UPDATE: On Friday morning, on his Ask the First Selectman radio show on WGCH 1490, Fred Camillo said he planned to speak at the RTM against the idea of moving 50% of the proposed Fire Dept review fees to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
“They’re looking into whether that’s even in legal order,” Camillo said. “I will be speaking against taking those fees and putting them toward the Housing Trust. That’s not what it was meant for. The money was to go into the General Fund.”
Original Story, April 13: The Greenwich Affordable Housing Trust Fund was created in November of 2021 to foster the creation of new units of affordable housing.
In CT, towns are required to provide 10% affordable housing “affordable” as defined under Title 8, Chapter 126a, Section 8-30g of the General Statutes of Connecticut (Section 8-30g).
The idea was to help the Town manage and influence the development of these units and not overburden local infrastructure. According to the town website, the Trust has received initial funding from the Town of $650,000, with another $450,000 available to match donations.
The Trust Fund has an 11 member board, chaired by Bob Barolak, who is also a member of the Planning & Zoning Commission. Vice Chair is Bill Finger and Secretary is Sally Bednar.
Monday’s upcoming RTM meeting includes a Fire Dept request to establish a fee of $5 per $1,000 for the Fire Dept reviews of building permit applications. Neighboring towns charge similar fees. All Greenwich municipal projects and projects of the Board of Education would be exempt.
Today Greenwich charges $15.26 per $1,000 of commercial construction and $13.26 per $1,000 of residential valuation of work. The $5.00 would be in addition to those fees.
There is an added twist.
Last week the RTM Town Services Committee, chaired by Richard Neuman, discussed a possible amendment that would require 50% of the Fire Dept fee be put toward the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The Amendment that was approved 9-2-0 (district 3 was absent).
Anticipating the possible, at Wednesday’s meeting of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, the chair Mr. Barolak said he anticipated being asked by the RTM moderator to opine.
He said his instinct was neither to support nor oppose the motion.
“I honestly think what has happened to this effort is that it has become a tussle over what is the appropriate way for the Town government’s process to deal with questions like this,” he said. “I understand there are members of the BET who are quite upset that the RTM is trying to intercede at this juncture and redirect funds that in the BET’s process were going into the general fund. I totally get that. Absolutely not something the Trust has any position on one way or another.”
Ellen Brennan-Galvin said her impression was that most RTM members were unaware of the possible motion.
“Everything in the RTM takes time,” Brennan-Galvin said. “We know the people out there who oppose this, but there might be people who might support this but don’t know anything about it.”
And she noted that while the Fire Dept proposed fee to review building permit applications was a second read, the anticipated motion to amend and move 50% of the fees into the Trust Fund was “coming out of left field.”
Trust Board Secretary Sally Bednar said the idea was generally supported during a discussion in her District 6 meeting in Old Greenwich, but people wondered how much money was involved.
Selectwoman Lauren Rabin, an advisory member of the board, said her understanding was that $500,000 was being budgeted for the fees, and therefore 50% would be $250,000.
She was concerned that there was misinformation in the community that the source of the fees would be 8-30g developers, which is not the case. The fees come from all applications, except municipal ones.
Bill Finger said he viewed Mr. Barolak’s potential opportunity to speak as a chance to share a summary of the Trust’s work, including the number of projects to date.
“What I propose to say is that while the trust board is grateful for any financial support from the town or anywhere else we neither support nor oppose the motion,” Barolak said. “At this moment we are still moving forward with our plan to see how much money we can raise by donations and to put that money together with the ARPA money allocated to us to work demonstrating the purposes for which we asked the RTM to approve the trust a year ago.”
Barolak said offered to describe to the RTM briefly what he thought the trust had accomplished so far.
“We’ve seen about a dozen applications – I should probably just call them overtures – two of them have ripened into full applications that have been through our process and voted to be approved for funding.”
The applications still need approval of the town’s Planning & Zoning Commission to move forward.
“We have others that I’m confident will be funded as well. Most of the applications have had developers build materially smaller than the 8-30g set-asides they have proposed. Others have proposed and are moving through our process with a suggestion that we will get more affordable units. My guess is we’re going to be getting anywhere from 40-50% more affordable units for those proposals.”
Board member Romulo Samaniego suggested the board be “accepting of the proposal regardless of the feelings of the BET leadership.”
“I really feel they have been somewhat obstructionist along the way,” Samaniego said.
Barolak disagreed. “The worst thing we can do is pick a fight with the BET or the RTM on anything.”
“Until we have finished our effort to try to raise donations, and have had more experience and concrete deals approved, I think it’s suicide for us to pick a fight with either the BET or the RTM,” Barolak added.
Brooks Harris balked at the suggestion the BET was obstructionist.
He said the very existence of the “broad coalition” that makes up the Affordable Housing Trust Fund board was evidence to the contrary.
He said the town might otherwise have used the $400,000 in ARPA money they used to fund the Trust for something else for the town.
“We’re going to need a lot of money, not just a couple hundred thousand here and there. I think the long game is not taking every nickle that crosses our path,” he said. “Perhaps we’ll want the town to put its credit behind the debt we want to use to fund these projects, or maybe we’ll need more money – whatever it is, we’ll be well served to hold this coalition together.”
“We should determine our own destiny,” he added. “I personally think this is a fraught discussion and we should be careful about getting caught up in this.”
He offered to speak at Monday’s RTM meeting as an individual opposed to the motion.
Bill Finger urged Mr. Harris not to speak in opposition, even as an individual, because the RTM might conflate his views with those of the entire trust.
Sam Romeo urged the board to “stay out of it and let the process work.”
“We don’t have a pony in this race. We didn’t ask for the money. It came from an outside group who thought they were helping us.”
Sec. 2-132-a. 50% of the Fee to be paid into the Town of Greenwich Affordable Housing Trust
Upon collection of the Plan Review Fee, 50% of said Fee shall be paid into the Town of Greenwich Affordable Housing Trust until such time as either the Town reaches its goal of ten percent (10%) Affordable Housing, or 5 years from the effective date of the Fee (July 1, 2023).
The deadline to sign up to speak at the Monday, April 18 RTM Meeting is Sunday, April 17 at noon.
https://www.greenwichct.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=1886