Letter: “Town-owned land is not private property. It belongs to the public.”

To the Editor:

Wilton is approaching decisions about town-owned land that will shape the community for decades. These are not routine transactions. They involve public assets, public trust and long-term consequences for our Village, neighborhoods and finances. Because of those significant consequences, how decisions are made matters just as much as what decisions are made.

Too often, conversations about town-owned properties drift toward informal, reactive processes. Ideas arrive “over the transom.” Assumptions harden before the public understands the options. Momentum builds around partial or incorrect information. By the time residents are asked to weigh in, the real choices have already narrowed.

That is not good governance, and it is not what our Town Charter envisions.

Town-owned land is not private property. It belongs to the public. Any significant change to its use should follow a disciplined, transparent process that begins with public goals, invites professional expertise, and ends with an open vote by the community.

The first step should be clarity about purpose. The town should be honest about which properties it truly needs for core public functions and which ones it does not. When Wilton holds land or buildings it cannot actively use, it becomes a landlord without the tools, expertise or mission to manage those properties well. That reality argues for deliberate action, not improvisation.

The second step should be openness. Before any direction is chosen, the town should publicly define its objectives for a property and invite qualified architects, urban planners, developers, and nonprofit organizations to respond. A structured, competitive proposal process allows the town to compare ideas side by side, rather than reacting to whichever concept happens to surface first. It replaces speculation with substance.

This approach does something important: it shifts decision-making away from assumptions and toward evaluation. It allows the town to ask better questions about design, historic context, financial responsibility, zoning implications and long-term stewardship. It also makes clear that no single idea has a head start simply because it arrived early or informally.

Just as important, this work should not happen in isolation. Significant town properties touch multiple responsibilities at once: fiscal oversight, land use, historic preservation and long-range planning. A coordinated effort involving [Town Boards of] Selectmen [and] Finance, and the Planning and Zoning and Historic District Historic Preservation [Committees] is not bureaucracy for its own sake. It is a recognition that public land decisions are complex and deserve careful, cross-disciplinary review.

Only after that process is complete should a decision move forward.

At that point, the Town Charter provides the final and essential safeguard: the Town Meeting. A public vote is not a formality. It is the moment when residents are able to see the options, understand the tradeoffs, and decide whether a proposal reflects the town’s values and priorities. The Charter explicitly allows the Town Meeting to impose conditions, reinforcing the idea that public land decisions are meant to be shaped in the open.

This is not about slowing things down. It is about doing them right.

Wilton has an opportunity to replace informal, opaque decision-making with a clear, credible process that centers public input from the start. When land is owned by the public, the path forward should be visible, disciplined, and worthy of the trust residents place in their town government.

If we get the process right, we are far more likely to reach outcomes the community understands, supports, and can stand behind for years to come.

For residents who want to signal support for a more transparent and community-centered approach, a petition calling for that standard is circulating on Change.org. Whether through that effort or other civic channels, the message is the same: decisions about public land should happen in public, guided by process, principle, and the long-term interests of Wilton.

Phil Murphy

Editor’s note: The Change.org petition was created by Mr. Murphy, representing a group calling itself the Common Sense Coalition. According to the petition, the group wants “a holistic approach to development and a disciplined, transparent process for capital planning and public spending. Too many proposals emerge without full context, clear alternatives, or meaningful public input.”