Letter Opposes $350K Funding Request for Girls' Little League Field on Hoyden's Lane

Editor's Note: The following letter was received in opposition to a $350,000 funding request for a girls' Little League field on town-owned property at 520 Hoyden's Lane. The funding request, already approved by the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance, faces a final vote by the Representative Town Meeting at 8 p.m. June 28 in the Education Center, 501 Kings Highway East.

I am writing as a concerned citizen and Fairfield taxpayer to urge the RTM to vote "No" on the $350,000 bonding request to build a softball field on the last open space in Fairfield (on Hoyden's Lane.)

There are so many reasons why this plan is shortsighted - it is fiscally irresponsible, logistically problematic, environmentally irreversible, and, from a Town Planning perspective, hard to understand as it diminishes the very quality of the landscape that makes up Fairfield.

Please do not take this vote lightly. You are not voting on building something downtown, or developing property that is already in a developed neighborhood. You are voting on using precious town money for developing some of the last open space in Fairfield for a private organization that doesn't even serve the entire Fairfield community. In fact, it serves 350 at best. And you are voting on this while  our education - EDUCATION! - budget has been cut by $3 million! And at a time when Fairfield students attend classes in trailers!

Fairfield residents will lose the use of that property. Fairfield is consistently sited as a desirable place to live because of its resources. In a time when families are hurting locally, when we are following the oil spill in the gulf and watching as land is irreversibly altered and gone, when we are working desperately to save our nest eggs, our jobs and our beautiful neighborhoods, what message does it send that Fairfield leaders don't value what it is that makes Fairfield great? Why is the town willing to shoulder the costs associated with a ball field for a private organization that doesn't serve everyone? How is this justified when the school system is already so strained, when the ball field will add more cost in the future (managing this property will cost money), and when doing this takes the area away from residents?

Don't let the organic farm be attached to this at the expense of losing this property. Fairfield shouldn't have to sacrifice its last open space to a private organization at taxpayers' expense just to get an organic farm. It shouldn't be one or the other.

Be a leader. Vote no.

Save the open space because to spend that money now is a slap in the face to those of us who rely on town programs for our children because, especially now, we simply cannot afford private summer programs. And it is offensive for those of us whose children attend classes in trailers and hallways because our school budgets have been gutted.

Save that space because it is what makes Fairfield beautiful. Greenfield Hill isn't one of the priciest areas in Fairfield because it's over-developed. It's desirable because its beauty has been maintained. Not randomly and irrevocably developed.

And save that space because if someone doesn't start taking stock in the value of the landscape, then Fairfield will look like any other poorly-planned town that "once was beautiful."  It doesn't take a genius to recognize that the movement toward sustainable living, toward not destroying the environment but working with it is popular. Look at the backlash from this oil spill in the gulf. People want to know that someone is looking at the bigger picture. Westport, Weston, Wilton and other towns' property values are high because someone is watching that valuable real estate; town zoning and school systems are protected.

Why can't we have that leadership in Fairfield?!

Why can't we have classrooms in classrooms? Beautiful open space? Maybe an organic teaching farm? Security in our town officials that someone values the details of what makes this town beautiful?

I say we can have all that.

But only if you start here and vote no.

Tiffany DeMartin
Fairfield, CT