FAIRFIELD — The Board of Selectmen on Monday, March 3, voted to restore $2 million to Fairfield’s $234,923,226 public schools budget.
The Board of Education originally asked for a 6.7% increase over the fiscal year 2025-2026 spending plan, one of the highest of any municipality in the region and one of the highest in Fairfield in 20 years. There was agreement that 4.45% of the increase attributed to long-needed increases in teacher and para educator salaries was crucial to maintain. But grand list growth of only 0.24% caused concern about the BOE’s budget and meant most of this increase would translate into higher taxes for property owners.
The selectman voted, 2-1, to approve a total budget of $381,964,286, which reduces the Board of Education budget cuts to $1.9 million, with First Selectman Bill Gerber and Selectman Christine Vitale voting in favor. Republican Selectman, and former first selectman, Brenda Kupchick, voted against the budget plan. The approved budget represents a 3.01% increase over the current budget, according to Gerber.
Vitale made a motion at the meeting to restore $2 million in funding, seconded by the first selectman, who had asked his administration to identify revenue opportunities and expense cuts to preserve school funding. From early January when Superintendent of Schools Michael Testani first informed Gerber of the proposed increase, the first selectman was searching for ways share services between the town offices and Fairfield Public Schools administration.
“The school budget is driven by the needs of the children and how many children are in our schools,” Vitale said. “If there can be a cost savings in buses or transporting children that can then be applied to resources to better educate children, I think we should look at them. There may well be potential in shared town and school services if the town and school administrations are committed to doing the work to find them.”
Gerber said he was not happy with making the cuts to the school board budget.
“I have never supported a cut to a school budget and I was uncomfortable with the $3.9 million in cuts,” he said, “but this is a challenging year with minimal grand list growth and the Board of Education presented a budget with one of the largest proposed increases in dollar terms in town history. Affordability is a concern for all of our families.”
“Providing an excellent education for our children is always one of my top priorities and compensation for our teachers is not in question,” he added. “I don’t have control over what the Board of Education actually does, but there are some things I hope they review.
The selectmen were able to restore the $2 million through offsets in the total town budget. First was moving $928,000 in maintenance projects in the operating budget to the capital plan for bonding, bringing proposed cuts to $3.9 million. Additional offsets include:
- Adding $1.1 million to the drawdown to the Active Employee Benefits Fund
- Adjusting the reserve from uncollected taxes to $3.35 million; the collection rate was moved from 98.96 percent to 99.01 percent, matching the prior year figure
- Increasing supplemental motor vehicle assessment assumption from $112 million to $113 million
- Increasing the grand list projection by $32 million. This adjustment was made with the change to the motor vehicle depreciation schedule, adding $921,000 in bottom line revenue.
Several small increases added $195,000 to the budget, including private school transportation, and several line items related to Police Department expenses: active employee insurance, regular Police Department payroll, an increase for a new police sergeant, Social Security payments, training fees, and clothing.
