About the GDTC

The Greenwich Democratic Town Committee (GDTC) is the official organization in the Town of Greenwich, CT representing the Democratic Party…

GREENWICH DEMOCRATS 2023 PLATFORM/ISSUES

Invest in our Schools

Public education is the foundation of our town and our country. Maintaining the quality of our schools is intrinsic to maintaining the quality of life in our town and for bolstering our property values. While the education our students receive is excellent, the condition of the buildings in which they learn is not. Our schools’ physical plants are in crisis; that should be our focus. Becoming embroiled in national culture wars is a distraction we cannot afford when our children’s physical safety and education is at stake. Our students, their families, teachers and administrators need advocates who prioritize intentional investment in our school infrastructure that will make them safe and enriching environments. 

We support and will continue to advocate for:

• ADA compliance in all of our schools
• Building the new Central Middle School without delay
• Renovating Old Greenwich School without delay
• Western Middle School fields remediation

Improve Public Safety

Public safety is a priority and not a place to cut corners. Republican leaders have been deferring too many items requested by our police and fire chiefs. This ‘kick the can’ budgeting left our fire department without any operable ladder trucks for a period of time in September. That is unacceptable and completely avoidable. Fire coverage NW Greenwich.

The current First Selectman pulled police from traffic duty on Greenwich Avenue without a plan in place to ensure pedestrian safety. 

Links to editorials (Weisbrod), videos

Keep our taxes low and improve fiscal responsibility

Short sighted fiscal management has deprived our residents of town services that they expect–like schools and streets that are ADA-compliant and structurally sound, athletic fields that are not contaminated, and first responders with the equipment they need to keep us safe– while wasting millions of dollars needlessly. 

Delaying projects year after year that you know are unavoidable just ends up costing more, as costs of labor and material increase annually. Refusing to fund maintenance means that residents end up paying more when buildings, elevators, ferries or fire trucks inevitably need to be replaced sooner. 

At the same time, our First Selectman has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on legal fees in pursuit of partisan lawsuits and investigations that do nothing to improve life for Greenwich residents. 

We don’t need to raise taxes to correct these problems. We need smarter fiscal planning. We need experienced investment professionals who know how to strategically plan with a 5-year, 10-year or 20 year horizon, and not just focusing on how to fix the latest ceiling collapse.

Creating Affordable Housing while preserving local control

Greenwich needs more housing for our seniors, our graduates, and our working men and women, like our teachers and first responders. Renting in Greenwich is so expensive because there are not enough homes to meet demand from middle-income earners or seniors on fixed income.

Further, until 10% of our total housing meets the definition of affordable, Greenwich will continue to be subject to a burdensome state law called 8-30g. This statute allows developers to bypass local zoning departments and build as large as they want, as long as 30% of the units are deemed affordable. Although this law was passed 34 years ago, Greenwich has made almost no progress in adding needed housing. In the last 21 years, Greenwich has only increased its affordable housing stock by 1.3%. At this rate, we will not meet the 10% threshold until the year 2093!

Our Democratic slate intends to work with local housing agencies to make sure that Greenwich is affordable to our workforce and our seniors, and that we do it on our own terms.

Climate Action and the threat to our neighborhoods

With 100-year floods occurring every 1-30 years now, Greenwich cannot ignore the threats posed to our neighborhoods by climate change. We are a coastal town, and it is not enough to tell residents to raise their homes. We need to adopt a climate action plan that incorporates conservation and resiliency into every aspect of local government. An abundance of infrastructure money is available at the state and federal level for municipalities to adopt climate mitigation and adaptation projects, but it takes leadership to take advantage of these opportunities.

Our Democratic slate has the vision and commitment to take advantage of the many available opportunities to keep our neighborhoods safe from flooding, while doing our part to address the climate crisis.

Improving our quality of life

Greenwich is a great place to live, with a beautiful shoreline and an abundance of parks and playgrounds. But years of myopic leadership are taking their toll as our quality of life erodes. Traffic calming measures have not kept pace with the surge of cars on our roads. Our residents have been asking for more sidewalks, bike paths, and safe crossings for years and in some cases, decades. Many of our athletic fields are in poor shape. Our woods are falling prey to development in the absence of an open space plan. Magical thinking will not make these problems go away. Our Democratic slate brings a vision of how we want our town to look twenty years from now, and a multi-year financial plan to get us there.