Panel grills Planning Board candidates
One alternate questioned on board’s role in negotiation with developers
STAMFORD — New voices could soon be coming to the city’s Planning Board.
The Board of Representatives’ Appointments Committee has recommended that Subramanian Ravi and Prasad Tunga be confirmed as regular members of the Planning Board and that Chester Salit join the board as an alternate.
Tunga, a Republican who works in the tech industry, and Ravi, a former IBM executive who isn’t affiliated with a political party, would replace two longtime Planning Board members, Michael Totilo and Chair Theresa Dell, both Republicans. Their terms expired in late 2020 and 2018, respectively.
The full Board of Representatives is expected to vote on their nominations Monday night.
But the candidate who faced the most scrutiny during an Appointments Committee meeting on July 1 was Stephen Perry, a Democrat who has served as an alternate since 2021.
Mayor Caroline Simmons has nominated Perry to become a regular member of the Planning Board. He would replace Democrat Michael Buccino, who stepped down earlier this year. Salit, a retired architect and Democrat, would take Perry’s place as an alternate.
The committee spent roughly 30 minutes each interviewing Ravi, Tunga and Salit. Perry, meanwhile, answered questions for about two hours. Committee members voted 5-1, with two abstentions, to recommend that the full board approve Perry’s appointment.
The city is facing a “tsunami of land value going up because people are moving out of some of the more dense areas, i.e., New York,” Perry said as he laid out the challenges he thinks Stamford must grapple with when it comes to land use. “We have a lot of people ... who want to live here, but it’s an affordability challenge.”
The amount of land in Stamford is limited, he said, and the city has to “maximize the revenue that the land generates as we transition between some of our corporate environments and what we do with them.”
Recently, proposals to convert fully or partially vacant office
parks into apartment complexes have prompted outcry from residents. Perry noted that some residents and members of the land use boards have said that they would rather see condominiums or townhouses developed instead of apartment buildings, but the “issue becomes financial.”
“The banks don’t want to finance condos because they don’t get the return as quick,” Perry said. “So then the loan rate goes up. That becomes problematic.”
Board Majority Leader Nina Sherwood, D-8, a critic of both the Planning Board and Zoning Board, seized on Perry’s comments.
Financing “should not come into the thinking of somebody on the Planning Board,” Sherwood said. “That’s my opinion because I believe that a person on the Planning Board should be making decisions based on what’s best for the community and the city, not what’s best for the bottom line of those who are applying and who are trying to make money off of the land.”
Perry said the issue is the land use boards don’t have “leverage” to control whether certain types of housing, such as condos or townhouses, are built.
“If we had a pool or if we had monies in the reserves to spend on development of our own or support a development or that we would offer abatements in order to develop certain types of property, we would have more control,” he said.
Rep. Eric Morson, D-13, a deputy majority leader of the Board of Representatives, said Sherwood’s remark about the land use boards making decisions based on applicants’ bottom lines “troubled” him.
“I think there’s really no basis for a comment like that because it insinuates something, and that’s not what we’re here to do with any particular individual,” Morson said. “I think that’s really a stretch.”
And Rep. Carl Weinberg, D-20, said the “economic viability ... of a project should be a consideration.”
“It’s obviously not the only consideration, but it’s a consideration that matters because that’s how we get tax revenues generated from the land that we have that’s being developed,” Weinberg said.
Sherwood also reiterated a point she made when Perry’s colleagues — Jennifer Godzeno, Jay Tepper and William Levin — came before the Appointments Committee for interviews on June 18: According to her review of minutes from Planning Board meetings, the board votes “yes” unanimously about “98 percent of the time.”
“What would it take for you to vote against (an application)?” Sherwood asked Perry.
“For them to break the law,” Perry said.
Developers hire legal firms to look at the city’s land use regulations and make sure that their plans are compliant, he said.
“To the extent that they are complying with the rules and the laws of the city of Stamford, there are some limitations as to what we can do,” Perry said.
The Zoning Board has recently faced lawsuits for denying applications for special permits. Three cases in the past year have been over proposals to open cannabis dispensaries. The board settled with one of those applicants, Sweetspot.
Sherwood disagreed with Perry.
“I personally do not interpret our zoning regulations, our charter and the state of Connecticut’s land use general statutes to mean that as long as an application fits a certain criteria then it 100 percent has to be passed,” she said. “If that were the case, there would be no point in having a Planning Board or a Zoning Board.”
Sherwood said she thinks the Planning Board should negotiate with developers, only agreeing to sign off on applications if the company changes its plans to include “better architecture or ... anything more to give back to the community.”
Perry said the board does that.
“We ... often push back, and I don’t know if our records show that,” he said. “We say, ‘Gee, that’s not so great. Maybe you should consider the architecture. Maybe you should consider the parking. Maybe you should consider open space.’”
The developer will then rework the proposal and come back to the board at another meeting, he said.
“Then if it’s all according to what we agreed upon and what they said they would do, and we’re comfortable with that, we’ll refer that to the Zoning Board,” which has the final say, Perry said.
In May, the Planning Board held off on voting on proposed regulatory changes that would allow for multifamily housing to be built at the River Bend Center business park. Members were concerned, in particular, about how residential development might affect traffic in the area.
River Bend Center’s land use consultant returned to the board in June with ideas for improving traffic flow as well as tweaks to the proposed text change that he said would encourage the development of homes that can be owned. The board then recommended approval of the application.
The board has also denied at least one proposed change to the city’s master plan in recent months. In November, Perry joined his fellow board members in voting down a master plan amendment sought by a developer that wanted to build 19 townhomes at the intersection of Long Ridge and Wire Mill roads.
Weinberg said only looking at whether a board voted “yes” or “no” is “too simplistic.
“It ignores the recommendations that the Planning Board makes to the Zoning Board in terms of conditions,” Weinberg said. “It ignores the conditions that ... the Zoning Board applies and requires in order for the developer to receive the approval.”