By Sarah Opdahl

At the Wednesday, March 18 New Fairfield Board of Finance (BOF) meeting, board members heard an in-depth presentation by First Selectman Ms. Pat Del Monaco, prepared in response to the many questions they had submitted about the Town budget, which is proposed at $16.2M, or a 9.92% increase. The presentation was based on slides originally shown at the budget hearing on March 7 with additional information that was targeted to answer the questions submitted by the BOF. Much of the discussion centered on the large capital ask that is driving the Town budget’s increase.

Del Monaco prefaced the presentation by saying, “I got a lot of questions from all of you…one of the biggest concerns that everyone has is the increase in capital…recently, as I said before, our focus has been on the Board of Education operating budget, and debt service…I supported that. That was necessary at the time. But I’m asking now that we put a little bit of focus on the Board of Selectmen capital, because underfunding our capital now more than we have, or continuing that underfunding is going to lead to higher costs later in repair or replacement of our infrastructure.” She went on to explain, in addition to this year’s rise in capital funding, “we want to get to a point where our debt and our capital are working together so that we have some stability…the concept here is, as our debt service decreases, we increase our capital so that we always maintain the same level. So there’s more stability in the budget, fewer spikes, fewer surprises for our taxpayers and well maintained infrastructure.” While debt funding is due to decrease, as promised to taxpayers in the lead up to the vote on the two new schools, the Town would instead keep budgeting for the full amount that was reached at the debt’s heights, with some projected stepped decreases, to address lagging capital improvement projects.

BOF members questioned specific capital, payroll, and non-payroll requests such as bridge and drainage repair, which involves a large number of projects with a range of severity in need. There was also an extensive discussion regarding Public Works, Police, and Fire Department vehicle needs and replacement schedules. Del Monaco described the pattern of cutting and postponing vehicle requests that was often leaned upon in previous budget seasons and expressed hope to instead establish a new cycle of steady replacement which will ideally avoid steep tax hikes and valleys for these needs in the future. The BOF had questions about the plan to hire an eighth police officer, when the contract needs to be renegotiated for the Town’s ambulance service, what the plan is for grant funding requests, and more. Further discussions were had about raising salaries for the First Selectman and the Town Treasurer, about funding plans for legal expenses, and more. 

New Fairfield’s Board of Finance will meet weekly on Wednesdays in March, 7:30 p.m.