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FEBRUARY 19, 2018 | VOL. 54, No. 8
Development a high priority for Trumbull’s new first selectman BY KEVIN ZIMMERMAN kzimmerman@westfairinc.com
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s is the case with many of Connecticut’s municipal leaders, newly elected Trumbull First Selectman Vicki Tesoro is facing a moving target when it comes to budgeting. “We had a very difficult year last year,” Tesoro, who was then on the town’s Board of Finance, said in her Town Hall office on Main Street. Thanks to the months-long struggle to get a state budget passed, “We didn’t have our final numbers out until October. Our mill rate is supposed to be set by May. We spent most of the year just guessing.” Gov. Dannel Malloy’s latest budget proposal would among other things cut $97 million in municipal aid from the original 2018-19 budget passed last year. Tesoro noted that in the original budget, Trumbull was to receive about $800,000 in state aid. Tesoro delivered her own $170 million budget proposal on Feb. 10, the day it was due. Under that budget, which must be passed first by the board of finance and then by the town council, residents would see a 1.95 percent tax increase. The budget also gives the board of education, which had sought a 4.2 percent increase for the upcoming fiscal year, a 3.1 percent increase, which Tesoro said comes to about $3.1 million. Town expenditures have » » TRUMBULL
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A quarter century of cakes page 2
Lisa Maronian at her Sweet Lisa’s Exquisite Cakes shop in Greenwich. Photo by Phil Hall.
Fairfield leader looks to build town’s commercial base
BY PHIL HALL phall@westfairin.com
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airfield First Selectman Mike Tetreau has a major problem with the level of state aid that his town receives from Hartford. “Twenty-four months ago, the town of Fairfield was receiving about $9 million in state aid,” he told the Business Journal. “That has been cut progressively down to the most recent budget that was passed to $4.7 million, and now it has been reduced by another $1 million since that passing. The gover-
nor’s most recent proposal that came out Feb. 7 had it cut down to $1 million.” The state also has eliminated Fairfield’s Educational Cost Sharing funding and funding for the payment in lieu of taxes or PILOT program, which help offset the lack of property tax revenue from Sacred Heart University and Fairfield University. “This is making us more reliant on property taxes than ever before and putting the pressure on the town to fund public education, which is 65 percent of our budget,” Tetreau said. “The state has an obligation to fund public education. Not the towns,
the state. The state is abdicating its responsibility.” Tetreau, a Democrat who has served as first selectman since June 2011, has grown frustrated with how the state legislature functions. “It is difficult to plan a town budget when you are seeing the state budget planned one year at a time based on whatever plan they can duct-tape together and get agreement from whatever the sources are,” he said. “The most recent biennial budget did not address it. It was one big Band-Aid designed to get us through 24 months and last» » FAIRFIELD
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