By Thane Grauel

WESTPORT — Extended hours for the splash pad and big slide are out.

More attendees for Camp Mahackeno and another hour early weekdays for the swim team are a go.

The Planning and Zoning Commission delivered a mixed decision late Monday on the Westport Weston Family YMCA’s application to extend hours for various outdoor warm-weather activities.

The Y had requested a substantial expansion of such summertime activities. After a rocky hearing last week, the Y scaled back its request, perhaps hoping, as neighbors noted, to split the difference.

But those neighbors remained unconvinced.

That fact, and questions from P&Z members and a Representative Town Meeting member, appeared to sway thinking as the lengthy discussion evolved.

When the new location of the Y on Allen Raymond Lane was improved in 2008, hours of operation for the outdoor activities were limited. Those hours were tweaked — after extensive discussion — five years ago by the P&Z.

Monday, neighbors questioned why the Y needed more accommodations at the expense of their quiet enjoyment of their properties, after such an extensive vetting in 2018.

Neighbor Jack Whittle suspected the Y would keep coming back with requests in future years to expand outdoor hours.

“When is it done?” Whittle asked.

Several P&Z members noted their families were involved with the Y, and support its mission, but ultimately voted for a scaled-back version floated by Chairwoman Danielle Dobin.

Representative Town Meeting member Don O’Day, District 3, said at the last meeting that the Y was an integral part of the community, but so were the neighbors. He urged discussion to find a compromise.

“I’m not sure the neighbors have been contacted,” he said Monday after listening to the Y’s presentation by lawyer John Fallon of Fairfield.

Fallon said the Y’s director offered to be the point person for neighbors’ concerns, and he provided her office phone number.

The lack of direct discussion also concerned P&Z member Marcia Falk, who urged an ongoing dialogue.

The neighbors’ best friend in the room appeared to be P&Z member John Bolton.

He had pointed questions for Fallon and ultimately was the sole vote against the application.

He said Falk made the best point of the night, about direct engagement between the Y and neighbors.

“That suggestion should not have had to come from this commission, but it was a great one,” Bolton said. “It should have been spontaneously, organically.”

“So, what I’m hearing pretty much is, ‘I’m fine with,’ ‘I’m comfortable with,’ ‘It’s reasonable this’ …,” he said of earlier comments.

“Unless you live there, I don’t think anyone has the right to say what they’re fine with, what they’re comfortable with,” Bolton said.

“Not our houses,” he said, noting that, looking at the list of people who commented in favor, 65 percent didn’t live anywhere near the grounds.

Fallon summed up the Y’s role.

“The Westport YMCA is a fundamentally important institution in this town,” he said. “We’re working very hard in difficult times to meet the needs of over 11,400 members.”

He said the Y could do that without a detrimental impact on neighbors.

Dobin summed up the input and distilled it down to supporting an extra weekday morning hour of outdoor swimming for the Water Rat Swim Team, and increasing Mahackeno’ s roster from 360 to 400.

Also, the resolution stressed no whistles be used at the pool and a 24-hour contact person be available for neighbor concerns.

Planning and Zoning Director Mary Young mentioned including the hope that the YMCA would keep communication lines open with neighbors.

“I would implore them to be so responsive that the neighbors don’t reach out to me,” Dobin said, “which I’m always happy to have the neighbors reach out to me and advocate for them, but I hope that they aren’t put in the position where they have to do that.”

Bolton noted, before casting his lone vote against, that he supports Mahackeno’s expanded attendance.

Thane Grauel grew up in Westport and has been a journalist in Fairfield County and beyond for 35 years. Reach him at editor@westportjournal.com. Learn more about us here.