Balancing Town Services and Affordability

I want to commend my fellow Democratic members of the RTM for their vigilance and perspective at our April meetings. Through emails, phone calls and personal conversations, we communicated with hundreds of constituents about the three appeals of Board of Finance budget cuts (Pequot Library, Senior Center Director and Fairfield Counseling Services), and about the budget as a whole. The RTM restored Pequot's funding by an overwhelming margin. I voted to restore the funding because the BOF cut was unfairly sudden and eliminated 100 percent of town funding in one year. Most other RTM Democrats voted the same way, although the Democratic caucus has never voted in a block on any item that has come before us, and I as the leader of our caucus would never speak for them. Democracy is about the individual voice, not herding people into a position their leadership prefers. At the May 6 meeting, I intend to propose a far more modest cut in funding for the Pequot library, as I stated at our April meeting, per the Moderator's request to announce intended cuts and give departments and agencies an opportunity to respond. (Something the Republican caucus did not do, although they did state that they intend to make cuts.) The tradition of proposing possible cuts to the budget at the April RTM meeting, allowing public discussion and time to reflect before the May budget vote, has been in place for all of my five terms – ten years - on the RTM, no matter who the majority party was. For the past two years, the Republican leadership of the RTM has tried to change the process, because it interferes with their control – they would rather marshal their full majority caucus and bring a completed plan before the body the day of the final vote. This may reduce the possibility of dissention in their own ranks; it definitely reduces the opportunity of Democrats to respond, and, most importantly, it denies the public their voice. I applaud the moderator for allowing public comment at the May 6th meeting—although it would seem that interested Fairfield residents still won't know what's coming in advance. Except for trimming funding to the private Pequot Library—which I will propose because, after all, town libraries, paving budgets and education funding have also been cut—I (and many members of the Democratic Caucus) will be fighting any further cuts to the proposed budget. The ones already made by the boards of selectmen and finance have cut services below the bone. The budget with no additional cuts would represent approximately a little over 3% tax increase which balances the need to keep taxes affordable while still providing the school, fire, police and public works services the town needs. Anything further would tip the scales toward austerity—and harm our town for many years to come. Hal Schwartz, Democratic RTM Minority Leader