LTE: Fairfield Board of Finance Passes Town Budget

Fairfield Friends,

On Tuesday night, 3/31, the Fairfield Board of Finance (BOF) unanimously voted (9-0) to pass the Town’s operating budget for fiscal year 2027 (7/1/26-6/30/27). The mill rate for taxpayers won’t be set by the BOF until the budget passes the RTM in late April, and the grand list is finalized in late May. However, with the bulk of the adjustments to the budget behind us, the mill rate is currently estimated to be 19.19%. This is meaningfully below the mill rate of 28.39% from last year.

Given the impact of the property revaluation this year, the BOF has been hyper-focused on keeping the increase to the operating budget as low as possible. Through a month-long diligence review and a series of budget hearings with department heads, we were able to identify $4.2MM in additional non-tax revenue opportunities, and $2.6MM in operating expense savings. We also took a close look at existing reserves that the town had built up from prior year’s surpluses and chose to release a significant portion of those reserves to further help reduce the burden on the taxpayer.

The town did add one new position for a geographical information systems (GIS) analyst. The BOF debated whether this position was critical enough to warrant being added this year, or whether it should be delayed. After understanding the importance of this role to support the Town’s economic growth in the commercial grand list (something that will help defray the tax burden away from residents), and the positive impact it would have for many departments (Police, Fire, TP&Z, DPW, Engineering, WPCU, Tax Assessor, C&ED, +), the BOF approved funding for this position in a bipartisan vote (7-2).

It’s worth noting that prior to the budget getting to the BOF, the BOS cut $2.0MM from the education budget. While the BOF did not restore any of this $2.0MM cut, the School Superintendent was able to identify ways to manage this reduction without adversely impacting programming for our students. Given the savings the BOF was able to identify on the Town side of the budget, the BOF was able to avoid making further cuts to the education budget.

The end result was a year-over-year increase in the tax levy of 2.30%, which is down from the 4.28% increase approved by the Board of Selectpersons (BOS), and is now below the current rate of inflation.

I’d like to thank the Town’s administration, the CFO and his staff (and the Budget Director in particular), and the Town’s department heads for all of their time and effort throughout this budget cycle. I’d also like to thank my fellow BOF members for all of their efforts. They certainly dedicated significant time and effort to diligence the proposed budget and identified opportunities to reduce the tax burden on residents without compromising town services. For the first time in many years, this budget was passed on a bi-partisan basis and unanimously (9-0). As the Chairman of this board, I really felt that we could have a collaborative and productive budget process this year, and it proved to be true. I respect each and every member of this board, and I appreciated everyone's input and effort. We all have different perspectives and different priorities, but I believe our process allowed each of us to be heard, and we ended up with a very good budget for the Town. In the end, that's what this is all about, and I feel that we've done our jobs. I hope my fellow board members feel proud of themselves. I certainly am proud of us all.

Sincerely, Craig Curley, Chairman, Fairfield Board of Finance