Opinion: TPZ Vice Chairman Randolph Asked for Solutions. Let Me Repeat Them.

Fairfield Town Plan and Zoning Vice Chairman Jeff Randolph has done me the honor of responding, at length, to the previous five installments of this series. He writes that he has "carefully read" all five articles. He writes that after "several thousand words" he still cannot find an alternative vision for Fairfield's future.

Ten thousand words, across five parts. The series set out a specific factual record: a TPZ Chair whose day job advises New York housing-finance lenders on projects like the ones his Commission votes on; three 5-2 votes against engaging outside legal counsel in public session on Connecticut's new housing law; a zoning text amendment drafted to fit a single 0.92-acre Southport parcel; a Commissioner's resignation video that quietly disappeared from the Town's official YouTube channel; and a Planning Director's April 7 statement about Section 25.13.3 that does not match Section 25.13.3.

The Vice Chairman's response does not dispute any of it.

Instead, he writes about vision. I am grateful for the engagement, and I would like to help — because the series was not, in fact, silent on solutions. Each of the five parts proposed one, addressed to a specific fact the Commission created and has to date declined to correct.

A Recap on Parts 1-5 of my TPZ Series

Part 1 proposed that a TPZ Chair whose day job advises New York housing-finance lenders on projects like the ones his Commission votes on should, at minimum, disclose that day job on the record before those votes.

Part 2 proposed that when the Commission voted three times, 5-2, against engaging outside legal counsel in public session on Connecticut's new housing law — the majority preferred executive session; Commissioners Monahan and Braun asked for the review to happen publicly, as Westport had done — the Commissioners in the majority should explain on the record what specifically they objected to about reviewing the largest state housing mandate in a generation in the open.

Part 3 proposed that a zoning text amendment drafted to fit one 0.92-acre Southport parcel should be identified as spot zoning, and that our regulations should require disclosure of the parcel a text amendment was drafted to serve.

Part 4 proposed that when a bylaws subcommittee is used to constrain a sitting commissioner into resignation from the subcommittee, the video record of that resignation should not quietly disappear from the Town's official YouTube channel — even when it makes the sitting majority look like they are actively attempting to silence the minority commissioners.

Part 5 proposed the solution the Vice Chairman was most invited to engage: adopt the Conservation and Parking Mitigation District that Public Act 25-1 § 16 authorizes, using the Braun-Monahan draft submitted for a vote on June 9 — a version that encompassed the Post Road and covered the parcels where the tool is most needed, rather than the staff draft that swept in territory better preserved for other uses. Greenwich adopted its own version on June 23, mapping 4,740 parcels and synchronizing to the July 1 statutory effective date. Something the public was not told: MetroCOG made a consultant available to Fairfield to help produce the map. Our Planning Director was not being asked to do this work alone.

These are five specific proposals, each addressed to a specific fact pattern this Commission created. I understand they may not be the solutions the Vice Chairman was hoping for. They ask specific individuals to do specific things they have to date declined to do. But they are the solutions the series proposed. I would welcome the Vice Chairman specifying which of the five he finds unsatisfactory, and why.

There is one further proposal I would add that underlies all of them.

Listen to what the people want. That is the responsibility of the Commission.

At every hearing at which the CPMD question was heard, every commenter asked for a designation. Every publicly submitted letter asked for a designation. The Commission voted 4-3 against a designation. The gap between what the public asked for and what the Commission delivered is the vision this series has advanced from the first installment forward. A Commission that listens is not a procedural nicety. It is the job description.

There is one further solution I would add now that we are on Part 6. It is the simplest of the six.

When a Planning Director makes a public statement about a specific section of the code, that statement should conform to the code.

On April 7, 2026, Director Emmeline Harrigan told this Commission that a downtown CPMD would harm the pre-automobile buildings that make the Center Design District what it is — buildings that could not meet modern parking requirements. She used this to explain why the staff map excluded downtown.

Section 25.13.3 of Fairfield's Zoning Regulations, adopted by this Commission thirty-five days earlier on March 3, opens as follows:

"The Center Design District is Fairfield's historical commercial center with many buildings constructed before the advent of the automobile where added parking spaces are challenging to provide without sacrificing the vibrant, pedestrian oriented nature of the center."

And provides:

"Existing buildings, as of the adoption of these regulations, may convert to new uses, without the provision of additional parking provided the footprint of the structure is not expanded."

The buildings Director Harrigan said would be harmed are the buildings Section 25.13.3 explicitly protects. Her department drafted it. She presented it to the Commission that adopted it. Thirty-five days later, she described its subject as unprotected. Anyone with a browser and thirty minutes can compare the two texts. I do not think they agree. The Vice Chairman may. The regulation will settle the question.

The Vice Chairman's op-ed anticipates this critique and reframes it. He writes that TPZ decisions "are routinely challenged and, when necessary, appealed and decided by judges," scrutinized by "applicants, opposing attorneys, professional staff, the Town Attorney, and ultimately the courts."

I do not disagree with any of that. I would note only what the list leaves out: the will of the people the Commission serves. Applicants, opposing attorneys, professional staff, the Town Attorney, and the courts are not the public. They are the parties with the resources and the standing to intervene after the fact. The people who live in Fairfield's downtown, who walk to Fairfield's schools, who attend Fairfield's Commission hearings without a legal budget — they are not on the Vice Chairman's list. They are, however, the people the Commission is elected to represent.

He writes further that Fairfield "will meet [its challenges] not by debating personalities or endlessly relitigating procedure, but by engaging honestly with the difficult policy choices before us." Process is not separate from policy. It is how policy is made. I would welcome honest engagement with the policy choices. I have not yet seen evidence of it. The Vice Chairman writes as if the town suffers from a housing shortage. Fairfield has an affordability challenge. That is not the same thing. And the "difficult policy choices" he invokes are not being debated in the public realm. Part 4 of this series describes at length how the Vice Chairman chaired a bylaws subcommittee whose express purpose, in his own words at its formation, was "efficiency in the way that we operate with our presenters" — code for less questioning, less debate, less relitigation of anything. The complaint that a series is "relitigating procedure" is a curious one from the Commissioner who used a procedural subcommittee to close down the policy debate.

To see what "engaging honestly with the difficult policy choices" looks like in practice, look at the record. It is instructive.

One. Solo drafting.

Vice Chairman Randolph has taken on the drafting of Fairfield's architectural design standards singlehandedly, on the stated view that collaboration would slow the work. A Vice Chairman drafting substantive regulation alone, without other Commissioners' input on the drafting itself, is a process choice. It is not a neutral one. It is the process choice this series has been criticizing for six months. When the Vice Chairman writes that the series "offers no solutions," he is describing a series whose central proposal is that this specific way of working should change.

Two. Data when it agrees.

Let me describe how the Vice Chairman engages a different commission on which he sits. Mr. Randolph is an alternate on the Fairfield Traffic Authority. At the June 18, 2026 Traffic Authority meeting, he spoke in support of a proposed protected bike lane on Mill Plain Road — bike lanes whose pavement markings had already been painted before the vote. He cited the neighborhood petition. He cited the engineering department's parking counts. He said, on the question of neighborhood consultation about the loss of on-street parking, that "the question about talking to the homeowners is more a matter of inform than ask."

Members of the public then pointed out that the petition never disclosed that a "protected bike lane" would mean the elimination of on-street parking, and that homeowners along the route had not been consulted. Commissioner Anthony Calabrese raised the same concern from the Commission side.

At that point the Vice Chairman did not return to the data he had opened with. He described actual documented parking demand — family gatherings, school events, homeowner overflow — as "edge conditions" that could be "adjusted for." The framing shifted from data to "change management." I do not object to the outcome. I object to the pattern. Data was authoritative when it supported the outcome he preferred. When the same underlying facts were tested against a concern he had not accounted for, the data receded and the language of process took over.

The same pattern shaped the June 9 CPMD vote. The staff-drawn map was rejected as too broad. The Braun-Monahan map was dismissed on the Vice Chairman's characterization as resembling a Texas congressional district. Any specific map became either too general or too specific. What the Vice Chairman actually objected to was protecting parking of any kind anywhere.

Three. A parking claim never tested.

The Vice Chairman writes that Fairfield has ample parking. He does not propose to count it. He has proposed that the town "consider buying" lots to solve any perceived shortage, an approach that requires no count and no accounting.

Commissioner Veronica Monahan, on her own initiative, has counted over 150 no-parking signs placed by businesses and the town on private lots throughout the downtown area, reserving those spaces for specific customers and excluding everyone else. The Connecticut Parking Reform Network's public map records that 39% of the Center Design District is off-street parking area — a figure that includes private lots that are open to the general public only during limited hours, if at all. The Bob's Plaza lot is often cited as evidence of ample downtown parking. It sits in front of what used to be a grocery store. It is no longer a grocery store because Stop and Shop, down the road, holds a non-compete clause. Stop and Shop's lot is at least as large as Bob's Plaza's. No one points at that one.

The Economic Development Commission is currently organizing a formal parking study. That is what accountability looks like. It is what a Conservation and Parking Mitigation District would require the town to do. The statute does not mandate parking. It mandates that the town count the parking before deciding whether there is enough of it.

The Vice Chairman and three colleagues voted against requiring the count.

The Vice Chairman writes that "reasonable people will disagree" on Fairfield's housing answers. I agree. Reasonable people can disagree about best parking minimums, ideal height limits, the correct downtown density, and the appropriate and best use of the Planning Department budget.

Reasonable people cannot agree that Section 25.13.3 says something it does not say. Reasonable people cannot agree that painting bike lanes before the vote is the same as taking the vote.

My vision for Fairfield's future includes a Planning Director who accurately describes the ordinances she has drafted, a TPZ Chair who discloses his day job before he votes, a Commission that welcomes outside legal counsel on the largest housing statute in a generation in public session, a public record from which Commissioners' subcommittee resignations do not disappear, and a Vice Chairman whose drafting, whose data, and whose consultations happen where the public can see them.

The Vice Chairman closes his op-ed by writing that communities are strengthened "by the difficult work of building consensus and governing together." I agree. Governing together requires both parties to be willing. I would welcome the honest engagement with policy choices he asks for. I have not yet seen evidence of it. When it appears, I will recognize it.

I look forward to Part 7.

Emily Hau is a Fairfield resident and is the Associate Director of the Yale Institute for Foundations of Data Science at Yale University. She has testified at multiple Town Plan and Zoning Commission hearings during 2026. She is paying very close attention. She speaks only for herself.

Read the series:

Part 1: How Fairfield's TPZ chairman spends his day job advising New York housing-finance lenders — and why his public posts about that work matter for the residents whose zoning he votes on. patch.com/connecticut/fairfield/fairfields-tpz-chair-voted-against-parking-protection-nodx

Part 2: How Fairfield's TPZ chairman voted three times against engaging outside legal counsel on Connecticut's new housing law — and why his New York day job involves advising on exactly that kind of legislation. patch.com/connecticut/fairfield/why-fairfields-tpz-voted-5-2-three-times-keep-public-hearing-cts-new-housing-nodx

Part 3: The developer-initiated zoning regulation amendments now in front of the Commission, and the specific 0.92-acre Mill Hill Road parcel one of them appears to have been drafted for. patch.com/connecticut/fairfield/can-developer-buy-zone-wreak-havoc-seems-it-nodx

Part 4: How Fairfield's TPZ chairman used a bylaws subcommittee to constrain a sitting commissioner — and why the video of her resignation isn't on the Town's official YouTube. patch.com/connecticut/fairfield/six-minutes-secretary-resigned-video-gone-nodx

Part 5: How Fairfield's planning director misstated a regulation her own office had just drafted — and why her misstatement defined a 4-3 vote that left downtown unprotected. https://patch.com/connecticut/fairfield/she-said-protecting-downtown-would-destroy-it-regulation-said-otherwise-nod

You are reading Part 6: How Fairfield's TPZ Vice Chairman responded to parts 1-5 of the series — and why the response, which does not dispute a single fact, is the record's strongest possible endorsement. patch.com/connecticut/fairfield/tpz-vice-chairman-randolph-asked-solutions-let-me-repeat-them-nodx