will not and cannot do.

Of course Ms. Ancel, who is a real estate sales associate at Coldwell Banker , wants houses built at Mahackeno. They would would give her something to list.

Matthew Mandell’s Rearview Mirror

Westport Truth wonders if Matthew Mandell should look in his rearview mirror. (See post from earlier today.) Given that Adrian Bowles deduced a few days ago that Westport Truth is Mr. Mandell himself, perhaps we should address him directly.

Yes, by all means, Mr. Mandell, look in the mirror. You might see Tuesday’s election rushing at you.

As the photo above shows, Mr. Bowles is correct. There is only one Mandell sign on Ferry Lane East and it is in front of a house that is jointly owned by your wife and mother-in-law. (It is hidden by the truck.) It doesn’t appear that you have mobilized neighborhood support for your candidacy.

Turf Field Tussle

While Westporters continue to argue over the safety of artificial turf fields, which use recycled rubber tires, a community in New Jersey is debating whether to install a new plastic and rubber field. The “turf war” may decide Tuesday’s local elections in Glen Ridge, according to WCBS TV.

While we watched the WCBS piece, we wondered why there is such heated argument about artificial turf. (See last week’s Westport News.) After all, the Connecticut Department of Public Health reported that its, “review does not find any reason to stop the installation of these fields.”

The debate in Westport was set off last summer after the New Haven-based lobbying group Environment and Human Health, Inc. raised the alarm about turf. EHHI hired the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station to test samples of recycled tire crumbs, which are used to cushion artificial turf fields. CAES conducted a small laboratory experiment during which scientists heated tire crumbs to more than 40 ºC.

But were these real world conditions? Susan Jacozzi, director of the Westport Weston Health District, didn’t think so. That is why she rejected demands to close turf fields last September. Ms. Jacozzi agreed with State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who said that additional testing needed to be conducted, but “on the fields and not in a labatory.”

How did the turf debate become as heated as the laboratory experiment? We fear the answer may be scientific illiteracy. We suspect that many people did not take the time to read the CAES report. Even if they did, they may not have understood the experiment’s methodology.

In 2003, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) studied the science, math, and reading performance of more than 250,000 students from the United States and the other 29 OECD countries. American students ranked 24th in mathematics skills and 19th in scientific literacy.

We wonder where Westport would place in a nationwide ranking.

Parties and Profits

We just received the following e-mail from Matthew Mandell, who is running for reelection to the RTM from District 1:

Election day is tomorrow and best way to be heard is with your vote. Polls are open 6am to 8pm. There are 5 stations, Saugatuck, Kings Highway, Long Lots and Greens Farms elementaries and Coleytown Middle.

As you know I am constrained in this email, as it comes from a non profit, to endorse anyone. What I will say is IF you are choosing to vote for Ellie Lowenstein for P&Z that you vote for her on the Save Westport Now line, third line. By getting, I believe 2%, of the vote, this independent party line remains for the next election. And wouldn’t it be wonderful spice up the elections and put up 4 independent candidates on a slate to work to preserve our character, protect our environment and stop over development. But that’s 2 years away.

Just to be fair, the other candidates for P&Z are Helen Martin Block, Mike Krawiec, Tim Wetmore and David Press.

Now, to be fair to Mr. Mandell, he did send this mesasge to people who subscribe to his Save Westport e-mail newsletters. But it seems a tad duplicitous to support a quasi-political party called Save Westport Now by sending e-mails form a website called Save Westport and to say that you are not endorsing anyone. Are we wrong? Didn’t Mr. Mandell just endorse both Ms. Lowenstein and Save Westport Now?

Westport: A Gated Community

Last week, the Westport Republican Town Committee sent voters postcards that warned, “Overdevelopment is endangering Westport. Westport is threatened by high-density residential developers bypassing local zoning rules under Connecticut’s controversial 8-30g law.”

The WRTC card was delivered on top of last week’s Minuteman newspaper, which reported on page one that former Westport First Selectwoman Diane Farrell recently had left Westport and moved to Easton. While we held both the newspaper and the postcard in our hands, we realized that there was a connection. No, we don’t mean the Republicans finally chased Ms. Farrell out of town. Like many Westporters, who want to downsize their home, Ms. Farrell and her husband left town to buy a smaller house.

Older couples find it hard to downsize and stay in Westport; young couples find it very difficult to move here; and families that earn less than $.25 million a year find it almost impossible to live in Westport. It wasn’t always this way. Two generations ago, Westport was a mixed community where Madison Avenue executives lived a few hundred yards from plumbers and carpenters.

Westport began to “gentrify” more than 35 years ago. But even though home prices rose during the 1970s and 80s, teachers who worked in Westport could afford to live here. Now, only teachers married to bankers can pay a mortgage in Westport, where houses cost more than five times what they do in other parts of the United States. Many Westporters would say that local housing is more expensive than most other places because of market forces (supply and demand) and regional economic differences.

However, University of Pennsylvania economist Joseph Gyourko says that the skyrocketing price of real estate in towns like Westport is mainly due to zoning regulations. In other words, since 1970, we have slammed the brakes on development and turned our town into a homeowners’ cooperative. Many people want to be members of our cooperative and that demand has driven up housing prices. That demand is also changing the face of Westport. When you spend more than $1 million for a house, you want a very nice house. That is why so many people are tearing down homes and replacing them with new construction.

Look at the two houses in the photo above. They are next to each other on Weston Road and the lots have equal value. But if you were going to spend more than $1 million to join the Westport Club, which house would you want?

That brings us the 8-30g law, which is not really as controversial as the Republicans claim. The law, which was called the Affordable Housing Appeals Act when it was enacted in 1990, simply reverses the burden of proof when a municipality denies a developer’s application to build affordable housing. In other words, the town has to explain to a judge why the proposed housing is bad for Westport. The developer doesn’t have to explain why it would be good for the town.

The 8-30g law has been cited a number of times by developers who want to build in Westport, but the law has only been invoked once during the past 17 years. The Planning & Zoning Commission was sued under 8-30g after it rejected an application to develop Gorham Avenue, but the court upheld Westport’s denial as Westport Truth observes below.

Critics complain that 8-30g allows developers to build housing for the upper middle class. That is partially true. To qualify for special consideration under 8-30g, developers only need to set aside 30 percent of their units for people who earn 80 percent or less of the state’s median income (currently $61,961 for a family of three). The other 70 percent of the units could be sold or rented at market rates.

It can be argued that 8-30g needs to be rewritten, or replaced with better legislation. But it seems to us at Politicus Machamux that our state legislators saw a real problem 17 years ago and it has only gotten worse. Towns like Westport are becoming gated communities, where the fences are made of money, not metal.

That is why we agree with First Selectman Gordon Joseloff, who believes that Westport must do something to help teachers and municipal workers live in the town they serve.

Local Website Open to Comment

Finally, a local political candidate has created a website that is both informative and interactive. Brock Hotaling, who owns Assured Information Technology, recently launched Westport 1 to explain why he his running for the RTM from District 1. Mr. Hotaling’s website does more than inform; it also provides a comment section for Westporters to share their opinions.

What is Politicus Machamux?

Recently, some readers have complained that we are not providing news. Others have accused us of not being objective, so we remind our readers that we are not a news website. Politicus Machamux is a blog, edited by a small group of people – when we can find the time.

Many readers have been calling us PM and we wondered if they were simply abbreviating Politicus Machamux or trying to tar us with a reference to the old liberal PM newspaper? No matter. We are proud to be linked to PM, an afternoon newspaper that was published in New York during the 1940s.

Ralph Ingersoll, former editor for the New Yorker (1925-30), Fortune (1930-35), and Time (1936-39), founded PM as an alternative to the generally conservative New York newspapers. PM was proudly anti-Poll Tax, anti-Fascist, and a supporter of Roosevelt.

Penn Kimball edited PM’s commentary pages. Mr. Kimball eventually moved to Westport, where he lived for many years while he taught at Columbia University. We like to think Prof. Kimball – who is retired and living on Martha’s Vineyard – might see the spirit of the old PM in Politicus Machamux.

We also think that Mr. Kimball would smile if knew that Chris Grimm, Jonathan Steinberg, and others were criticizing us. “Of course, I don’t get the whole point of PM,” writes Mr. Grimm. The point is simple: we are offering Westporters our critical opinions and we are giving readers a chance to respond. That is rare in our town. In fact, other than Westport Now, we don’t know of another blog, or website, that is open to comment. We frequently visit Matthew Mandell’s website Westport Distict 1, and we are surprised that he doesn’t have a comments section. After all, he owns Melmar, a web design company, so should be able to create one.

Mr. Kimball might also smile if he knew that we found the old PM’s first editorial, which was published on June 18, 1940, long before “mission statements” were invented.

PM is against people who push other people around.
PM accepts no advertising.
PM belongs to no political party.
PM is absolutely free and uncensored.
PM is one newspaper that can and dares to tell the truth.

We are trying to do the much the same thing with Politicus Machamux. If you don’t agree, or simply don’t like us, it doesn’t matter. Unlike the old PM , we’re not selling our writing.

Chris Grimm Talks About the Issues

Chris Grimm, who is seeking reelection to District 5 in the Westport RTM, said that he was out of town and unable to provide a one-paragraph biography to the League of Women Voters for its 2007 Voters’ Guide. Mr. Grimm seems to suggest that his failure to be in the Voter’s Guide doesn’t matter. “My comments on a variety of subjects, in the papers, in meeting minutes, etc. are pretty easy to find,” he wrote to us.

Sadly, it is not easy to find out much about any of the current members of the RTM. If you search Mr. Grimm’s name on Westport Now, for example, you find a short list of entries, many of which are about Mr. Grimm’s opposition to the underage drinking ordinance (which was proposed and voted down in 2005).

Oh yes, you also find Mr. Grimm’s old “Wine Talk” column, which used to appear as frequently as Politicus Machamux. We guess he gave up the column when he began campaigning against the drinking ordinance.

Plus ça change… Plus c’est la même chose

We at Politicus Machamux have been out of state on a series of business trips for the past few weeks and we have let this blog languish. But we are back in time for the election in November.

Since we returned to Westport last week, we were saddend to see that some members of the RTM continue to be disdainful of Westport voters. Michael Gilbertie, Michael Rea and Chris Grimm all failed to provide information to the League of Women Voters to publish in its 2007 Voters’ Guide, the most important tool voters have in our local elections.

Perhaps they don’t want to highlight their poor performance during the past two years as members of the RTM. (We are surprised that Chris Grimm is even standing for reelection after he embarrassed the RTM last summer by acting like a testy high school student.) Whatever the reason, it is an egregious insult to Westporters when incumbent members of the RTM give “no response” to the League of Women Voters.

Mr. Grimm and Mr. Rea obviously feel they do not need to explain themselves, since neither is running in a true election. (They are running for office in uncontested RTM districts.) But their failure to communicate with the electorate demonstrates how much we are governed by an oligarchy.

Plus ça change…

Well, Now We Know Where Matthew Mandell Lives

Westport’s Representative Town Meeting (RTM) voted on Tuesday, September 4, 2007 to allow Matthew Mandell to run again this November to be an RTM member from District 1.

We, and others, have questioned Mr. Mandell’s residency. (See the story in the August 31st Westport News.)

Jim Howe, a resident of 20 Ferry Lane, told the Westport RTM that he had never seen Matthew Mandell at his home at 18 Ferry Lane and he questioned if Mr. Mandell should be allowed to represent a district in which he has never technically resided. “As I understand it, it is not a question of home-ownership,” Mr. Howe said.

Dewey Loselle, of District 8, rushed to the podium and put forth a motion to cut the debate short, but he failed. The RTM continued to debate Mr. Mandell’s status for more than two hours.

Michael Gilbertie, of District 9, said that Mr. Mandell wasn’t trying to pretend that he currently lived at Ferry Lane, since he never cut his grass. We think Mr. Gilbertie said that in support of Mr. Mandell, but we really couldn’t tell.

Finally, a little after 10:00 p.m., the RTM voted 30-0-2 in favor of Mr. Mandell’s motion that he be declared a resident of District 1.