RTM puts new rink on ice before passing budget
$448,545,232 spending plan OK’d for 2021-22
GREENWICH — After slicing funds for road improvements and planning money for a new ice rink, the Representative Town Meeting gave its final approval to the 2021-22 municipal budget for the town of Greenwich.
It passed by a vote of 147 to 64 with three abstentions late Monday night. The budget for 2021-22 totals $448,545,232 according to the budget director, an increase of less than 1 percent over this fiscal year’s budget of $448,381,253.
The reduction in funds for the rink originated in the RTM’s Budget Overview Committee, with a cut from $950,000 to $50,000 to finalize plans for the $17 million project. BOC Chair Lucia Jansen and Vice Chair Dan Ozizmir said they do not oppose the project but said they need more information — including where the new rink would be located.
The BOC kept $50,000 for the project in the budget to show support for a new rink, Jansen said.
Speakers expressed concerns about whether the new rink would need an access road and
how the project would impact the sewers, the nearby baseball field and the 13 memorial trees planted in the park in honor of local heroes killed while serving in the military.
“It is clear that an exceptionally large number of facts are unknown,” Jansen said. “They are unknown not only to the town but to the BET and the proponents of the project. There are many stakeholders involved externally, including the baseball players who use the field, the Byram Veterans Association, the McKinney Terrace (apartment complex) with senior citizens facing the green space, the dog walkers and the abutting neighbors.”
Jansen also called for more information on how ice time would be allocated to the different groups using the new rink.
Town Superintendent of Construction Alan Monelli asked for $950,000 to finalize the designs so that construction money could be included in the 2022-23 budget. The five designs under consideration “would be protective” of the memorial trees, he said.
“This is an important project to the town, and we are moving through it as fast as we can and with all consideration to all parties,” Monelli said.
By a vote of 133 to 80 with three abstentions, the RTM also cut the $175,000 that would have been used to finalize plans for intersection improvements at Brookside Drive and Glenville Road. Residents had objected to the project, saying the changes could cause more traffic problems.
“This is a project the town doesn’t need and the neighborhood doesn’t want,” said Kimberly Blank, a member of District 7, which proposed the cut.
Another $500,000 was cut that had been for a planned “bump-out” on Greenwich Avenue. Jansen and others want the “bump-out” on Elm Street completed and evaluated before any more are built.
The RTM also cut $2 million to cover employee health care costs. That cut was possible because the premium increases came in far lower than projected, allowing the town to save money.
Drama before the meeting
The RTM meeting was a hybrid: 100 people attended in person at Central Middle School and the rest via Zoom, including the public. But when RTM members and town officials arrived at CMS, they were met by a protest by about 100 members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 456, complete with a giant inflatable rat on display.
The union, which represents 504 full-and part-time town employees, has not had a contract since June 30, 2019, and it has protested outside of Town Hall twice in recent weeks. The union represents school custodial and maintenance staff as well as nurses and nursing assistants at Nathaniel Witherell, park and tree crews, operators at the wastewater treatment plant and snowplow operators.
Chanting “No contract, no peace,” the protesters took up much of the parking outside the school, RTM Moderator Tom Byrne said, forcing some who had intended to attend the meeting in person to go home to watch via Zoom.
Setting the the tax rate
The Board of Estimate and Taxation will set the mill rate for the 2021-22 fiscal year, which begins July 1, at its regular meeting May 17.
Those voting against the budget included a contingent of RTM members who said they were voting no to protest what they called an “underfunding of the town’s public schools” by the BET.
In its budget votes, the BET split on partisan lines over school funding. All of the board’s Democrats voted against the budget as a protest, necessitating BET Chair Michael Mason to use his majority tiebreaking power to end the deadlock and pass the budget on to the RTM.
BET Democrats objected to the majority Republicans’ decisions to reduce the planning money for improvements to Julian Curtiss School in the 202122 budget from $1.7 million to $200,000 and to defer a $102,000 feasibility study to determine the future of Central Middle School.
In a letter to local media, 37 members of the RTM voiced their objection to the budget, calling it “highly partisan” and “shamefully inadequate.” Their letter said the budget process was unfair because the RTM, under town charter, does not have the ability to propose new spending or correct what they said were “deficiencies” in the budget.
The letter said the budget system is “asymmetric” because the RTM can only make cuts.
“The BET has taken advantage of this asymmetry by proposing underfunded budgets to the RTM for years, preventing it from acting as a true forum for debate about the financial future of our town,” the letter said.
“We find it nonsensical that the six individual GOP members of the BET (the six Democratic members of the BET who voted to reject this budget) were able to force an unpopular budget through the system, with single tie-breaking vote,” the letter said. “The GOP-majority led BET has pushed a partisan budget but the challenges facing our town are not partisan in nature.”
But RTM member Carl Higbie, from District 8, said at Monday’s meeting that the budget cuts didn’t go far enough.
“We’ve got to save every penny we can,” Higbie said. “Everything has gone up. … We can’t keep going down this path. Connecticut has the third-highest unemployment in the nation. We have Julian Curtiss coming up. We have Central Middle School that undoubtedly will need to be completely renovated or even redone.
“We can’t be spending money on a bunch of junk like ice skating rinks and civic centers and all this stuff. We’ve got to get this spending under control,” he said.