In 'bad' times, Dunn is seeking lowest tax increase possible

By Scott Benjamin

BROOKFIELD - - In response to the worst economy in decades, First Selectman Steve Dunn says he is “trying to get as low a tax increase as we can” for the fiscal year that starts in July, because “times are bad.”

Dunn, a third-term Democrat, related that he is “asking all of the [municipal] departments to come in with a zero increase on the operating side” – but acknowledged that there will be salary increases and, for example, the Police Department will have to purchase body cameras to conform with a new law.

The $71.5 million budget for the current fiscal year represents a 1.76 percent tax increase and a spending hike of 2.09 percent over the previous fiscal year.

Dunn has seen state assistance to Brookfield reduced each of his first five years in office and anticipates an even larger reduction may be included in Gov. Ned Lamont’s (D-Greenwich) proposed budget, which will be delivered in February.

The first selectman remarked that he is preparing for the “lowest estimate for revenues that we think we’re going to get. We’ll be able to manage that, but it won’t be fun.”

During the current fiscal year, Brookfield received $1.8 million in state assistance.

Dunn said even with the recent distribution of a vaccine, he expects the pandemic and the accompanying economic downturn to linger.

“I don’t think that we will be completely back to normal by the end of the year,” he said.

He noted that Brookfield, as has been the case in many municipalities in Connecticut since late autumn, is still in the red alert category in COVID-19 cases. He said as had been the case months earlier, many of them are “intra-family.”

On the financial side, Dunn supports Democratic President Joe Biden’s call for an additional $1.9 trillion in fiscal relief on top of the nearly $4 trillion that has been allocated since last March 27.

“We need to help people survive,” he explained. “It is not their fault that they are out of work.”

The Brookfield Chamber of Commerce recently initiated a contest – the “Eat Local Challenge” - to encourage local residents to visit restaurants in town, many of which have reduced dining space or have been limited to just take-out orders since last March.

Dunn exclaimed that the municipal government has thus far weathered the fiscal storm.

He said it appears that tax receipts for the current fiscal year will be equal to or higher than the last fiscal year.

The current budget has $500,000 in contingency for pandemic-related expenses and $387,000 is remaining, although Dunn said there will be further expenses in the coming months.

He said the fund balance is at 11.57 percent – with a goal of getting it to at least 15 percent – and Brookfield still has an AAA bond rating – the highest possible -with Standard & Poor’s.

Dunn said that Branson Ultrasonics should be fully operating in their new, $53 million building on 13 acres in the Berkshire Corporate Park by the end of February, which will generate considerable municipal tax revenue. The company, which specializes in plastics and medal-wielding, is moving after spending many years in Danbury.

Additionally, in the summer of 2022 construction should start on two new phases of the street scape in the 198-acre Brookfield Town Center. Two phases have already been completed.

Bill Davidson, the last Democratic first selectman, said in 2013 that in five years the emerging business district would look “very different” Dunn said that did occur by 2018 with, among other things, the opening of the large retail shops and adjoining housing at Brookfield Village near the Four Corners intersection of Federal Road.

Dunn added, “I think there is a lot of development still to come.” He expects that a supermarket will be built in the business district, which will include 40 public parking spaces, an important commodity with the popular Still River Greenway.

Construction should commence in late spring on the new $78.1 million Huckleberry Hill Elementary School (HHES). The project, which was approved by voters in March 2019 will have students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. With state reimbursement money Brookfield taxpayers would only have to pay for $63.3 million in costs.

In 2020 an ad-hoc committee made recommendations to utilize the property where Center Elementary School (CES) is for a library and possibly Parks & Recreation Department programs, as well.

Library officials initially indicated a lack of space at the current library on Whisconier Road in 1999. Voters in 2018 rejected a proposal to construct a new $14.7 million facility on the municipal campus along Pocono Road.

Dunn said he wants to have “hard numbers” on the new HHES before spending any money on reconverting CES after the students there are transferred to HHES when the newbuilding is completed – perhaps as early as Fall 2022.

He said that next year the town will probably seek to have a designer evaluate CES – the oldest school and the only wooden school in Connecticut. He said it might be determined that it would be best to raze the current structure and build a new library or combined library/recreation facility on the Route 133 parcel.

On November 23, 1986 – prior to the Route 7 bypass, the Brookfield Town Center, the influx of furniture stores along the southern corridor of Federal Road, and at a time when M. Jodi Rell was in her first term as a state representative in the 107th District – The New York Times did one of its, “If you’re thinking about living in ----” profiles on Brookfield.

At that juncture, the population was 14,200, following a surge in the 1960s when Brookfield grew per capita more than any of Connecticut’s 169 municipalities. The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2018 that it had a population of 17,002.

The Board of Education budget was $12 million, compared to the current $45,437,460 expenditure.

Democratic First Selectman Ken Keller told the newspaper that very few people worked in town following the development some years earlier of I-684, which made it easier to commute to New York City and Westchester County.

“I’m not sure it’s healthy to have a strictly affluent community,” Keller said at the time.

However, a real estate professional who had moved to Brookfield from Missouri told The New York Times that her family landed there after not being able to afford housing in New Canaan, Darien or Stamford.

Dunn said Brookfield was, is and probably always will be more affordable than the Gold Coast of lower Fairfield County. He said it ranks 29th in wealth in Connecticut, but there is a large gap, for example, between Brookfield and Greenwich – where designer Tommy Hilfiger recently sold his European-inspired mansion for $45 million, according to Patch.com.

Dunn noted that there are a tiny number of $2 million homes in Brookfield, but most housing is in the middle range.

He added, “I think we’ve retained the same level of affluence that we’ve had.”

Dunn said starter homes usually range from $280,000 to $380,000, and as is the case across Connecticut there is often not enough inventory.

He said with only 20 square miles –six square miles less than rural Roxbury, which only has about 2,300 people – “a lot of the [residential] property in Brookfield has already been developed.”