Welcome to Fairfield Taxpayer
www.minutemannewscenter.com/fairfield/fairfield-taxpayers-mission-keep-town-desirable-and-affordable/article_9d7857c8-3bd7-5837-afab-4f7191ae9117.htmlStarting with an email list of about 50 residents in early 2012, Fairfield Taxpayer now connects directly with over 4,500 concerned taxpayers, and around 1,6050 have “liked” us on Facebook. We also started Fairfield Strategic Plan, an effort dedicated to starting and nurturing a crowd-sourced strategic plan for Fairfield. FSP has its own independent site and Facebook Page. Here is a newspaper article which discusses Fairfield Taxpayer, published in the Fairfield Minuteman
Fairfield Taxpayer's participants or followers include teachers, young singles, parents with children in our public schools, empty nesters, seniors, retirees, elected officials, town merchants, town employees . . . in short, a real cross-section of Fairfield. The pie chart below shows the diversity by voting district of our participants.
Our Mission, as we hope growing numbers of Fairfielders know, is to preserve Fairfield as both a desirable and affordable community for all its residents. To fulfill our mission we believe it necessary to hold future growth in the Town’s spending and taxes below the rate of inflation, after 15 years when spending and taxes increased, respectively, at 2.5x and 3x the rate of inflation. To control spending and taxes, given the still rising cost of wages, benefits and work rules for active public employees plus the cost of their post-retirement benefits, we must identify opportunities for greater efficiency, and we must also make tough decisions about which municipal and educational services to reduce or eliminate. Fairfield Taxpayer does not presume to dictate which services should be reduced or eliminated. Instead, we welcome a community-wide debate that will allow the Town to identify services that can be reduced or eliminated with “the least pain for the fewest number.” Longer term, we hope that successful efforts to control labor costs and to increase our commercial and industrial tax base will allow us to expand both municipal and educational services.
Making good decisions under much more challenging general economic conditions than have applied for most of the post-war period, will require much greater engagement on the part of all Fairfield residents, which in turn will require much better information and analysis about the costs and benefits of the services currently provided. Fairfield Taxpayer hopes to provide some of the needed information and analysis in a strictly non-partisan, objective way. We have been surprised to learn that our public officials, the people who are making critical decisions about the future of our town, sometimes lack even the most basic information (e.g., historical spending and taxes relative to inflation; historical debt levels; or rigorous benchmarking against what other towns are spending), and we have been surprised as well by the apparent apathy of the voters, less than 30% of whom turned out to vote in our municipal elections in both 2009 and 2013.
Accordingly, we think of ourselves as roughly equal parts “think tank,” “publisher,” “forum,” and “militia.”
The THINK TANK part is our ability to apply the knowledge and skills we have acquired in our professional careers to do excellent, in-depth, objective research on the important issues affecting our town.
The PUBLISHER part is our ability to compensate for what, with all due respect, we feel is the lack of real in-depth, investigative journalism in the local media by publishing the kind of articles that we feel are necessary to inform and engage more Fairfield residents on the issues. We publish our articles on our website, through social media like Facebook and Twitter, and in print “advertorials” in the Fairfield Minuteman, chosen because it reaches almost all Fairfield households. In 2013, we sent more than 25 e-mail updates and “call to action memos” to our followers, and we also produced a flyer to broaden our reach to those who are not on the Internet.
The FORUM part is our desire to provide a place where all interested parties can come together to exchange ideas and opinions, and one that makes it easy for residents to communicate with and engage with our elected officials. The people who have chosen to participate in our forum come from all corners of town. Our mission of "preserving Fairfield as a desirable and affordable community" resonates with people from all backgrounds and circumstances.
The MILITIA part, a long and honorable New England tradition, reflects our lack of hierarchy and formal organization, and our open door to anyone who is able and willing to help in any way, to whatever extent, for as long as s/he can. We have no titles, and don’t want any. We do not support, oppose or endorse candidates or political parties. Some supporters have joined our militia for a particular skirmish and then departed to deal with other pressing matters in their lives, and others have become more-or-less regulars, but they too, for a variety of reasons, are likely to be replaced by others in the future.
Fairfield Taxpayer's current regulars are well known to most if not all public officials in Fairfield, including the leaders of both major political parties and the members of such boards as the BOS, the BOF and the BOE. On a regular basis, FT meets face to face with many of these public officials and with department heads, some of whom have collaborated actively with FT on issues like Aquarion's recently proposed 23% increase in our water rates (which was reduced by the regulators to 6%-7%).
We try to meet weekly, usually on Thursdays at either 2:00 pm or 7:30 pm, and we welcome anyone who is interested to join us. Many of Fairfield’s past, present and future leaders (Democrats, Independents and Republicans) from the BOF, BOE and the RTM have participated in one or more meetings. Among those around the table at one of our recent meetings were five elected officials from the RTM and the BOF, three of whom were Republicans and two Democrats. Some of our regulars have backgrounds in investment research, actuarial analysis, communications, graphic design, project management and general management. Perhaps our greatest strength as an advocacy group is our commitment to rigorous peer review by this demanding, talented and experienced group of people of any positions we adopt and of anything we publish in Fairfield Taxpayer’s name.
The largest single real cost of Fairfield Taxpayer's efforts is the value of the uncompensated time that various people have contributed. Many, many hours have gone into creating and maintaining our website and promoting it on Facebook and elsewhere, and into researching, writing, and presenting the information and analysis we have published. The greatest single monetary expense has been the cost of the seven full- and one half-page “ads” we placed in the Minuteman by the end of October 2013. When we have agreed to do things that cost money, people at the table have simply chipped in to cover the expense.
Our list of Core Values and Beliefs is still evolving, but the latest version is as follows:
1. We are strictly non-partisan; indeed, we think party affiliation at the local level is irrelevant. We simply want the best qualified, least ideological and most diligent public officials we can get to focus on the important issues facing our Town.
2. We do not endorse candidates because there are many things voters can and should consider about them that are beyond our expertise as an independent and reliable source of objective information and analysis about the important issues.
3. We do endorse positions on issues when we feel we have done enough work to have confidence in our opinion, and we are always open to changing our positions if doing so is justified by new facts and/or circumstances.
4. We don’t claim to be infallible, but we do claim to be extremely diligent, and instead of being strident or argumentative, we are thoughtful and analytical.
5. We trust well informed voters to make good choices, so we want as many of them as possible by informing residents about how the town works (or doesn’t) and about key issues. By making this information very accessible and thereby helping residents to understand the issues, we hope to empower them to form their own opinions, even if (as is likely) they will not agree with us on everything.
Our Key Objectives are also still formative, but the current list is as follows:
1. Restrict future spending and tax increases to levels no greater than the rate of inflation.
2. Renegotiate wages, benefits and work rules for public employees so that labor costs are no greater than they are for comparable work in the private sector.
3. Require school and town administrators to provide budget breakdowns by service and by student or user, so that the people and their elected representatives can make well informed decisions about which services they both want and can afford.
4. Begin every budget cycle with broad agreement on how much we can afford to spend (as virtually all of us do in our own households), and end every cycle with a clear explanation from every town body of why the budget it has approved is affordable for the taxpayers.
5. Create a long-term strategic plan for the town that, among other things, addresses the need for more non-residential commercial development in order to ease the burden on residential property owners, and includes a rolling-five year plan for spending and taxes.
6. Demand strong leadership from our State Representatives to reduce unfunded state mandates that increase our local property taxes, like Binding Arbitration, Minimum Budget Requirements and Prevailing Wages.
7. Reform the Town Charter to require that any increase in taxes greater than the rate of inflation must be approved in a town-wide referendum.
Fairfield Taxpayer's participants or followers include teachers, young singles, parents with children in our public schools, empty nesters, seniors, retirees, elected officials, town merchants, town employees . . . in short, a real cross-section of Fairfield. The pie chart below shows the diversity by voting district of our participants.
Our Mission, as we hope growing numbers of Fairfielders know, is to preserve Fairfield as both a desirable and affordable community for all its residents. To fulfill our mission we believe it necessary to hold future growth in the Town’s spending and taxes below the rate of inflation, after 15 years when spending and taxes increased, respectively, at 2.5x and 3x the rate of inflation. To control spending and taxes, given the still rising cost of wages, benefits and work rules for active public employees plus the cost of their post-retirement benefits, we must identify opportunities for greater efficiency, and we must also make tough decisions about which municipal and educational services to reduce or eliminate. Fairfield Taxpayer does not presume to dictate which services should be reduced or eliminated. Instead, we welcome a community-wide debate that will allow the Town to identify services that can be reduced or eliminated with “the least pain for the fewest number.” Longer term, we hope that successful efforts to control labor costs and to increase our commercial and industrial tax base will allow us to expand both municipal and educational services.
Making good decisions under much more challenging general economic conditions than have applied for most of the post-war period, will require much greater engagement on the part of all Fairfield residents, which in turn will require much better information and analysis about the costs and benefits of the services currently provided. Fairfield Taxpayer hopes to provide some of the needed information and analysis in a strictly non-partisan, objective way. We have been surprised to learn that our public officials, the people who are making critical decisions about the future of our town, sometimes lack even the most basic information (e.g., historical spending and taxes relative to inflation; historical debt levels; or rigorous benchmarking against what other towns are spending), and we have been surprised as well by the apparent apathy of the voters, less than 30% of whom turned out to vote in our municipal elections in both 2009 and 2013.
Accordingly, we think of ourselves as roughly equal parts “think tank,” “publisher,” “forum,” and “militia.”
The THINK TANK part is our ability to apply the knowledge and skills we have acquired in our professional careers to do excellent, in-depth, objective research on the important issues affecting our town.
The PUBLISHER part is our ability to compensate for what, with all due respect, we feel is the lack of real in-depth, investigative journalism in the local media by publishing the kind of articles that we feel are necessary to inform and engage more Fairfield residents on the issues. We publish our articles on our website, through social media like Facebook and Twitter, and in print “advertorials” in the Fairfield Minuteman, chosen because it reaches almost all Fairfield households. In 2013, we sent more than 25 e-mail updates and “call to action memos” to our followers, and we also produced a flyer to broaden our reach to those who are not on the Internet.
The FORUM part is our desire to provide a place where all interested parties can come together to exchange ideas and opinions, and one that makes it easy for residents to communicate with and engage with our elected officials. The people who have chosen to participate in our forum come from all corners of town. Our mission of "preserving Fairfield as a desirable and affordable community" resonates with people from all backgrounds and circumstances.
The MILITIA part, a long and honorable New England tradition, reflects our lack of hierarchy and formal organization, and our open door to anyone who is able and willing to help in any way, to whatever extent, for as long as s/he can. We have no titles, and don’t want any. We do not support, oppose or endorse candidates or political parties. Some supporters have joined our militia for a particular skirmish and then departed to deal with other pressing matters in their lives, and others have become more-or-less regulars, but they too, for a variety of reasons, are likely to be replaced by others in the future.
Fairfield Taxpayer's current regulars are well known to most if not all public officials in Fairfield, including the leaders of both major political parties and the members of such boards as the BOS, the BOF and the BOE. On a regular basis, FT meets face to face with many of these public officials and with department heads, some of whom have collaborated actively with FT on issues like Aquarion's recently proposed 23% increase in our water rates (which was reduced by the regulators to 6%-7%).
We try to meet weekly, usually on Thursdays at either 2:00 pm or 7:30 pm, and we welcome anyone who is interested to join us. Many of Fairfield’s past, present and future leaders (Democrats, Independents and Republicans) from the BOF, BOE and the RTM have participated in one or more meetings. Among those around the table at one of our recent meetings were five elected officials from the RTM and the BOF, three of whom were Republicans and two Democrats. Some of our regulars have backgrounds in investment research, actuarial analysis, communications, graphic design, project management and general management. Perhaps our greatest strength as an advocacy group is our commitment to rigorous peer review by this demanding, talented and experienced group of people of any positions we adopt and of anything we publish in Fairfield Taxpayer’s name.
The largest single real cost of Fairfield Taxpayer's efforts is the value of the uncompensated time that various people have contributed. Many, many hours have gone into creating and maintaining our website and promoting it on Facebook and elsewhere, and into researching, writing, and presenting the information and analysis we have published. The greatest single monetary expense has been the cost of the seven full- and one half-page “ads” we placed in the Minuteman by the end of October 2013. When we have agreed to do things that cost money, people at the table have simply chipped in to cover the expense.
Our list of Core Values and Beliefs is still evolving, but the latest version is as follows:
1. We are strictly non-partisan; indeed, we think party affiliation at the local level is irrelevant. We simply want the best qualified, least ideological and most diligent public officials we can get to focus on the important issues facing our Town.
2. We do not endorse candidates because there are many things voters can and should consider about them that are beyond our expertise as an independent and reliable source of objective information and analysis about the important issues.
3. We do endorse positions on issues when we feel we have done enough work to have confidence in our opinion, and we are always open to changing our positions if doing so is justified by new facts and/or circumstances.
4. We don’t claim to be infallible, but we do claim to be extremely diligent, and instead of being strident or argumentative, we are thoughtful and analytical.
5. We trust well informed voters to make good choices, so we want as many of them as possible by informing residents about how the town works (or doesn’t) and about key issues. By making this information very accessible and thereby helping residents to understand the issues, we hope to empower them to form their own opinions, even if (as is likely) they will not agree with us on everything.
Our Key Objectives are also still formative, but the current list is as follows:
1. Restrict future spending and tax increases to levels no greater than the rate of inflation.
2. Renegotiate wages, benefits and work rules for public employees so that labor costs are no greater than they are for comparable work in the private sector.
3. Require school and town administrators to provide budget breakdowns by service and by student or user, so that the people and their elected representatives can make well informed decisions about which services they both want and can afford.
4. Begin every budget cycle with broad agreement on how much we can afford to spend (as virtually all of us do in our own households), and end every cycle with a clear explanation from every town body of why the budget it has approved is affordable for the taxpayers.
5. Create a long-term strategic plan for the town that, among other things, addresses the need for more non-residential commercial development in order to ease the burden on residential property owners, and includes a rolling-five year plan for spending and taxes.
6. Demand strong leadership from our State Representatives to reduce unfunded state mandates that increase our local property taxes, like Binding Arbitration, Minimum Budget Requirements and Prevailing Wages.
7. Reform the Town Charter to require that any increase in taxes greater than the rate of inflation must be approved in a town-wide referendum.
