FINN: Camillo’s Too Little, Too Late Admission

Jun 19, 2023

Submitted by Jim Finn, Cos Cob, Former Democratic candidate for Greenwich First Selectman

Hey, anybody see the new CT Examiner story on the Greenwich First Selectman race?

The buried lede occurs half way through the article when First Selectman Fred Camillo made news:

“Asked for his stance on the June vote (when Republicans voted on a party line vote to withhold full funding of Greenwich’s public schools), Camillo said he disagreed with the Republican Board of Estimate and Taxation members’ decision. He added that he will continue to advocate for the renovation of the Old Greenwich School.”

That’s certainly news to the parents of Greenwich public school children – and particularly those at Old Greenwich School.

The timing of his comments about being “disappointed” are suspect…why on August 2 did the incumbent finally say this?

Wouldn’t it have been timely for the First Selectman to make his position known in the March public hearing when he brought forward an OGS student complaining about the issues Democrats were trying to fix like sewage and other minor issues like ADA in the classroom?

Of course it would have been the right decision. Instead, he made a “years late and tens of millions of dollars” short gesture and recommended $1.5 million to continue studying a problem that’s been studied to death.

Simply put, the First Selectman could have backed the Board of Education’s bipartisan proposal in March and in June.

But he didn’t.

Why? I suspect that with a party nomination in late July when there were rampant rumors that the incumbent would be primaried, he found August vacation month a much better time to criticize his party than March or June.

And don’t even get me started on the recent front page Greenwich Sentinel op-ed from Fred where he took a victory lap and boasted about Republican’s commitment to education. You might have thought from reading this – incorrectly – that his party fully funded the public schools. Spoiler alerted: They didn’t – by a lot.

A little background in case you haven’t been following along…

Greenwich Public Schools are in miserable physical shape because of decades of cost-cutting by the controlling Republican finance board and board of selectmen, the latter of which Camillo has headed for the past four years.

Even worse, the Greenwich League of Women Voters recently issued a report on capital expenditures in Greenwich and concluded that, not only have we underfunded public school infrastructure, we’ve been underfunding public infrastructure across town for decades with a misguided pay-as-you-go approach that defies modern day economic governance.

People I know outside of Greenwich cannot believe it when I tell them our Central Middle School, one of the town’s three middle schools, was allowed to deteriorate to such an extent that inspectors a year ago condemned the building and immediately evacuated everyone from the structure. Only after constructing significant steel supports to keep the building from literally collapsing were students and teachers allowed back in temporarily.

But there’s more. Instead of fully funding a new building that would meet the needs of town children and families for decades to come, Fred Camillo led the effort to dramatically cut the new school’s construction budget that had been agreed to by the bipartisan board of education.

Further, Old Greenwich School, a century-old elementary school, is in miserable shape, again due to decades of neglect by the controlling Republicans on the finance board and board of selectmen. That school is operating under a consent decree with the federal government, requiring the town to make major repairs, including making the school ADA-compliant. Indeed, 80 percent of Greenwich schools are still not compliant with federal ADA requirements – in the town of George H.W. Bush who passed this landmark civil rights law.

But there, too, Camillo refused to authorize proper funding to make the repairs and upgades required by the consent decree. Instead, he and his fellow Republicans on the finance board offered excuse after excuse to delay a decision until the deadline for funding had passed. So once again, children in one of the wealthiest towns in Connecticut will have to go through at least another year in a school with flooding and pollution problems and a lack of compliance with ADA requirements. And that failure lies entirely with the First Selectman and his radical RTC.

For all our neighbors who volunteer their time and talents, I understand how frustrated you all must be when we started with a good, bipartisan BOE plan last fall and people played games only to arrive one year later at the same place – decades late and millions of dollars short.

Greenwich is an iconic American town. We can – and will – do better than this…time for accountability in support of our public schools.

Jim Finn

Former Democratic candidate for First Selectman

"Joe Kelly rings a bell for many people in town. His name comes with many different hats: Chairman of the Greenwich Board of Education, President of Connecticut Rugby, CEO of Forestland Development, CEO of Uranium Markets LLC. Each hat comes with its own colour, its own responsibilities." - James Chang

View all Letter to the Editor Posts →