Dunn urges residents to be "calm and collected" during pandemic

By Scott Benjamin

BROOKFIELD – First Selectman Steve Dunn is urging residents to “to be calm and collected” during the Coronavirus pandemic, noting that “the less that people congregate the better chance that you have to slow it down."

The Brookfield school district decided on March 12 to close schools for two weeks and since then Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) has called for all schools to be closed through at least March 31.

However, municipal officials will continue to develop a proposed budget for the fiscal year that starts in July.

Following its deliberations in February, the Board of Selectmen presented the Board of Finance with a $72,082,605 recommendation that would increase town government services spending by 2.24 percent and education expenditures by 5 percent.

The current proposed tallies are $46,207,027 for education, $19,196,300 for town government services and $4,948,950 for capital.

Dunn said in an interview that the current proposal would boost the tax mill rate by 3.58 percent, with the possibility that as a result of growth in the grand list that the tax increase would be lowered to just over three percent, which is at the outer limits of what usually would be approved by voters at referendum.

“It’s a fine balancing act,” said Dunn.

The first selectman said the higher-than-usual education increase is largely due to growing costs for special education students and a kindergarten enrollment that was larger than anticipated.

Dunn said the best answer toward getting the municipal budget approved at referendum in May is to have the Democratically-controlled Board of Selectmen and Board of Education and the Republican-controlled Board of Finance all enthusiastically endorse the same plan.

“For all of them to say to the person that this is the right budget for the town; that makes it easier to get it passed,” he said. “When you do that you have much more confidence from the residents. If you have boards split on a budget, it’s more difficult.”

In June 2015, Dunn, who was then a candidate for the Democratic nomination for first selectman, told Patch.com that the school district’s new leaders, especially new Superintendent John Barille, would be under a magnifying glass after the district had $1.2 million in overspending under Braille’s predecessor, Anthony Bivona, and former schools Business Manager Art Colley, as money was inappropriately carried over from one fiscal year to the next.

“After what happened recently, I think many people don’t think the school district spends its money wisely,” Dunn said at the time. “I share that concern.”

Have the school district’s administrators recaptured the public’s confidence?

“To a large extent, yes,” Dunn said.

However, he added, “I think in regard to budgets, they need to be more forthcoming, with more detail. “I’ve been working with them on that, and they’ve been very cooperative.”

Dunn said the town government services budget binder is 312 pages. “We get 20 pages from the Board of Education and their budget is two and a half times as large.”

“It needs more detail so that the Board of Finance and the Board of Selectmen can make better decisions,” said the first selectman.

Dunn said he anticipates that the state Bond Commission will approve reimbursement funding for the new $78.1 million Huckleberry Hill Elementary School, which would bring the cost for local taxpayers down to $63.3 million.

He expects the project will go out to bid later this year and that construction should start in 2021.

On another subject, Dunn said he supports state Rep. Stephen Harding’s (R-107) efforts to increase business education in the state’s high schools.

“I would like to see a personal finance class for every high school student,” the first selectman said.

Nationally, only one in six high school graduates take a personal finance class.

“It helps them when they get to college and they start looking for jobs and managing their budgets,” Dunn said regarding the long-term benefits.

“I’d also like to see a civics class come back for the high school,” he said. “It is shocking how many kids don’t know that there are three branches in the federal government.”

On a separate topic, Dunn said Brookfield’s economic development continues to proceed swiftly. He has said that the corporate portion of the grand list could grow from the current 16 percent to 20 percent of the tax income in the coming years from projects in the 198-acre Town Center of Brookfield near the Four Corners of Federal Road, the cornfield on Junction Road and the sprawling Berkshire Corporate Park that also has parcels in Bethel and Danbury.

The 140,000-square-foot building that will house Branson Ultrasonics on a 13-acre parcel in the Berkshire Corporate Park should be open before the end of the year. News reports have indicated that company, which makes precision welding machines, will employ 220 workers.

Dunn said likewise the medical building at the cornfield on Junction Road also is on schedule to open within months, and an assisted living facility is under construction next to the Wood Bin Plaza.

Additionally, some businesses are about to open in the retail center across the BMW dealership at 450 Federal Road.

“There’s going to be a lot of competition,” Dunn acknowledged. “However, we’re already seeing people from outside the area come to Brookfield Village” near the Four Corners of Federal Road.

Regarding the addition of more restaurants, the first selectman said, “People in Brookfield like to go out and eat,” noting that last December he and his wife, Cassie, went to dinner at the White Horse in the Marble Dale section of Washington – a 25-minute drive - and there were three other couples there from Brookfield.

Dunn said a mixed-use building that will include a supermarket, other retail outlets and upstairs apartments will be built soon near the Still River Greenway. He said there will be two parking lots – one of which will have 36 public spaces.

However, he said that since all of the current public parking spaces are usually occupied on Saturdays, even with the additional spaces near the supermarket, the town is going to have to pursue other public parking options.

On the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Dunn, a member of the Brookfield Democratic Town Committee, said local party members have been “split,” with some supporting U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Vice President Joe Biden of Delaware, as well as others supporting candidates who have withdrawn from the race.

Regarding state issues, House Republican Leader Themis Klarides (R-Derby) has called Lamont “incompetent” and state House Deputy Speaker Pro Tempore Bob Godfrey (D-110) of Danbury has referred to him as being “naïve.”

Dunn has a different perspective.

“I think he has done an excellent job of reaching out to people and being very open and transparent,” the first selectman declared. “I think he’s much more open and engaging than Gov. Malloy was,” Dunn said. “I’ve met him and spoken with him probably six times since he took office. I only met Gov. Malloy once when he came to the town after the storm and shook my hand and said, ‘Hello.’ ”

Dunn said Lamont has done more to promote transportation than any governor since the late William O’Neill, who undertook a massive revitalization following the June 1983 collapse of the Mianus River Bridge in Greenwich.

Malloy underscored transportation infrastructure as a priority early in 2015 as he began his second term and there were serious discussions over border tolls and congestive pricing, but he did not expend the political capital that Lamont has since he took office in early 2019.

After a year of squabbles over multiple electronic tolls plans, none of them ever got to a vote. But after Lamont said he was dropping, at least for now, pursuit of that plan he has reluctantly committed to spending $200 million a year in bond appropriations to transportation upgrades.

Dunn acknowledged that the relatively small amount of funding will do little to upgrade a transportation system that is “failing.”

A 2017 engineering study indicated that Connecticut has the worst roads in the country.

“I don’t think that he’s been able to build the consensus that he wants for some of the projects,” he said regarding Lamont’s inability to get even tolls on tractor trailer trucks installed.

“You need to get the voters to talk to their representatives about the way you want them to, and I think that’s hard to do,” the first selectman added.

However, Dunn applauded Lamont’s vision on the state’s transportation infrastructure.

“I think a lot attention is going to rail than in the past, which is a good thing,” remarked the first selectman, who worked on Wall Street for nearly 30 years and was familiar with the potential obstacles of traveling to Manhattan

“It is the lifeblood of Connecticut,” he said of the commuter rail lines in lower Fairfield County. “You have people in the Gold Coast that make good salaries and you don’t want to choke off those communities when it comes to getting efficiently to New York City.”

Locally, Dunn said he anticipates that the state Department of Transportation will begin work in the Spring of 2021 on improvements along the southern corridor of Federal Road from the BJ’s Wholesale Club to Ramen House on the Old New Milford Road. He indicated that more lanes will be added and the odd intersection between Federal Road and Old New Milford Road will be eliminated through a reconfiguration of the area that will create better access to the shopping center at 317 Federal Road, which features O’Connor’s Public House.

He said the project also would improve access to Chick-fil-A for motorists traveling northbound.

On another topic, the General Assembly recently approved a $4.7 billion bond appropriations package – which would be about $1.1 billion beyond the debt diet that Lamont established last year. The votes were overwhelming - 126-20 in the state House and 31-5 in the state Senate.

However, Dunn noted that Lamont chairs the Bond Commission and he “very well could” limit the items that get considered by that panel, as he did in 2019 when only four meetings were held.

“He’s working on it very carefully and trying to use financial discipline,” said the first selectman, who acknowledged that Lamont has probably curtailed bond spending more than any governor since Lowell Weicker (ACP-Old Lyme)

Dunn said he believes that Lamont is taking a similar tact to what Brookfield has taken over the last decade in which it is spending more money on its road repairs in cash than in bonding. Dunn said it is at the point that within two years all of the money spent may come from the operating budget.

He said that Lamont has probably held the line on the bond appropriations more than any governor since Lowell Weicker (ACP-East Lyme) in the early 1990s.

Dunn said a recent study indicated that there combined between the municipalities and the state government there are $80 billion in unfunded pension liabilities.

He said the governor and the General Assembly should start “chipping away” at the unfunded state pension obligations.

Dunn said he agrees with the concept stated in “Finance and the Good Society,” (Princeton University Press, 304 pages), the 2012 book in which Yale Economics Professor Robert Shiller stated that pensions for public employees should be connected to the taxpayers ability to pay. Shiller wrote that gross domestic product over time could be the measure.

“I see where he’s going with that,” said Dunn. “In a sense it is a viable, good idea.”

He said in the 1960s and early 1970s there was economic growth that “allowed [Cost Of Living Adjustment] pensions to be created and to be supported,” but that “they are not viable in lesser economic times.”

Dunn said there are some state employee pensions where there are annual increases that are higher than the rate of inflation.

He said that with the Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA) on public sector pensions “they could double in 20 years.”

Said Dunn, “I’ve never heard of a COLA in the private sector.”