Submitted by Jim Finn, Cos Cob
My name is Jim Finn and I’m running for the Representative Town Meeting (RTM) from District 8.
As a current member of the RTM, I cannot wait to cast an historic vote in favor of fully funding Central Middle School (CMS) on Monday night, a school both of my sons attended. I predict the RTM will pass CMS funding by an overwhelming margin, voting for a school that will be with us for the next half century plus and will educate 40,000 students over several generations.
For those of you who have watched for more than a year the acrimonious debate surrounding CMS and Old Greenwich School (OGS), you might be wondering: What the heck happened last week? Well, here’s the facts…
Board of Estimate & Taxation (BET) Chairman, Dan Ozizmir, called a special meeting last Tuesday after CMS received approval from Planning & Zoning (P&Z) for Municipal Improvement (MI) status. When the BET voted to consider an interim appropriation of $42 million (which would actually fully fund the school, as opposed to the $67.5 million Republicans appropriated earlier this year), outgoing Republicans Dan and Bill Drake courageously joined six Democrats on the panel to move the project forward.
The Town of Greenwich owes a debt of gratitude to Dan Ozizmir and Bill Drake for providing the leadership needed to break the logjam and prioritize public education in our great town. Yes, Greenwich, we can have nice schools and keep taxes low, too.
Now back to November 7…
I am running for a full term in the RTM because the job of fixing our schools is not done after years of neglect that resulted in a condemned school – CMS – and sewage flowing through one of our elementary schools – OGS.
As the League of Women Voters detailed in their widely-read report on Greenwich’s public infrastructure, we have over $1.5 billion in backlogged projects that the leadership of this town has slow-walked for more than two decades.
OGS, having received MI status before CMS, will be seeking from the BET more than $40 million in funding for the renovation of the school in December. We need to keep these projects moving forward so our state representatives can get us on the states’ priority funding requests for reimbursement by mid-2024.
That’s why this year’s municipal elections are so important.
Not one Republican BET member running for re-election voted for CMS. And in December, if the voter’s leave the BET in the hands of Republicans, you can guarantee that not one of them will vote for OGS. Or for Riverside, which was just approved in the Board of Education’s capital budget.
That would indeed be a “Faustian bargain” for Greenwich Public Schools.
But the threat to having nice schools doesn’t stop there…
The Greenwich Republican Town Committee (RTC) submitted 100 new candidates for the RTM, which means that there will be an unprecedented 330 candidates seeking 230 seats across our 12 districts. Let’s set aside for a moment that the RTC Chair put out a letter in the Greenwich Free Press taking credit for funding CMS when NOT ONE REPUBLICAN VOTED FOR IT!
What you can expect if the extremist RTC gets its way and engineers a hostile takeover of the RTM is a vote against OGS and Riverside after that…and North Street and North Mianus after that.
Folks, this election really matters. Please do your home work and get to know the candidates for RTM as the ballot will not tell you who’s a Democrat or who’s a Republican. The new and bi-partisan group, The Voting Moms, has also endorsed pro-public school candidates.
If you want great public schools, low taxes and a town run using modern financial techniques and tools, vote for me and the Democrats on November 7.
The opinions expressed are my own.
NOTE: Letters to the editor about candidates in Greenwich’s Nov 7, 2023 municipal election is Oct 30, 2023 at 12:00 noon.