Editorial Page

PUBLISHER Beth@GreenwichSentinel.com Elizabeth Barhydt EDITORS & COPY EDITORS Editor@GreenwichSentinel.com Peter Barhydt Stapley Russell, Anne W. Semmes

Growing Up and The Value of Summer Camp

Let’s face it growing up today is very different than it was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. For starters, all the electronic devices and instantaneous communications is a world away from Mom yelling out the back door during the summer to come in for dinner or routing around for a dime to use the payphone at town hall to call home.

We suspect this is not a new phenomenon either. Every generation looks at the younger ones and notes how different they are. Our grandparents probably thought we were spoiled when we played whiffle ball since they used a broom handle. Or that the music of our era would poison society, it being so unlike the crooners of the 1950s and the Big Band era.

The big difference between our grandparent’s generation and our children’s is technology and the speed at which it is evolving. Who remembers the evening news when we would sit there and actually watch someone read the news for 30 minutes or the first cell phone that was the size of a shoe box? Today we have the power to access any news topic around the globe and for that matter make a call anywhere around the world on a device that fits in our pocket.

As kids we used to love losing hours poring through the latest installment of The World Book Encyclopedia, 22 volumes of facts and articles on almost any topic you

could imagine. Today it is just easier to swipe left on your smart phone for the same information.

As parents this gives us pause for concern. Are our children having the same kind of well-rounded and different experiences as they grow that we did, or our parents did? Lifestyles today lend themselves to be overprogrammed and very hectic, especially in a community like Greenwich. Sometimes it is easier to let our children spend that extra time on their electronic device because we are busy with work. We are just as guilty as anyone of this.

When we talk about this challenge with other parents, we are reminded that there has been one constant available to children since the beginning of the 20th century – summer camp. Often when we think of a camp for our child we think of a lacrosse or dance camp, one that will help further their abilities in a specific area. However, there are a slew of sleepaway and day camps that offer a chance to return the type of summer we knew as a child, free of electronic devices.

Imagine waking up not to your iPhone beeping, but a bell being rung from a farmhouse. You are not sleeping in your own bed, but in a cot in a platform tent along the shores of a Maine lake. You run to the farmhouse for breakfast because you are excited to see what the day will bring. 200 kids gather at long tables and wait to sing a good-morning song before devouring a hearty (and healthy) meal. The farmhouse is loud with laughter, songs, and conversation. There is not an electronic device to be found anywhere and the kids are fine with that.

Or being dropped for a day of swimming, sailing, arts and crafts and fun. When the day is over you don’t even realize that you did not miss texting your friends because you were too busy having fun! These are what summers were like growing up and they still exist today.

In two weeks, we will be issuing our annual Summer Camp and Program guide. It is a wonderful resource to find opportunities for our children that get them outside of their normal routine. Summer is a chance for them to take a step back from the hectic lives they live during the school year and just be kids for a couple of months. Opportunities abound in the guide. There is something for everyone. Unplug and enjoy.

Imagine waking up not to your iPhone beeping, but a bell being rung from a farmhouse. You are not sleeping in your own bed, but in a cot in a platform tent along the shores of a Maine lake.

LETTER

Why the Hurry?

By Jim Brown

With anxiety and depression on the rise, parents should reflect on lessons learned during the lockdown and rethink how they approach their child’s education and social and emotional wellbeing.

I live in a neighborhood where the houses are stacked close together. It’s nearly impossible to go out of your front door and not say hello to a neighbor, and almost every home has kids living there. However, my wife and I are among a handful of empty nesters. We walk the streets nearly every day, usually late afternoons and into early evenings. Saturday and Sunday late mornings, we are out as well. Over the years, we noticed fewer and fewer kids out playing. But that all changed during the spring of 2020.

While families had to halt their routines, opportunities arose that allowed them to connect and become creative about how they spent their days. Families were out in their yards throwing or kicking balls, and little ones crouched down drawing sketches on driveways with chalk. Parents took walks, often stopping to say hello to neighbors. Small bands of kids chased each other on their bikes through the streets, and while the older part of me shivered from the potential danger, the other part of me smiled and thought, “What a great way to be with friends.” A couple of siblings built an elaborate fort using branches from trees. Two brothers obsessed with soccer created obstacles on their lawn and ran drills through them. They also ran clinics for younger kids in the neighborhood, coaching them through the cones they had placed. Evening time brought different aromas from barbecues, along with laughter, music, and sometimes sound effects from movies playing on a makeshift outdoor theater.

One night, two couples across the street from our house sat in lawn chairs in their front yards. They faced each other about fifteen feet apart with drinks in their hands and baby monitors on the ground. They talked and laughed well into the evening.

I realize the challenges the past few years caused significant problems for many families. As educational consultants, we hear daily about the damage the pandemic caused to many families. Students suffered from not being among their peers and teachers. These students needed the physical connection they could not get by staring at a screen. And we regularly discussed with parents brainstorming ways to avoid catastrophes and how they could maintain their sanity.

Streets and yards in our neighborhood are emptying once again. It seems like families are reverting to how it once was and in full force. I realize parents need to perform a balancing act. They need to be proactive, but families are maybe overdoing it now. Kids don’t need adults directing every moment of their day, and sometimes those structured activities don’t need to occur at all. Being creative, problem-solving, collaborating, compromising, and even learning to entertain themselves around their own homes, as many did the past few years, are ways for them to develop essential skills.

Children need time to explore and process the world on their terms. When they have time, they ask questions or make statements that seem to come out of the blue, but they are not. Instead, it often means a child has some time and wants to hear a parent’s response. What a fantastic opportunity for some life lessons!

Parents need to think through what is important for their children. They need to realize life is not a race. Running from one activity to the next does not set children up for future success and happiness. Staying connected at home does. For children to develop an internal strength to deal with life’s challenges, some unstructured time at home and with their families is necessary.

It seems like families are reverting to how it once was and in full force.

LETTER

Time to Get Moving with Affordable Housing

By Ellen Brennan-Galvin

Statement in support of the 3/9/22 Sense of the Meeting Resolution (SOMR): RTM - March 14, 2022 - Call Item #35

CT Statute 8-30g, which was initially adopted in 1989, did not achieve what it set out to do. In an article in the Western New England Law Review (vol. 23, 2001, entitled: “CT’s Housing Appeals Statute: After 10 Years, Why Only Middling Results?”, one of the original authors of the 8-30g Statute, the late Terry Tondro, noted that it had been a lightning rod since its inception, (and still is). Mr. Tondro commented on various aspects of the statute, noting that it was fairly unique at the time in that it placed the burden of proof to deny or approve applications squarely on local planning officials rather than on developers. He also commented (in his exact words) that the Statute could in a sense be construed as a type of “blackmail” since applicants whose traditional developments were denied could come back with even more ambitious projects under the guise of 8-30g, which could then not be denied, except on grounds of wetlands or narrow grounds of health and safety.

We have certainly seen this happening in Greenwich lately, when both the Benedict Court Project (110 units) and 240 Elm St. (60 units) came back after a period of years under 8-30g as much larger projects than initially proposed. Because 8-30g projects are virtually impossible to deny, they can be constructed without taking into consideration such factors as height, density, traffic congestion, neighborhood opposition, and so forth.

Essentially, 8-30g is a cudgel that allows development that is often out of scale with surrounding neighborhoods and sometimes in areas that are problematic. As the late Terry Tondro noted, “the downside of relying on the developer to do affordable housing planning is that the developer’s decisions about where to build will almost always be based simply on market considerations, such as where land is available, its cost, etc., rather than on planning considerations such as where it is best to provide housing for low- and moderate-income families.”

Currently, 8-30g projects in Greenwich are proposed in out-ofthe way places not served by public transport: (e.g., Greenwich Woods on King St. (162 units); another (5 Brookridge Drive (86 units) is not on a sewer line; Church St./Sherwood Place (192 units) is on the edge of a national historic district that would involve the destruction of numerous historic homes; and even 3 units are proposed on the roof of a historic building on Greenwich Avenue, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The most astonishing aspect of 8-30g is the rapid proliferation of projects. From 1989 to mid-2021, a period of more than 30 years, there were ten 8-30g projects proposed in Greenwich (5 were approved, 4 were eventually approved with modifications, and one is currently still in litigation after nearly 5 years. In town after town throughout the State, local governments have shouldered the burden of lengthy court appeals, confronting developers with far deeper pockets. Indeed, out of 24 appeals of 8-30g before the courts in recent years, only 3 appeals were upheld.

Somewhat shockingly, in less than a year, the dams have opened and there has been a flood of 8-30g projects, one after another, on an almost weekly basis. Indeed, 13 new projects have come before Planning and Zoning in the past year alone, with a total of 741 proposed units, 30% of which would be affordable.

In the current legislative session of the CT General Assembly, one modest step is a bill (SB 169) that proposes not to repeal or substantially reform 8-30g, but merely to study the impacts of the statute. The wording of the bill is to “conduct a study of the affordable housing policies, as set forth in section 8-30g of the general statutes, and the effects of such policies in the State, to identify any recommended amendments to said section to improve affordable housing opportunities for residents.”

Hardly incendiary language. Despite these laudable intentions, testimony from town after town was frequently divided, with even two Greenwich residents decrying Greenwich’s poor record on affordable housing and asking that the Statute not be modified.

On the other hand, local residents and officials from many CT towns expressed incredulity that so many projects were coming in all at once that they were powerless to even modify. Large ugly buildings in the midst of historic districts and overly bulky buildings on relatively small plots of land were becoming the norm, not only in more affluent towns in Fairfield County but in some working-class towns as well.

Speaker after speaker from multiple towns at the SB 169 hearing emphasized that the affordable housing goal as it stands is completely unattainable, particularly with the 70-30% breakdown for setaside housing, since the building of more market rate units made the denominator keep increasing, hence made the 10% affordable housing goal increasingly elusive. Quite a few speakers expressed the opinion that the goal should rather be to seek moratoria, giving towns a 4 or 5 year respite, during which they could re-group, not face a continuing onslaught of 8-30g projects, but continue to seriously pursue their affordable housing goals.

The problem with moratoria:

In the case of Greenwich, the construction of around 500 units would be required to obtain a moratorium. The timing is crucially important. The town just cannot say it intends to build the housing; rather, it must be built in a timely fashion. A case in point: New Canaan, one of the towns that received a moratorium, recently had it revoked because construction of a project was delayed due to supply chain issues during Covid. New Canaan appealed to the State but was told there was no way to grant an extension since there was no “leeway in the law.”

Ellen Brennan-Galvin is on the RTM from District 7 and serves as Vice-Chair of the Land Use Committee.