To the Editor:

In response to the recent letters regarding the Venuti property I have a few observations.

1) I applaud all individuals who wrote and have expressed their frustration as to why the Venuti property can't be decided by all registered voters at referendum. I also admire their classy manner in which they choose not to try to persuade any one in to a yes vote but rather advocate that all voters should be heard whether yes or no, again total class!

2) As for Phil Stull and his letter, first let me say I met Phil as a member of P&Z and have had many discussions about active adult housing. I believe him to be fair and honest and I do respect his opinions.

However his letter about the P&Z new regulation and the amount of benefit the town would receive is inaccurate and misleading. First off the Venuti family went to the board to ask them to consider adopting these new regulations over 2 years ago. Subsequently I attended 4 more meetings with P&Z before receiving a rough draft. The draft was ridiculous, made absolutely no sense and I gave up all hope and walked away. That draft 2 years later is today's new regulation. In my meetings, I submitted regulations from all neighboring towns regarding elderly housing. To work, certain criteria must be met.

A) number of units shall far exceed all conventional subdivisions, usually doubling the density versus existing housing.
B) Buildable lot size shall decrease (smaller lots equal more affordable units) more units means more tax revenue for the town.
C)There typically is no open space dedication and any land not ear marked for lots would go back to the elderly housing development not the town.

This isn't reinventing the wheel, just good common sense. The benefits of active adult housing are smaller, more affordable place to live, no school age children to further burden our non existent tax base, and finally a very real chance to try to increase our tax base with positive tax dollars being received for our community, in essence the more units the more revenue!!!

Sadly Mr. Stull and P&Z failed to accomplish this..The new regs are a disguise for their old regs on conservation subdivisions, they limit the number of approved units (total acreage divisible by 1/3) so 300 acres divided by three equals a maximum of 100 units. Lot sizes basically remain the same size and 1/3 of total acreage gets donated back to the town as open space. The Venuti family already has in their possession a feasibility study undertaken by a well known civil engineer that shows almost very similar lot yield!! Why would we or any one else choose elderly housing over conventional housing especially when lot yield is virtually equal??? Why sell to just a small fraction of the buying market (55 and over) when you could market all potential buyers??

Perhaps P&Z would have been better served to have worked closely with the housing Partnership in an effort to make good, effective regulations that are realistic in making Killingworth more affordable for our teachers,our young families, and of course all our volunteers who we all take for granted when a 911 call is made,there was a wonderful opportunity for aggressive, workable, active adult regulations that could work and help create our tax base. The housing partnership has been working on these regs. for over 2 years based on countless surveys from everyone in town, yet we're never asked for their hand in helping shape these new regs!!

As written these new (old ) regs. will never work on the Venuti property and have strong doubts any landowner or developer would ever consider implementing these regs.

Finally the survey Mr. Stull alludes to when making his case for what's best on my property also had much more results which I suppose he simply forgot to mention. 81 percent said they would support a large open space acquisition with a natural park like setting with miles of recreational trails,etc...

Taken as a whole these three recent letter from Gorman, Stull, and Boulay support my reasoning that important issues like this should only be decided by all the voters, until this occurs or something else happens I would now suspect that I will not have to hear or read of any more ridiculous plans of what to do with our property. Simply stated these new regs will insure that no age restricted development will ever occur on the Venuti property!!!
sincerely,

Michael Venuti