Submitted by Mark J. Lewis
At the recent municipal elections in November, the Chairmanship of the Town’s Board of Estimate & Taxation, or BET, passed to the Democratic Party for only the second time in the past one hundred years. The citizens of Greenwich were clearly done with the Republicans on the BET, who have spent much of the past two years forcing through wildly unpopular and unwanted actions on 7-6 party line votes while utterly failing to plan for the future.
Earlier this year one of those 7-6 votes by the BET completely ignored Greenwich Public Schools (GPS), the Board of Education (BOE), and the Representative Town Meeting (RTM), and ultimately the citizens of Greenwich, regarding the refurbishment of the Hamilton Avenue geothermal HVAC system.
In that 7-6 vote the Republican-controlled BET tried to force GPS to adopt a conventional natural gas fired HVAC system at Hamilton Avenue – at a higher cost to taxpayers while abandoning existing and perfectly functional infrastructure. This decision went against the advice of GPS’s engineering firm AECOM, and the clear desires of GPS, as well as the BOE and RTM. The BET’s attempt to force the higher-cost conventional system on Greenwich taxpayers was resoundingly rejected by the RTM, who voted to delete the undersized $4 million appropriation in the budget in a stunning bipartisan vote of 180-17.
In one of its final displays of utterly ignoring the will of the people, at the November 17th BET meeting GPS Chief Financial and Administrative Officer Ben Branyan presented the BET with a $5.3 million interim appropriation to fully fund the refurbishment of the Hamilton Avenue HVAC system. Despite broad bipartisan support for this plan, the BET vote was 5-0-6, with every Republican member of the BET abstaining from the vote. Abstaining on a vote to spend $5.3 million while continuing to throw away nearly $1,000/day on a temporary solution? Really?
If these Republican members really had the courage of their convictions about this decision should they not instead have voted against this interim appropriation? The answer is self-evident of course, but it is also indicative of the complete lack of leadership and foresight shown by this outgoing Republican BET membership and its Chairman, Harry Fisher. I for one am looking forward to the Democratic leadership of the BET. I look forward to real leadership from the incoming BET and to decisions that are made to better our town and to plan for and invest for the future. The citizens of Greenwich deserve thoughtful, fact-based, and forward-looking governance from the BET, rather than decisions made around the silly culture war topics that so captivated the outgoing BET majority and that do nothing but divide our community, cost us all money, and leave us unprepared for the future.
Mark J. Lewis
RTM Member – D11
Member – RTM Budget Overview Committee
RTM Liaison – Energy Management Advisory Committee