FARMINGTON — When Farmington's town survey goes out, on October 9 if the schedule holds, it will ask residents how high a priority it should be to raise tax dollars for a new elementary school building. It will ask the same about expanding preschool, about public safety services and about public safety buildings. None of those lines was in the draft the town posted last week. The committee writing the survey added all of them on Wednesday, September 30; the final wording is still being set.
As drafted and discussed Wednesday, the question puts no price on any line. Residents will be asked to rate a new school, more preschool and public safety buildings as a very high, neutral or not very high priority for more tax money without a cost beside any of them. A survey answer is not a vote, and nothing on the list commits Farmington to building anything. But Town Planner Shannon Rutherford described this tax question, and the priorities question before it, as "the two that we most want answered," and on Wednesday the committee moved both toward the front of the survey.
What the question asks
The survey will guide two long-range plans: the Town Council's strategic plan and the zoning commission's next ten-year Plan of Conservation and Development. Its Survey Oversight Committee has five voting members, two each from the council and the Town Plan and Zoning Commission and one from the Board of Education.
The tax question lists areas of town spending and asks residents to rate each one "to increase tax dollars." The draft the Mercury described last week had 19 of them, from roads and schools to senior services and historic buildings, plus a line reading "Maintain low taxes and not expand service levels." Town Manager Kathleen Blonski told members the question is built so that a resident who wants lower taxes can mark "not very high" down the whole list. "If you really don't want higher taxes and don't want this, you're putting in no on every single one of these," she said.
The committee added these, in its working wording:
- support construction of a new elementary school building
- expand preschool services
- expand educational services and opportunities for Farmington Public Schools students
- expand public safety services
- public safety facilities
It also split one existing line, upkeep of town-owned buildings "including schools," into separate lines for town buildings and school buildings.
Schools: preschool, a new building and per-pupil spending
The preschool line came from Erika Nowakowski, the committee's Board of Education member. She said she wanted the survey "to see what the appetite truly is about preschools, because we continue to hear about this waitlist." She did not say which program's waitlist or how long it is.
Town Council member Keith Vibert said he was comfortable adding both preschool and a new school building, and that a clear answer either way, on renovating or on building new, would be useful. "You could get 80% of the people that want rehab, and then you could see 80% of people don't want a new building, and then maybe people don't want preschool," he said. "Then you kind of really have a path forward."
Blonski said the schools superintendent had brought up a new school with staff as well, and that when some of the schools need renovation, "it would be cheaper to build a new one." She did not name a school or give a figure.
The line on educational services began as something else. At the committee's September 21 meeting, resident Tim Kelly asked it to add a question on how much Farmington should spend per pupil, with choices from $15,000 to $30,000 a year. On Wednesday Vibert raised the idea again, citing Kelly, as a line on increasing per-pupil spending. Members worried that respondents would not know what the term meant or what the money would buy, and the services line went in instead. Committee chair Patti Boye-Williams, a Town Council member, asked for "opportunities" alongside "services," because some readers might take "services" to mean special education only. Kelly's question on how much debt the town should carry did not come up.
Public safety
A member pointed out that the list had nothing on public safety, and the committee added a line on expanding public safety services. Assistant Town Manager Kat Krajewski then raised a separate line for public safety buildings, citing the fire station project.
That project is the plan the Mercury covered in July: two new fire stations and a major renovation of a third, budgeted at $30 million to $35 million and now with the Fire Station Building Committee. It would be paid for by borrowing, which Farmington voters must approve at a referendum, and the committee has been aiming for a 2027 vote.
Moved up, and a longer survey
Until Wednesday, the tax question was the last question before the "about you" section. Vibert said he worried respondents would give up before reaching it. The committee voted to move the strategic-plan half of the survey, tax question included, ahead of the land-use half. The "about you" questions stay at the end.
The survey now has 29 questions plus 12 about the respondent. A representative of Weston & Sampson, the consulting firm the town hired to run the survey, told the committee the firm usually recommends no more than 25 to 28. Members kept all of them, and staff said they would raise the time estimate, which had read 15 to 20 minutes.
The committee gave final approval to the land-use questions and tentative approval to the rest, meaning those questions stand unless a member flags a problem. It does not plan to meet again unless problems come back: each member will review the finished online version and send comments to staff. 🏛️
This coverage is supported by Farmington Storage, 155 Scott Swamp Road, the only storage facility in Connecticut with Museum air. Farmington is about to ask which of its buildings deserve more money. Farmington Storage has already settled that question for the things you keep there: all of them, at institutional grade. 860.777.4001 📦
Jack Beckett has covered Farmington's survey committee from its first draft to its last scheduled meeting, and would like it noted that the tax question is no longer the last thing anyone reads. Second coffee. ☕
The Farmington Mercury covers the town nobody else is covering: the committee that decides which questions get asked, the lines it adds on a Wednesday, and the order it puts them in. We publish slowly and without apology. Always last to breaking news, thorough about everything else. Find us at farmingtonmercury.com and tell your neighbors. #WeAreFarmington 📰