Politics & Government

RTM Denies Appeal to Restore Funding for Full-time Senior Center Director

The Fairfield Senior Center will have to wait another year for the possibility of a fulltime director after the RTM voted down the appeal to restore the $53,261 in funding, which had been cut by the Board of Finance in its entirety earlier this month.  

Tom Flynn, Chairman of the Board of Finance, explained the reasoning behind his board's vote before the RTM on Monday.  

"There were tough choices that needed to be made this year. There were reductions in virtually every department budget, but this position resulted in an increase," he said.  

Flynn added that it's not just the $53,261 in salary and benefits to fund the position beginning in January (the Board of Selectmen had previously halved the funding and corresponding benefits to delay the hiring of the position until halfway through the upcoming fiscal year), but its the compounding addition of another salary year after year and the obligation to fund the person's eventual retirement.  

"Unfortunately this was not a priority this year given the economic climate," Flynn said.  

Late last year, members of the Top 10 Committee tasked with finding ways to improve the Senior Center, told the Board of Selectmen that hiring a fulltime director is the top need.  

Currently the duties of Senior Center director fall under the town's Director of Human and Social Services Teresa Giegengack as a part-time position.  

"This is an untenable and unfair arrangement and compromises both positions," Ron Atwater, a member of the committee and volunteer at the Senior Center, said to the RTM on Monday.  

"For some 19 years the Fairfield Senior Center has been the object of benign neglect. We're doing our part [to make it better]," he added, and asked the RTM do the same by restoring the funding for a fulltime director.  

"We're supporting everyone else. We need someone to support us, who support you," Palma Senator, another member of the Top 10 Committee, said.  

RTM members Carol Way, R-10, Sheila Marmion, D-6, David Becker, R-1, and Peter Ambrose, R-2, all spoke in support of the position before their fellow RTM members.  

"We owe it to our seniors," Ambrose said. "It's wonderful for the community. I really think it's the right thing to do."  

But Marc Patten, D-7, the chair of the senior tax relief committee and "as pro-senior and senior tax relief as you can get," said that he cannot support a new position in the Fiscal Year 2014 budget.  

"It doesn't mean we don't need it but it's not the fiscally responsible thing to do this year," he said. "With any luck, if it's proposed again next year, maybe it will go through."    

The appeal to restore the funding failed in a 22-26 vote.   


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