Without a doubt, the current earmark of $500,000.00 to expend on private property and the petition drive to stop it is going to be a polarizing issue as we enter into the local elections.
We have a lot of heavy hitting on the support side of the project and the Council decision to move forward with this. (Councilors Fishbein and Economopoulos voted against it).
There is strength in the opposition as well as the petition efforts pick up steam.
Steve Knight, a former Town Councilor and co-writer of the Record Journal’s FROM WALLINGFORD column came out in support of the council’s decision (please see FROM WALLINGFORD - Vision and sophistication)
The Record Journal ran a story this morning titled “Small says Wallingford isn't on hook for $500,000”
I’d like to review a few things that Steve wrote, and mind you, those are his opinions and like mine are going to differ. As an op-ed piece you don’t need to be objective – the whole point is to offer an opinion.
So I’ll start with:
“First of all, who benefits from the improvements? Opponents would have us believe that only the four property owners do. Nonsense. We all do, because a viable town center benefits each and every one of us, whether it’s in the property values of our homes or the quality of life we all wish to have. And that viability only exists because people want to come downtown. And they will only drive downtown if they know to a certainty that safe, convenient parking is available for their car. No parking? No people. No people? No successful downtown.”
I have said this before and I’ll say it again, there is plenty of parking downtown other than this one lot that is available for public use. The way that this gets outlined it makes it sound like there is no parking at all if we give up or lose the rights to use this lot as public parking that the entire downtown collapses.
I would like to see the study of how many cars use this lot on a daily basis as public parking in that they are not patronizing one of the businesses there.
The thing is, you won’t see it because there hasn’t been one. It is all done on estimation and assumption that there are users in this fashion and there probably are. I would argue they are a very small minority and at such a low use level that it can be equally argued that the spaces available at Town Hall and on the Wooding-Caplan property would suffice.
Next is:
“Secondly, let’s look at this investment. Yes, the Town of Wallingford is spending taxpayer money improving a piece of private property. But we are leasing this property. The owners are giving up control of the property. For thirty years”
I agree with Steve on the first part – we would be spending taxpayer money improving a piece of private property, something I don’t support out of the box.
We would be leasing the property but to say the owners are giving up control is more than a stretch. They are still able to pretty much do anything they currently are allowed to do but about the only things they will not be able to do is back out of the agreement on short notice as this would be a 30-year agreement and not a short term one. The other thing that they are effectively giving up is the ability to say “this is parking for my business only and all others will be towed.”
Now I am not sure what Steve was referring to with his next statement of “Frankly, I think it took a real leap of faith on the part of the four owners to make this deal. Without the parking behind their buildings, their property is worth zilch. It is a credit to them, and to the town government, that there is enough trust between the parties to enter into such a sweeping and lengthy arrangement” – Is he suggesting that the town could potentially take the property by eminent domain? I wouldn’t support that either and it is completely unnecessary as we have Wooding-Caplan and all the parking we should need if we would just fix that lot. I haven’t had the chance to speak with him so I am not entirely sure of his point here.
Someone else commented somewhere and I forget if it was a letter to the editor or someone I spoke with but they inferred that if we are leasing that property and it is in disrepair and if that someone was injured the town could be sued and if found liable, we might be on the hook for medical bills, pain and suffering and all that.
Could be the town and the property owners both in a situation like that.
So what do you think happens when someone sustains the same injury on the Wooding-Caplan parcel? We own that outright and it is in equal or worse disrepair right now. That’s right, the town, and only the town gets sued. The point here is we are at risk of being sued in both places and that is always a matter of risk but if we have this money I argue that we use it to repair our own property that is being used currently in the same manner (public parking).
Steve’s next point was:
“Okay, so the Town of Wallingford spends money on the parking lot. It directly benefits every single merchant downtown, and it indirectly benefits every single property owner in town because the downtown remains vibrant. You don’t need to be a professional urban planner to see the bright line connecting this investment with the benefits to the entire community. It’s obvious.”
So I am not sure how this is a direct benefit to every single merchant downtown; if people won’t park at town hall and walk one block to eat or go shopping why can anyone assume they’ll park there and walk down the hill? Be that as it may, then I could apply the same argument to the Wooding-Caplan property – if you fix it, a property that we already own – then you are providing a direct benefit to every single merchant downtown two fold; you have fixed a dilapidated public property and added net new parking to downtown.
Tomorrow I will write some additional comments with respect to the story in the Record Journal - “Small says Wallingford isn't on hook for $500,000”
