One Person Peeing in a Swimming Pool Is Not a Problem. A Hundred Is

Traffic in Fairfield is nightmarish. You know it. I know it. I hear about it every single day as I campaign to represent Fairfield and Southport in the 132nd District, and I hear it alongside a second worry, which is all the new buildings being proposed.

The concern people describe to me is almost always the same one, even when they don't have the vocabulary for it. It isn't that any single project will wreck the town. It's that nobody seems to be adding them up.

Subscribe

One person peeing in a chlorinated pool is not a problem. A hundred people peeing in that pool is a problem.

Fairfield's rules do require adding them up. Three things get in the way.

The part of the rule that already works, and the three holes in it

Section 25.14 is the Town's regulation governing traffic impact studies. It requires an applicant's engineer to model traffic under three scenarios: existing conditions, "no-build," and "build." And the no-build case is defined to include "nearby approved or submitted development impacts" on a three-year horizon.

Good. That is exactly the right structure, and credit where it's due.

Now the holes.

One: nobody has defined "nearby." Not a distance, not an intersection count, not a corridor. It is left entirely to the engineer the applicant is paying.

Two: the Town doesn't keep the data. Town Plan and Zoning Commissioner Kathryn Braun has proposed that traffic studies be filed electronically and go into what she called "the town's sort of inventory of traffic studies… so we can rely on this when we look at the cumulative impact going forward." It's a good idea. It's also a proposal, which tells you there's no such inventory today. So even where the rule says to count nearby approved development, there's no central place holding the numbers an engineer would need to do it.

Three, and this is the big one: a project that never triggers a study contributes nothing to anyone's math. Right now the trigger is 100 peak-hour vehicle trips. Commissioner Braun proposed adding objective thresholds — 15 or more residential units, 40 or more parking spaces, or more than 10,000 square feet — and, crucially, applying them to "adjacent or interrelated sites that exceed the thresholds in the aggregate over any five-year period."

Here is how she explained it to her fellow commissioners on August 4:

"…which Westport does and we need to start doing, because the cumulative impact is not being assessed. We only look at each project on its own, and we can all see where that's gotten us. It's gotten us to a lot of congestion, a lot of flooding, etc."

That's not me. That's a sitting commissioner, on the record, saying the quiet part at a public meeting.

Six 14-unit buildings on the same road, filed a few months apart, each one just under the line. Every study says no significant impact. Every study is correct.

That's the pool.

Why the words matter more than they used to

The Town Plan and Zoning Commission has now spent two meetings on Section 25.14. That would be dry stuff except for what changed underneath it this year.

PA 25-1 is the biggest change to Connecticut housing law since 8-30g, and it will land hardest on Fairfield County, because let's be honest: it's more profitable to build here. The law moves a large share of new housing out of the Commission's hands entirely. It goes to summary review — if an application meets the criteria in our rules and regulations, it passes.

No hearing. No notice. No moment where a resident or a commissioner or an expert gets to stand up and say wait, stop, a fire truck cannot get to that building.

So the rules have to be bulletproof. Whatever protection used to come from people talking in a public hearing now has to be baked into the text, in advance, or it doesn't exist.

What the fire department said

Here is the part I want to be scrupulous about, because the Planning Director did something right and it matters.

She sent the draft to the Fire Department and the Police Department and asked them to review it. That was the correct thing to do.

She sent it Monday, July 27, at 5:43 in the evening. Assistant Chief Cronin answered at 12:19 the next day. Captain Irizarry twenty-five minutes after that. Neither man had to be asked twice.

Cronin — Assistant Chief and Fire Marshal — sent back the code language for fire department access roads, out of the 2022 Connecticut State Fire Safety Code, Chapter D1.2. Twenty feet of unobstructed width for fire apparatus access — a number he noted is expected to change to 24 in the next code set. Thirteen feet six inches of vertical clearance. Approved turnarounds on any dead end over 150 feet. Grade limited so the angle of approach and departure doesn't exceed a one-foot drop in twenty.

Then he gave them the actual truck: "Inside turn radi 23 ft 10 in, curb to curb 39 ft 5 in, wall to wall 43 ft 4 in is our current ladder truck." And he flagged that the required width "shall not be obstructed in any manner, including by parked vehicles."

His second sentence was this:

"Many of the newer buildings have been challenging."

Captain Hector Irizarry, writing for the Police Department, was warm about the draft — he called it "a very well thought-out amendment and a significant step forward," praised the Vision Zero and Complete Streets framing, and thanked the staff who wrote it. He is not a critic here and I'm not going to dress him up as one.

He offered two suggestions. The first was that the safety analysis section consider operational data alongside crash history — enforcement trends, recurring parking and loading issues, pedestrian complaints — because "crash data tells part of the story, but it doesn't always capture locations where proactive enforcement has helped prevent more serious issues from developing."

What the draft says

Six days later, on August 4, the Planning Department circulated a redline of Section 25.14.

In it, emergency access is item M. Here is item M, complete:

M. Emergency Vehicle Access.

Three words. In the July draft it was item K, and it said the same thing.

The safety analysis provision — item H in the July draft, item J in the August one after the letters shifted — still reads crash history for the preceding three years, and nothing else.

So: the Fire Marshal was asked, and answered within hours with widths, clearances, turning radii and the dimensions of the truck. The Police Captain was asked, endorsed the draft, and made one substantive request.

Neither appears in the redline. Not the fire access standards. Not the operational data. The section came back with the same three words it had in July.

I don't think that's malice. I think it's what happens when nobody's job is to close the loop. But the effect is the same: the fire department told the Town what it takes to reach these buildings, in writing, at the Town's own request — and the rule that will govern buildings approved without a hearing doesn't say any of it.

The one place fire and police appear

There is exactly one provision in Section 25.14 that mentions them. It says that where safety concerns "have been identified by either the Fire Department or the Police Department in the town's pre-application code review process," the study must address them.

At the August 4 meeting the Commission was told, by the Planning Director, on the record:

"We cannot require the code review, which again is an informal, voluntary, unenforceable group meeting with town departments."

Read those two things together. The only fire and police protection in the regulation depends on a meeting the applicant can simply decline to request. And under summary review, there's no hearing where anyone would notice.

What the rest of the redraft did

I want to be careful here, because this is where it stops being about one item.

Commissioner Judy Szablak submitted a 28-item list after the July 21 meeting, capturing what commissioners had raised. Compare it line by line against the August 4 staff redline and a pattern shows up that has nothing to do with fire trucks:

Every mechanism that would have let anyone stop, pause, or re-examine an application came out.

• Braun's provision letting the Commission require a study on findings, with the deadline tolled — deferred to the Town Attorney.
• The Chairman's trigger returning an application to the Commission when the State forces a design change — rejected. "Not needed where the Town has no jurisdiction."
• Braun's version of the same trigger — rejected.
• Monahan's requirement that police and fire concerns be addressed in writing, on the record, before the Commission votes — the words "in writing," "on the record before the vote," and the Health Department were all struck.
• And the item that would have let the Town Engineer demand re-conducted traffic counts before accepting a study — removed.

That last one matters, because it isn't a story about staff taking power from commissioners. Authority came out for everybody. The Chairman lost a provision. The Vice Chairman had two deferred. Petise — the DPW Director, a licensed engineer who presented this very section — had two of his own items dropped.

Nobody kept the ability to say no.

Who works for whom

This is worth saying plainly, because I don't think most residents have any reason to know it.

The Town Plan and Zoning Commission is the body with the authority. Its members serve the public and answer for what gets built. The Planning Director is a hired professional whose job is to staff that Commission — to advise it, draft for it, and carry out what it decides.

She works for them. Not the other way around.

That isn't a criticism, it's the org chart. And it's why the sequence here should give you pause. Commissioners spent a meeting saying what they wanted in this regulation. A commissioner compiled it into twenty-eight items and filed it. What came back had sixteen of the twenty-eight dropped, deferred, or weakened.

Now — staff is entirely entitled to say "I don't believe you can legally do that." That's the job, and on some of these she may well be right. Tolling a statutory deadline is a genuine legal question. So is jurisdiction over state roads.

But that's advice. The Commission is the body that decides whether to test it, ask the town attorney, or write it narrower. And a commission cannot decide anything about language that isn't in the draft in front of it.

And this is exactly what summary review changes. It doesn't just take away your chance to speak. It moves the decision itself — from commissioners who have to face the voters, to staff who never do.

Westport just does this

Fairfield resident Jim Brown of South Pine Creek Road went and looked at how the town next door handles it, and wrote to First Selectwoman Christine Vitale about it. In Westport, an application isn't complete until it's gone to Police, Fire and Public Works for comment. Those departments can come back with "no comment," and usually do.

That's the whole mechanism. It costs a routing step. It gives them the opportunity.

Mr. Brown copied the TPZ Commission. The Planning Director replied — from the Commission's own email account — to say the Commission can't require departments to review traffic studies.

On the narrow legal point, she's right. A zoning commission writes zoning regulations; it doesn't assign another department's workload.

But nobody needed to be assigned anything. Cronin and Irizarry had already written. Unprompted. The letters were sitting in the file. The question was never whether the Commission could make the Fire Marshal produce something — he already had.

The question is why what he produced didn't make it into the draft.

How you fix it in one afternoon

The Commission unquestionably controls one thing: what a traffic study has to contain. That's its own regulation. It directs no department and needs no statute.

Put their standards in the study:

M. Emergency Vehicle Access. The study shall demonstrate compliance with fire apparatus access requirements under the Connecticut State Fire Safety Code, including unobstructed access road width, vertical clearance, turning radii adequate for the responding department's apparatus, approved turnarounds on dead ends exceeding 150 feet, grade, and surface load capacity. The study shall identify any location where on-street or on-site parking would reduce required access width.

That's the Fire Marshal's language, not mine. It commands nobody. And it doesn't depend on whether an applicant volunteered for a meeting.

Do the same for cumulative traffic — count what's approved and what's pending, not just this one lot.

Is this radical?

Fire truck access. Adding up the traffic. Asking the fire department before the building is built instead of after.



Am I taking crazy pills? Could someone please have some common sense?

Section 25.14 comes back before the Commission soon — likely August 25. Please weigh in. Write to the Commission. Show up.

Because unless we get these development rules right and tight, what we get is a hellscape where you sit at a light watching it cycle through the colors twice without moving, and there's nobody to blame but ourselves for not caring when we had the chance.

I don't speak for you. Not yet, anyway. I'm on the ballot November 3, and early voting starts October 19.



I don't give a fig about politics. I give every fig I have about the people who live here — the ones sitting in that traffic on the way to work, the ones who bought a house on a street that's about to change, and the ones who are going to need a fire truck one night and will not be thinking about zoning when they do. I care a great deal about common sense, and I love this town with my whole heart.

So let's stop pretending nobody's peeing in the pool, and write the rules tight enough to keep the pool nice for everyone to enjoy.

God bless us all.

Emily Hau is a Fairfield resident and a filed candidate for State Representative in the 132nd District. emilyforfairfield.com

Documents cited: Written comments of Assistant Chief John Cronin and Captain Hector Irizarry to the Town Plan and Zoning Commission, July 28, 2026; Section 25.14 staff redline dated August 4, 2026, and the July draft, in the Commission's meeting backup; Commissioner Szablak's 28-item list submitted July 27, 2026, in the August 4 packet; TPZ meeting of August 4, 2026, at 1:57:45; correspondence with the Planning Department, August 10, 2026, copied to the Commission, the Police Commission, and the First Selectwoman's office.

Read the TPZ series:

Part 1: How Fairfield's TPZ chairman spends his day job advising New York housing-finance lenders — and why his public posts about that work matter for the residents whose zoning he votes on. Read Part 1

Part 2: How Fairfield's TPZ chairman voted three times against engaging outside legal counsel on Connecticut's new housing law — and why his New York day job involves advising on exactly that kind of legislation. Read Part 2

Part 3: The developer-initiated zoning regulation amendments now in front of the Commission, and the specific 0.92-acre Mill Hill Road parcel one of them appears to have been drafted for. Read Part 3

Part 4: How Fairfield's TPZ chairman used a bylaws subcommittee to constrain a sitting commissioner — and why the video of her resignation isn't on the Town's official YouTube. Read Part 4

Part 5: How Fairfield's planning director misstated a regulation her own office had just drafted — and why her misstatement defined a 4-3 vote that left downtown unprotected. Read Part 5

Part 6: How Fairfield's TPZ Vice Chairman responded to parts 1-5 of the series — and why the response, which does not dispute a single fact, is the record's strongest possible endorsement. Read Part 6

Part 7: How Fairfield's TPZ Vice Chairman reassured residents that Tuesday's traffic amendment "does not replace the Commission's judgment" — without mentioning how many future applications will never reach the Commission at all. Read Part 7

Part 8: How a traffic regulation drafted eighteen months ago, before the state law that made it matter, consumed an entire meeting — and why its author limited the debate on it. Read Part 8

Part 9: How both affordable units at a Southport condominium development ended up with the developer who screened the applicants and with his business partner's son — and how the paperwork showing it sat in a Town file for five years. Read Part 9

You're reading Part 10: Why every Fairfield traffic study is written as though it were the only building in town — and what the fire department asked for in writing on July 28 that still isn't in the rule going to a vote.

Part 11 (coming soon): Why the architectural standards now before the Commission need more eyes on them than they are getting — and what's already been written into other regulations on the assumption they'll pass.