By Thane Grauel

WESTPORT — After a nearly four-hour session Monday, the Representative Town Meeting approved $84.1 million for the town side of the 2022-23 budget.

That includes town operations — $77.7 million — and the budgets for the Railroad Parking Authority, town sewers and Wakeman Town Farm. 

Spending for that portion of the budget is up 0.8 percent for next fiscal year, which starts July 1.

Tuesday, the RTM, the town’s ultimate funding body, will take up the education spending plan, which accounts for just under two-thirds of the town’s overall $222 million proposed budget.

Debate focuses on restoring transit funding

On Monday, the RTM spent an outsized amount of time, about an hour, discussing restoration of a relatively small amount — $133,000 — for the Westport Transit District, representing half of the funding allotted for the district’s on-demand commuter service, Wheels2U Westport.

That money was slashed last month by the Board of Finance.

Board of Finance Chairwoman Sheri Gordon gave a presentation on her board’s proposed budget.

“The Westport Transit District did ask for a similar budget,” Gordon said. “The Board of Finance decided, given the fact that … it’s not that the Board of Finance doesn’t believe in transit, to the contrary, the Board of Finance believes that Westport is in some ways a transit desert.

“We’re trying to create an environment … that is receptive and open to people of all income levels,” she said. 

“When we have a transit system that is really only focused on people who are going to work in Manhattan, that is not servicing all of the levels of people in Westport,” Gordon added. “And, in fact, the people who need transit the most are those people who are riding the Route 1 buses, and walking to their jobs because they have no way to get transit …”

“This is what the Board of Finance is saying,” she said.

When the finance board cut the Wheels2U budget, members said the panel would consider restoring half the funding for the coming fiscal year if a plan to solve the town’s transit needs works out.

Town faces big financial challenges

Gordon also noted that people should be aware of the likely financial impact of the town’s planned capital improvement projects in the coming years, including a school and firehouse replacement.

“Our taxes are probably going to go up as much as 10 or 15 percent,” she said.

Seth Braunstein, District 6, RTM Finance Committee chairman, said his committee had discussed and recommended unanimously that the full RTM restore the $133,000.

Nancy Kail, District 9, spoke in favor of full transit funding.

“It would be very imprudent to hobble the Wheels2U service by halving its budget for the coming fiscal year,” she said. 

Peter Gold, District 5, who also is the transit district’s director, spoke to the legislative body from that perspective.

“It’s going to be hard to solve it in the amount of time that’s available,” he said of the finance board’s deadline. “Doesn’t mean we’re not trying to work on it, but it’s not going to happen. 

“If we don’t get this funding the Wheels2U is going to end on Dec. 31,” he said. 

First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker told the RTM that the town is in the middle of a series of nine meetings, for each RTM district to find solutions for traffic and safety problems.

“As I look to the future to think about solutions to some of those problems, I think it is important to make sure that our transit district is a potential solution,” she said. “I agree with Peter, that to talk about public transportation in a silo at this time of year is not the way to move this conversation forward.”

“I have committed that we will gather the right stakeholders around the table over the next year to have the proper discussion as to whether or not public transportation as currently defined in Westport will be part of the solution going forward, or if it needs to look different,” Tooker said.

Jimmy Izzo, District 3, said he’d vote to restore, but with reservations.

“We have to get a concrete plan, and this has to get done right,” he said.

Louis Mall, District 2, spoke against.

“Here’s what my problem is,” he said. As the RTM, “we appoint the director, and what we ended up doing last month was appointed one of our own members of the RTM as director of transit.” 

So, he said, “we own transit.”

“I don’t think it’s our job, and our responsibility, to be running transit,” Mall said. “What I would really like to see is the Westport Transit integrated into the Norwalk Transit District and we get out of the transit business.”

Mall was the sole vote against the vote to restore the funding. Gold recused himself.

Other business

The RTM plowed through 10 agenda items in its nearly four-hour session. Among the items approved in addition the town-side budgets:

• An appropriation of $400,000 from federal American Rescue Plan Act funds for the planning, design and permitting to redevelop Parker Harding Plaza, Jesup Green and the Imperial Avenue parking lots.

• An appropriation of $232,000 for the design and permits for a replacement bridge carrying Hillandale Road over Muddy Brook. The bridge, about a century old, was badly damaged by floodwaters in 2018.

• An appropriation of $852,000 for repaving at Bedford Middle School and Staples High School.An appropriation of $30,000 to the Historic District Commission, after receiving that amount from the state Office of Historic Preservation, to be used to hire an architectural historian to update historic inventory forms.

• An appropriation of $30,000 to the Historic District Commission, after receiving that amount from the state Office of Historic Preservation, to be used to hire an architectural historian to update historic inventory forms.

Thane Grauel is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to Westport Journal. Learn more about us here.