Nobody Will Say Who Wrote Fairfield's New Design Rules

It was after ten o'clock on the night of August 4 at a Town Plan & Zoning Commission meeting when Commissioner Veronica Monahan said the thing that got the rest of the evening moving.

"It's okay to say no. We don't have to constantly [alter] our regulations to change what a developer wants."

The Vice Chairman, Jeff Randolph, running the meeting in the Chairman's absence, told her that her comments were "of a general nature," and asked whether she had "anything specific about this regulation."

She did.

She pointed out that Section 6 — the amendment in front of them that night — was being rewritten to require compliance with Section 17, a regulation that has not been adopted. It is still a draft. And she said this:

"We're citing sections in architectural design standards in something that we're reviewing now before we've reviewed those standards. So we should be reviewing those standards first and then be looking at this. But there's a reason we're doing it this way and I don't know why. I haven't put my finger on it yet. So I'm trying to figure that out."

That is specific. It is also a direct question about why the Commission's own work is being done backwards, asked by a member of the Commission, on the record.

Commissioner Kathryn Braun answered it.

"Doing this because one applicant wants it."

She was ruled out of order before she finished the sentence. Twice, in the same breath: "I'm sorry, Commissioner Braun. You're out of order. So I was — you're out of order, Commissioner Braun."

The explanation offered instead: "We're working on these concurrently. Neither of them has passed. It's a reasonable question. The explanation is we're working on these concurrently. So that's the answer."

I don't know whether Commissioner Braun is right. I have not established it, and I'm not going to assert it because a commissioner said it over a gavel. But watch what happened to the question.

One commissioner raised it and was told she was being too general. She got specific, and said plainly that she could not work out why the sequence was backwards. A second commissioner supplied the only answer anyone offered that night — and was gaveled down mid-sentence.

And "we're working on these concurrently" is not an explanation of why one regulation cites another that doesn't exist. It is a description of the thing being asked about.

That question is still unanswered. I intend to answer it next.

This weekend I wrote about what Section 17 — Fairfield's proposed architectural design standards — would let someone build on the Post Road. A fifty-two-foot building ten feet from the road, two hundred feet deep, striped in whatever cladding is cheapest, with eight feet of buffer stripped from the houses behind it.

This is the other half. In my opinion the more interesting half. Not what the rules say. How they got that way.

Buckle up.

Who wrote it?

I have been asked this more than once, so I went looking in the Commission's own record.

Section 17 was written by an outside consultant. On March 10, before any draft existed, the Planning Director told the Commission: "we've given our consultant pretty clear direction about the standards." A commissioner asked the obvious follow-up — whether that direction had ever been put in writing, "like something in writing, like please do visuals that they're working from."

Two months later, on May 5, when commissioners questioned photographs that had appeared inside the regulation, the answer was the same: "They were developed by our consultant." One commissioner asked why new images weren't redlined like every other change. Another said plainly: "I don't like the pictures… I don't think they're illustrative of what we would want certain buildings to look like."

In the meeting record I have been able to review, the consultant is never named.

Which produces a strange asymmetry, and it is worth sitting with.

The people who commented on this regulation signed their work. Their letters sit in the public file with names, firms and dates on them. A local architect filed a technical review on May 5 that caught a defect nobody else did: Section 17 requires 60% transparency across the ground floor and, separately, 70% durable materials — and glazing does not count as a durable material. Which means, in his words, "it is mathematically impossible to satisfy both standards simultaneously."

That is not a stylistic quibble. It is a provision that cannot be complied with. He flagged it in writing, six weeks before the revision. Both numbers are still in the July 14 draft, unchanged.

So the outside professionals who reviewed this regulation are identifiable, dated, and on the record — and were not answered. The person paid to write it cannot be identified at all.

The Commission should say who that is. This regulation will govern the appearance of every commercial building in Fairfield for a generation, and the public is entitled to know who drafted it, what they were asked to produce, whether that scope was ever put in writing, and what the Town paid. Four questions, four short answers.

What happened between May and July

I put six substantive concerns and seven drafting errors into the record at the May 5 public hearing, in writing the following day, with a marked-up copy attached. Why the marked-up copy? I wanted to make it idiot-proof.

A revised draft came out July 14. Every section number in it had moved — 17.10.1 became 17.11.1, 17.16 became 17.17, 17.8.2 became 17.9.2, 17.21.1 became 17.22.1. Somebody went through this document carefully enough to renumber it end to end.

Of the six substantive concerns, the revision addressed zero.

Of the seven drafting errors, it fixed two — a missing definition and a cross-reference to a section that doesn't exist. I said thank you for both, and I meant it.

Still in the regulation after a full revision cycle:

• "Reconfiguration of parking areas shall that Parking areas, drive aisles, and loading areas shall not be located between the building façade and the primary street frontage." That is the sentence, as written.
• "the context of the sounding area."
• "5-foot sideway."
• A section heading reading "17.11.2 6.2 Middle (Upper Floors)."
• And in an exhibit heading: "Exhibit A: Build-To Frontage Measurement (needs to be maximum setback)."

That last one is an editor's note to himself, still sitting inside the regulation. The exhibit still draws a minimum setback. Minimum versus maximum is not a typo — it is a substantive choice nobody has made, flagged by the drafter, and left there.

The one comment that did get through

Section 6 is being amended alongside Section 17. Section 6.4 now sets a minimum first-story height of 12 to 15 feet downtown. Section 17 sets it at 15 feet flat. A building that satisfies one violates the other, and nobody has said which controls.

That contradiction has an origin. The Planning Director stated it plainly on August 4:

"We had the first story required at 15 feet. Some architects have asked for flexibility and to provide a range for that, 12 to 15 feet, within the first floor height limit."

Somebody asked for a change and got it. Fifteen feet of required ground-floor height is expensive to build, and a range down to twelve is real money. The request was reasonable, it was made in public, and the Commission acted on it.

This is not a scandal. Architects commenting on architectural standards is exactly what public comment is for, and I have spent this entire series asking the Commission to listen to people who show up.

The point is that it proves the machinery works. A comment came in, staff evaluated it, and the regulation changed to accommodate it — same package, same timeline, same weeks that six documented objections went unaddressed and five drafting errors survived.

The process is not incapable of responding. It responded to this.

Five minutes each

There is also the question of how much discussion these amendments get.

At that same August 4 session, with the Chairman absent, Vice Chairman Jeffrey Randolph opened by announcing he would run the meeting "a little bit differently." He imposed five-minute speaking turns on commissioners for commission-initiated text amendments and said the Commission should "avoid repetition and extended line by line drafting."

Then he asked Jonathan Mullen to keep time, pointing him to the clock on the wall.

Jonathan Mullen is not a commissioner. He is Fairfield's assistant planning director. He is staff.

So the Commission's deliberation on its own regulation was put on a stopwatch held by an employee of the department that drafted it.

Asked why, Randolph said:

"I don't think anybody on this commission is an expert in this area… Director Petise is an expert, and so is Director Harrigan, and so I would defer to them for the exact language."

Later that night, delivering what he called his summary comments, he made the principle explicit:

"Commission discretion. I think we should really limit commission discretion for a few reasons. One, this is a technical matter. Two, it leaves us open to lawsuits because we'll have a non-expert opining on an expert review."

There is a real argument buried in there, and I'll give it its due. Land use commissions do get sued, technical findings are where they lose, and a commissioner freelancing on sight lines is a genuine liability. Fair.

But "limit commission discretion" is a remarkable position for the second-ranking member of a commission to advocate. Discretion is the job. It is the entire reason seven residents sit on that dais instead of a software package. A commission with no discretion is a rubber stamp with a public comment period attached.

The item before them that night was Section 25.14 — the traffic regulation whose first draft Randolph wrote himself. He said so at the same meeting: "everybody keeps asking who wrote this. I wrote a first version of this and sent it to Commissioner Noonan a year and a half ago."

Commissioner Noonan is no longer on the Commission. Many of the people being held to five minutes were not there when the document started.

And the rule was not announced as a one-night measure. It was announced as a guideline for commission-initiated text amendments — which is exactly what Section 17 is.

The town planner works for this Commission. The Commission does not work for the town planner. A commissioner who spends five minutes on a thirty-year regulation and then defers to staff for the language has not reviewed it. They have received it.

Which districts does this even apply to?

Since late April, the Commission's agenda has described Section 17 the same way at every meeting — April 28, May 5, May 12, May 26, June 2, June 9, June 23, July 21, August 4:

"Revisions to the existing standards that apply to any property in a Designed Business District or Designed Industrial District."

Section 17.2, the applicability section of the actual regulation, lists three districts: Center Designed, Designed Commercial Business, and Neighborhood Designed. Designed Industrial District is not among them. Either the agenda is wrong or the regulation is wrong, and the discrepancy has been sitting there four months.

I would let a single agenda error go. This is not a single agenda error. A different application this summer had its street address wrong on the agenda. It was corrected on the record. The next agenda carried the same error again.

An agenda is not a formality. It is the legal notice telling a property owner the Town is about to do something that affects them. When it's wrong, the people who most needed to know are the ones who don't show up.

Where I have seen this before

A few weeks ago I wrote about Section 25.14, the traffic study rules. The Town's own fire marshal was asked for input, answered overnight with the widths and clearances a ladder truck needs, and the redline came back six days later saying "Emergency Vehicle Access" — three words, unchanged. A commissioner's twenty-eight-item list came back with sixteen items dropped, deferred or weakened.

Section 17 is the same shape. Comment goes in. The document gets worked on — renumbered, reformatted, revised. The substance comes back out the other side unchanged.

I don't think anyone is doing this on purpose. I think there is no step in the process where somebody is responsible for going through the public record item by item and answering it.

Two different regulations producing the same result is not a coincidence. It's a missing step.

What I would ask for

Not a redraft. Not a delay for its own sake. One meeting.

Before the Commission votes, someone should go through the public comments item by item, on the record, and say which are being accepted, which are being rejected, and why.

Not renumbered. Answered.

That is a normal thing for a legislative body to do. It costs one agenda item. It would take less time than the five minutes each commissioner was allotted to discuss the last thirty-year regulation this Commission passed.

Write to the Commission at tpzcommission@fairfieldct.org. And if you are on that Commission and you are reading this: you were not elected to hold a stopwatch or to be handed a document. Ask the question Commissioner Braun was gaveled for asking.

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

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

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

You're reading 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.

Part 13 (coming soon): Why Fairfield's general zoning amendment and one developer's private application ask for the same rule, in the same words.