Dunn, Belden want to build capital projects with little tax increase

By Scott Benjamin

BROOKFIELD – The Yankees season ticket holders tell you that it isn’t until May 10 that you can be confident that you don’t need to wear a windbreaker for a night game.

It is a week before that, the dandelions started sprouting through the grass blades two weeks ago and the evening temperature is warm and there is – as Vin Scully used to say from beautiful Chavez Ravine – “a shirt-sleeve crowd.”

The BBQ at Twins on Junction Road is up for order.

This event is billed as “Get Involved With Steve & Bob.”

Steve & Bob are not the new act auditioning for Roast Battle at the New York Comedy Club.

Steve Dunn and Bob Belden want to rally the base and recruit potential nominees for the municipal ticket in the November 4 election.

Dunn, a Democrat, was initially elected first selectman in 2015 and became the first person to hold that job for at least three terms since 1999. He lost his bid for a fourth term in 2021 but recaptured the office two years ago.

Bob Belden had been a Republican since he became an adult. He was elected in 2003 to the Board of Finance and became its chairman. He later became chairman of the Board of Education.

Two years ago, a while after becoming an unaffiliated voter, he was elected as an Other Selectman – as Dunn’s running mate – on the three-member board.

Based on past experience, the Democrats apparently now subscribe to the theory that the early candidate gets the voters.

In 2021 Dunn said in June he hadn’t decided if he would seek a fourth term even though the party caucus was about six weeks away. When he made his comeback two years ago, it wasn’t formally announced until the first week of June.

This year the Democratic duo announced their re-election plans the last week of March and now they are seeking to put the finishing touches on the ticket.

“We would love for you to step forward,” Belden said to the audience during the speaking program.

Dunn said in an interview with Brookfield Patch that their biggest accomplishment during the current term was getting committees in motion to expand the police facilities and consider what to do with Center Elementary School (CES), which closed in the summer 2023.

He said, “Nothing was done on those things” in the previous two years.

Dunn said his top priority if he annexes a fifth nonconsecutive term will be to establish price tags for those capital projects that will not generate tax-bill sticker shock.

“You don’t overload the taxpayers,” he explained.

Dunn said during his previous tenure as first selectman the $78.1 million Candlewood Lake Elementary School was built “under the cost that was projected” with “a reasonable tax increase.”

Dunn and Belden have said that the police project should be the first one to be addressed since the current headquarters, constructed in the 1980s on Silvermine Road, doesn’t conform to federal standards.

The ad-hoc committee is studying whether to expand the current headquarters or build a new facility.

Dunn and Belden have said they want to have price tags for each project before they proceed so that voters know what the long-term fiscal impact will be before each of the projects go to referendum.

There has been discussion of moving the library, now located on Whisconier Road, to CES and possibly having recreation programs and meetings rooms in parts of the structure.

On another topic, last year, with the expansion of multi-family housing in the 198-acre Brookfield Town Center district, Dunn called for a temporary moratorium on construction. That has since been enacted.

Zoning Board of Appeals Vice Chairman Karl Hinger has been recommended by the Brookfield Republican Town Committee for nomination for first selectman at the GOP party caucus on July 16.

He has called for a town-wide moratorium on new construction.

In fact, state Senate Republican Leader Stephen Harding (R-30) of Brookfield has taken the same position.

Dunn said that he disagrees.

“I think it is illegal,” he explained. “You can’t stop construction altogether” through the whole town.

Dunn said the other prime priority for the next term would be rewriting the municipal Plan of Conservation & Development.

He applauded the work that land-use officials have done over the recent months to develop the plan, which is updated once every 10 years.

Dunn commented that the revised plan will “set down new zoning ordinances.”

The joke was a generation ago that you could go to a Democratic caucus to nominate the candidates for the municipal slate and the crowd would only be the size of a Republican Town Committee meeting.

Now, the Democratic candidate for first selectman has prevailed in six of the last eight municipal elections.

However, Dunn remarked that the Republicans continue to be “a formidable force.”

Last November, Harding was re-elected by nearly 1,900 votes in Brookfield and former First Selectman Marty Foncello, now the state representative in the 107th state House District, garnered a second term by winning Brookfield by about 800 votes.

Connecticut has only gone for Democratic candidates for president since 1992, but Republican Donald Trump won Brookfield by about 400 votes.

As of April, the Brookfield Registrars of Voters reported that the town has 4,993 unaffiliated voters, 3,787 Republicans, 3,045 Democrats and 214 registered with other parties.

Hinger will face former Brookfield Republican Town Committee Vice Chairman Austin Monteiro at the GOP caucus. Both candidates have said they don’t plan to force a primary if they lose at the caucus.

Monteiro ran as a petitioning candidate for first selectman in 2021 and was the Republican nominee in Danbury’s 110th state House district last year.

Brookfield Democratic Town Committee Chairman Shannon Riley said she thinks that Dunn and Belden are in a stronger position now than where they were two years ago when they formed their new ticket.

She said residents have benefitted from their managerial acumen.

Dunn was a vice president at J.P. Morgan Chase and Belden had held a similar position with IBM.

Said Riley, “They have the skill set.”

She said the Democratic Vacancy Committee is completing its interviews of prospective candidates and will present a recommended slate to the Democratic Town Committee in June. The party caucus will be held in July.

Riley said that the party has benefitted from the permanent headquarters on Federal Road that was established in May 2023.

It has been “an organizing hub” where campaign workers are interacting and even has been utilized to collect non-perishable items for the municipal food pantry.

She maintains that attracting the unaffiliated voters is crucial to the Democrats winning municipal elections.

“Too often parties forget about unaffiliated voters,” Riley remarked.

“We listen to their needs,” she commented. “We knock on the hard doors.”