They're Writing the Rule About Who Gets to Ask Where the Water Goes

On Sunday morning, 5.92 inches of rain fell on Fairfield. Roads closed. Underpasses filled. The National Weather Service kept the town under a flash flood warning until eleven o'clock, and by the time it lifted, a lot of people here had learned something about their basements they did not previously know. Governor Lamont called it a rain bomb.

On Wednesday at noon, for one hour, on Zoom, a subcommittee of the Town Plan and Zoning Commission will take public comment on a draft set of bylaws.

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One of those bylaws is about who gets to ask where the water goes.

Seven people decide what gets built in Fairfield. They sit on the Town Plan and Zoning Commission. A two-member subcommittee is proposing the rules for how those seven may speak, what they may ask, and who controls the agenda.

You get one hour to object: Wednesday, September 16, noon to 1 p.m. For the love of Fairfield, use it.

How we got here

Back in January, the Commission voted 5–2 to create a subcommittee to write its own bylaws. Commissioners Kathy Braun and Veronica Monahan voted no. Braun was put on the subcommittee anyway. She resigned thirteen days later.

What happened in those thirteen days was extraordinary. The first meeting was noticed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when town government was closed, on an agenda posted the Friday afternoon before. Braun objected in writing. The meeting went forward anyway. Its one-page minutes say it opened, say it closed, and say it was cancelled. A cover email sent that night says it was not cancelled. Four different meeting times were floated in eight days — one of them a slot Braun had already said in writing she could not attend, another she had to object to before it was moved.

I laid all of it out in Part 4 of this series.

Then the subcommittee went quiet for eight months. In twenty-one consecutive Commission meetings, nobody mentioned it.

Now it is back, with a draft that would govern how every Fairfield land-use hearing is run.

Credit where it is due. As recently as last week, Wednesday's meeting carried no public comment on the agenda at all. The subcommittee's January notice said flatly that "public comment is not available." The new notice has public comment as item C. Somebody changed course, and it was the right call.

But an hour at noon on a Wednesday is not much public process for rules this consequential.

I have knocked on a lot of doors this year running for state representative in the 132nd. After speed cameras, the issue I hear about most is overdevelopment — flooding, traffic, buildings that do not fit. Whether Fairfield can say no to a project, and on what grounds, gets decided at TPZ meetings.

This draft decides who controls those meetings.

Nobody is going to send you a postcard about bylaws. That is exactly why you should read them.

Three provisions that matter

1. The Commission is told to defer on exactly the thing that flooded you

Section 6.2 says that where another authority has jurisdiction, the Commission "shall give due consideration and deference to such authority's expertise and determinations." An appendix instructs the chair, when a subject belongs to another agency, to "confirm status only; do not relitigate."

Drainage, stormwater and wetlands belong to another agency.

So read that the way a homeowner on a flooded street would read it. You come to a hearing about the development going in uphill from you. You say the drainage study is optimistic. Under Section 6.2, the Commission has been told to defer to the wetlands agency's determination. Under the appendix, the chair confirms the wetlands permit exists, and moves on.

Connecticut law says a zoning commission does not have to do that — and the leading case is a wetlands case.

In Arway v. Bloom, the Appellate Court held that a wetlands report "is merely one of the many factors the zoning commission must consider in rendering its own decision," that "how much weight the report should be given is a matter of discretion for the commission," and — this is the sentence —

"There is no indication that the legislature was attempting to make the zoning commission either a rubber stamp or a review board for the wetlands commission."

In Thoma v. Planning & Zoning Commission, a commission adopted its own regulation making another agency's approval binding on it. It was struck down as an impermissible delegation: "Ultimate authority over approval rests with the commission, and any regulation that abrogates this authority is invalid." The Appellate Court decided it in 1993. The state Supreme Court affirmed in 1994.

State law also gives this Commission two powers on flooding that the draft never mentions. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 8-3(g) lets a zoning commission deny a site plan for failure to comply with inland wetlands regulations. The same subsection requires that where the Commission sets terms inconsistent with the wetlands agency's decision, it "shall state on the record the reason." The statute assumes this Commission will sometimes disagree, and tells it to explain itself when it does. Neither the denial power nor the duty to explain appears anywhere in the draft.

There is also a right of yours it does not mention. Under § 22a-19, any person may intervene in a proceeding like this one by filing a verified pleading asserting that the conduct at issue is reasonably likely to unreasonably pollute or impair the state's natural resources. It is your statutory route into a hearing on environmental grounds. The phrase "22a-19" appears in the draft bylaws zero times. A commissioner raised that omission in January. It has not been fixed.

::screaming into pillow::

One thing in fairness, and it matters. On Tuesday's regular agenda, the Commission takes up a change to Section 21 that runs the other way — narrowing the exemption so excavation and fill escapes Commission review only when it happens inside a wetland or wetland setback covered by an Inland Wetlands permit. Otherwise the Commission reviews it.

Same Commission, same month. One document pulling authority in, another pushing it away. They plainly know how to write the first kind.

To be clear about what I am not saying: these bylaws are a draft. They have not been adopted, and nothing in them caused a single inch of Sunday's rain or a single flooded basement. No project is named here and none is blamed.

What I am saying is narrower. Sunday told a lot of people in this town that they have a water problem. The rule being written for Wednesday is about whether, when they come to a microphone to say so, that is a question the Commission is permitted to take up.

2. The chair controls the agenda

Section 5.4: "The Chair, in consultation with staff, shall prepare the meeting agenda." Section 4.3 gives the Chair the same power and gives the Secretary the minutes.

Connecticut requires this Commission to elect exactly two officers. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 8-19: "The commission shall elect a chairman and a secretary from its members." Two officers. The draft gives one the agenda and the other the minutes.

The Secretary of the Fairfield TPZ is Kathryn Braun — the commissioner who voted against creating this subcommittee, was placed on it, and resigned. The commissioner whose questions I have quoted in this series more often than anyone else's.

Here is the part that cuts against my own argument, and you should have it. As a practical matter, the Secretary has not been building these agendas. Planning staff and the chair have. Section 5.4 does not take a working function out of Braun's hands. It writes down an arrangement that already exists.

That is a real answer. It is not a complete one.

Writing it down is the point. An informal practice can change at the next meeting — under Robert's Rules, a proposed agenda is amendable by majority vote before it is adopted, and any commissioner can move. A bylaw closes that door. The question Wednesday is not what has been happening. It is whether what has been happening should become the rule.

And the subcommittee's own research points the other way. Its files hold bylaws from three towns it selected: Colchester, Enfield and Glastonbury. Glastonbury's Secretary "shall also supervise the preparation of the agendas of regular and special meetings under the direction of the Chairman." Fairfield's own Board of Education requires its chair to "confer with the Vice Chair and the Secretary." Canterbury's Secretary prepares the agenda outright.

Of those six documents, Fairfield's draft is the only one that hands the agenda to the chair and staff while confining the Secretary to minutes.

In January, Braun called that "a significant degradation," and wrote that it was proposed "after the newly elected secretary is a member of the minority party."

The subcommittee has not answered that. Wednesday is an hour in which somebody could ask. Ask!

3. The chair decides which questions belong

Section 11.8 says commissioners' questions to staff "shall generally be focused on seeking factual information, clarification, or professional analysis within the staff member's area of responsibility and expertise."

That sounds harmless until somebody asks a question the chair or staff would rather not answer.

I have spent two columns trying to learn who wrote Fairfield's proposed architectural design standards, who hired the consultant, what the consultant was asked to do, and what Fairfield paid. Nobody has answered.

Under Section 11.8, a commissioner asking those questions could be told they fall outside a staff member's responsibility. Under the appendix, the chair decides whether the question is in scope.

It is not hypothetical. At the Commission's September 8 meeting, Commissioner Monahan asked Vice Chairman Jeff Randolph, who chairs the bylaws subcommittee, whether he had looked at other towns' bylaws or had "just free-form decide[d] to draft your own."

Randolph's answer: "Point of order. This is not an agenda topic for tonight."

Three days later a Frequently Asked Questions document appeared, authored by Randolph, listing six other towns.

A rule about which questions are allowed is a rule about which facts come out.

Read the three together. The Commission is told to defer to other agencies. One person controls the agenda. Questions to staff can be ruled outside their lane.

Ask yourself what problem these bylaws are designed to solve.

I have my answer. I would rather you reach your own.

Two people deliberate. Everyone else gets public comment.

Wednesday's agenda carries a heading that appears on no earlier notice:

NOTICE REGARDING OTHER TPZ COMMISSIONERS

"Other TPZ Commissioners may attend and may speak during public comment subject to the same procedures as other speakers. They are not members of the Subcommittee and will not participate in Subcommittee deliberations or action."

There is a legitimate reason for that, and the subcommittee's chair gave it on September 8, before the notice existed: commissioners attend "as members of the public, not commissioners, because otherwise we would have to have a noticed meeting." If enough commissioners participate, the gathering becomes an unnoticed meeting of the full Commission. That is a real concern and the language addresses it.

But consider the result.

The Commission has seven members. The subcommittee began with Jeff Randolph, Steven Levy and Kathy Braun. Braun resigned in January.

At the September 8 meeting, Braun asked directly whether anyone had been appointed to replace her. Chairman Tom Corsillo answered: "No one was appointed to fill your departure, Commissioner Braun."

So on Wednesday, two commissioners deliberate. The other five may speak during public comment, under the same time limit as everyone else, and then stop.

Those two are not debating punctuation. The draft in Wednesday's folder is substantively identical to the April 9 version. Four words changed between the September 8 and September 9 files: two obvious errors were corrected, one acknowledgment requirement was removed, and the word "lawful" was deleted.

That is the entire distance the bylaws traveled over the summer.

The paperwork

Two details capture the rest.

The agenda names an April 9 draft, then directs residents to a folder containing a September 9 draft. The file it names is not where it says it is. The texts are nearly identical, so you can comment on either. But a subcommittee writing procedural rules for everyone else ought to be able to identify the document under review.

And on September 8, Braun asked where the record went: "Where are all the prior versions, and where are all the minutes and the prior agendas? They're not on the website anymore." Staff replied that they "should still be there."

I went and looked. The Town's TPZ agenda archive has a folder for every month of 2026. There is no By-Law Subcommittee folder of the kind January's agenda linked to, and no January subcommittee agendas or minutes anywhere in it. The June folder is empty entirely — no agendas, no minutes, no backup, for a month in which the Commission met at least three times.

Those materials may live somewhere else on the Town's site. What is certain is that they are not in the archive the agendas send people to, and that when a commissioner said so out loud, the answer was that they should be.

One hour. Noon Wednesday.

Wednesday, September 16, 12:00 to 1:00 p.m., on Zoom. Meeting ID: 395 180 1920 · Passcode: 123456

Do not use the telephone meeting ID printed on the notice. It gives 725 068 2403, which is the Commission's standing meeting ID, not this meeting's. That same wrong number appeared on the notice for the original September 17 date, survived a revision that afternoon, and carried over unchanged when the meeting moved. Use 395 180 1920.

The meeting moved to Wednesday, incidentally, because a commissioner said at the September 8 meeting that Thursday was realtor open-house day and she had a listing. They moved the day. She also asked that it not be at noon. That part did not change.

Written comments go to tpzcommission@fairfieldct.org. The agenda says written comments "are encouraged and will be considered."

Most of you are working at noon on a Wednesday. I sure am. Write anyway. Put it on the record.

These are the rules for who gets heard.

Use the hour they gave you. Unmute.

Emily Hau is a Fairfield resident and a candidate for state representative in the 132nd District. This is Part 13 of a series on Fairfield land-use governance.
emilyforfairfield.com

Land-Use Governance 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

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. Read Part 10

Part 11: What Fairfield's proposed architectural standards would actually let someone build — and the state statute that lets the Commission fix it without asking anyone's permission. Read Part 11

Part 12: What happened to the six problems filed against Section 17 in May, who actually wrote it, and why commissioners were held to five minutes each on a thirty-year regulation. Read Part 12

You're reading Part 13: What the draft TPZ bylaws would do to a resident's flooding objection — and how the subcommittee writing them went from three members to two.