LETTER TO THE EDITOR
When did Norwalk become the Upside Down?
If you haven’t seen Season 3 of Stranger Things, Upside Down this is a Spoiler Alert. Hawkins, Indiana Mayor Larry Kline, is up for reelection. There are protesters outside his window — owners of mom and pop stores whose businesses are failing thanks to the new Starcourt Mall, the mayor’s signature land use deal. The mayor doesn’t like the sounds of protest. He asks Chief Hopper to disperse the crowd because guess what? They don’t have a permit. And suddenly the skin on the back of my neck tells me something. You don’t have to be a sleuth like Nancy or a nerd like Dustin to unravel this mystery. Norwalk isn’t Norwalk anymore. We’ve become the Upside Down.
Only in the Upside Down does the Common Council work not on behalf of the people, but on behalf of a shady group of government operatives, big banks and corporate developers, meeting behind closed doors to hammer out secret deals. Only in the Upside Down can a municipal government support an underworld of road work, traffic jams, high taxes, beach overcrowding and fugitive dust.
In the Upside Down, the mayor works on behalf of campaign donors, not in the interest of the people. In the Upside Down, a quasigovernmental agency accountable to no one calls the shots for the 90,000 people who live here, including the 20,000 households paying most of the bills.
When citizens spoke up in opposition to the Redevelopment Agency’s Wall Street West Avenue plan, Chairman Kydes accused us of spreading misinformation, saying the Wall Street plan had nothing to do with the Garden Cinema. And here we are a few months later considering a plan to demolish the Garden Cinema. In the Upside Down, misinformation is spread by public officials, not private citizens. In the Upside Down, developers and bankers are given unlimited time to present their cases. And the people are given only 3 minutes. Only in the Upside Down does low income housing cost $800,000 per unit to build. Only in the Upside Down does a city give away a parking lot for one dollar so that one day a bank and a developer can demolish a cherished art house cinema to do — guess what? — put up a parking lot.
How do we escape the Upside Down? We can take back our town if the Common Council insists on going back to the drawing board and meeting with real stakeholders — not connected developers — to come up with a plan that respects the historic character of the neighborhood. Donna Smirniotopoulos
Norwalk