LTE: Fairfield's TPZ Chair Voted Against Parking Protection.

To the Editor:

On Tuesday night, June 9, Fairfield's Town Plan and Zoning Commission voted 4 to 3 against parking protection for Fairfield. Chairman Tom Corsillo cast one of the four votes that killed it.

Corsillo is Executive Vice President of Marino, a communications firm headquartered in New York, where he leads the public affairs practice. He was promoted to that role on May 19, 2026. By the firm's own description, his career there — which began in 2005 — has led "high-profile rezonings, policy initiatives, and advocacy campaigns," including "major land use efforts delivering thousands of new homes." City & State magazine has named him one of New York's top political consultants, recognized for his work in land use. Selective. Sympathetic. Silent on the inconvenient.

On Thursday morning, two days after killing parking protection for Fairfield, he published an op-ed in Patch celebrating his leadership. The vote appears nowhere in it.

Of course it doesn't. The op-ed is the damage control.

What the vote actually did

Public Act 25-1 takes effect July 1. It eliminates Fairfield's authority to require off-street parking for new residential developments under sixteen units, anywhere in town. The only legal tool left for protection is a Conservation and Parking Mitigation District — up to two zones in which Fairfield can still require parking in the neighborhoods that need it most. Two of Corsillo's fellow commissioners — Kathryn Braun and Veronica Monahan — built such a proposal over four months, with a volunteer geographer, the Town's Economic Development Director, and 667 residents who responded to a ranked-priority survey at fairfieldparkingprotection.netlify.app indicating which neighborhoods most needed protection. Corsillo voted to defeat it. On July 1, Fairfield will have no protected neighborhoods. His op-ed does not mention any of it.

What the commission said about the people who responded

Vice Chairman Randolph called the survey "quack" and its questions "leading." Commissioner Capozzi went further, telling the room the July 1 deadline itself wasn't real: "the arbitrary deadline of July 1st which actually doesn't exist because we've already implemented these regulations consistent with the statute." He then described the survey respondents this way: "There were under 600 respondents to that poll. That is not everyone. That is 600 people who were incited by a Facebook group and one-sided, slanted media with no official studies done."

Both men are wrong about the facts. The July 1 effective date is the operative date for the governing state statute, Public Act 25-1, §§ 16 and 19. The Town's own Planning Director confirmed this at the same meeting. As for the survey: 667 ranked responses from Fairfield's roughly 23,000 households have a margin of error of approximately ±3.7 points at 95% confidence. Quinnipiac University calls Connecticut statewide elections with comparable sample sizes drawn from 3.6 million adults, a sampling ratio more than 100 times thinner than this survey. Calling 667 responses "incited" and "quack" isn't a statistical objection. It's a political one.

Commissioner Braun, one of the three yes votes, noted what the responses showed: residents prioritized the downtown over their own neighborhoods. Not self-interest — public interest. The chairman's op-ed mentions none of it.

Beyond the survey, 165 Fairfield residents submitted written comment to the public record on this question — to the Commission they had elected. Their letters do not appear in the Chair's op-ed either.

The argument they made — and what it applies to

Randolph's marquee reason for voting no: "I look at Bob's parking lot. I don't think that's visually attractive." The chairman's op-ed echoes this, citing "massive, underutilized asphalt lots like those at the former Bob's shopping center."

Bob's is a private commercial lot. Public Act 25-1 doesn't touch commercial parking. The protection they just killed was for residential. The argument they made to defeat it had nothing to do with what they were voting on.

And the inversion is striking. After July 1, the Town can still address Bob's parking lot — through zoning, design standards, redevelopment incentives. It cannot still address residential. Randolph had until July 1 to preserve that authority. He chose not to.

The chairman describes the elimination of mandatory public hearings on every commercial-zoned lot in Fairfield, starting July 1, as "a modest two or three floors of apartments above ground-floor retail."

The op-ed warns against developer-initiated amendments, yet the chairman is moving one forward.

The op-ed's own words: "Developer-initiated changes typically are intended to facilitate specific projects and sometimes have little to no relationship to the Town's comprehensive plan."

Currently, before his commission, Section 10.3.D, submitted by the law firm of Russo & Rizzo on behalf of True You Design and Development LLC, would allow up to nine dwelling units as-of-right on residential lots between I-95 and Metro-North. Forty-five residents have written in opposition. No Town planning study has been conducted. No POCD analysis exists. By the chairman's own stated standard, it is exactly what the commission has stopped tolerating. It is moving forward anyway.

An honest mid-year update would have included Tuesday's vote on parking mitigation. This one didn't. That tells you what it is: damage control.

Emily Hau is a Fairfield resident. She built and maintains fairfieldparkingprotection.netlify.app, where the methodology and all responses are publicly available.

Read the series:

You're reading 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. patch.com/connecticut/fairfield/fairfields-tpz-chair-voted-against-parking-protection-nodx

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. patch.com/connecticut/fairfield/why-fairfields-tpz-voted-5-2-three-times-keep-public-hearing-cts-new-housing-nodx

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. patch.com/connecticut/fairfield/can-developer-buy-zone-wreak-havoc-seems-it-nodx

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. patch.com/connecticut/fairfield/six-minutes-secretary-resigned-video-gone-nodx

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. https://patch.com/connecticut/fairfield/she-said-protecting-downtown-would-destroy-it-regulation-said-otherwise-nodx

Part 6: How Fairfield's TPZ Vice Chairman responded to the series — and why the response, which does not dispute a single fact, is the record's strongest possible endorsement. patch.com/connecticut/fairfield/tpz-vice-chairman-randolph-asked-solutions-let-me-repeat-them-nodx