A lease designed to allow a group home for six disabled people to be built on Prospect Ridge will come before voters at a Town Meeting June 10 starting at 7:30 in town hall.
It was originally scheduled for today, Wednesday, May 27, but it was moved to June due to a procedural mix-up.
The $1-a-year lease would give a half-acre of town land at the north corner of Halpin Lane and Prospect Ridge Road to the organization Ability Beyond, which plans to build a group home there.
“The location itself, it makes this particular piece of property very attractive for this exact kind of use,” First Selectman Rudy Marconi said.
Ability Beyond, a Bethel-based organization that provides the disabled with services from housing to employment support, operates about 100 group homes in Connecticut and nearby New York, including one that has existed for more than two decades on Ritch Drive in Ridgefield.
Ability Beyond President Tom Fanning told a May 6 public hearing that the group home for six would be staffed 24 hours a day.
At the public hearing, one speaker from the Quail Ridge condominiums raised concerns about the plan, saying it would eliminate the last area of woods in the neighborhood.
But the extent of opposition to the plan isn’t clear.
“No one has contacted me or made me aware that they’re concerned,” said Ray Goddard, the president of the Quail Ridge I condominium association.
Goddard had spoken with First Selectman Marconi, and said last week that he was planning to meet with him again to get more details on the development plan.
“I can see people objecting to it, and I can see people being very happy with it,” Goddard said.
“I’m not trying engineer anything.”
Marconi said Monday that he’d met with Goddard and with Bev Barnard, the Quail Ridge resident who’d spoken at the public hearing.
“I did speak with Ray Goddard — he’s the president of Quail Ridge I. Although there are always some concerns anytime there is a development of any size next to your property, generally speaking he did not have an issue and felt that Quail Ridge in general did not have an issue with this project,” Marconi said.
“However, I also today met with Ms. Bev Barnard, discussing her concerns and the fact that she doesn’t have any issue with the use that we’re looking at, but that it’s more to do with the fact that this is the last remaining little patch of woods in that immediate area, and that we should work to preserve that and find another location for the home.”
Marconi added, “The impression we were given during the public hearing, that Ms. Barnard represented 60 residents at Quail Ridge, I believe is the number she used — according to Mr. Goddard, that it is not the case.”
Marconi said he’d been trying to get specifics on the development plans.
“Also, I have followed up with Mr. Tom Fanning, president of Ability Beyond, to discuss plans and their availability for public review. And I hopefully will have something available in the middle or the end of this week,” Marconi said.
“What he’s stated to me after the meeting is that they have Mr. Craig Studer, landscape architect, working on the plans, illustrating the location of the building, and which trees are to come down, trees to be saved, and future screening to the north side, which is the Quail Ridge side.”
People should be able to find out more about the plan at the Town Meeting.
“If people do have an interest, I hope they do show up and have their questions answered,” Marconi said.
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