An Open Letter to the Leaders and Residents of Fairfield

A Mandate to Fulfill Bill Gerber’s Vision

Tonight, the Charter Revision Commission (CRC) will hold a “special meeting.” A look at their agenda reveals that they seek Board of Selectpeople approval of their “final” charter revision before hearing public comment. This comes on the heels of them already filing their report with the Town Clerk. This is all to fulfill a requirement sold as progressive public service.

These are not procedural errors; they are deliberate acts of a system designed to silence you. It is an insult to our democracy and a betrayal of the late First Selectman Bill Gerber’s final vision. It is the culmination of a 50-year process, driven by the state and its pro-developer allies, to dismantle local control in our town. This document is our response. It is our audit, our indictment, and our insistence that we, the people, re-commission a new Charter Revision Commission to do the job right.

This charter is the result of a deliberate, state-led strategy to impose a developer-first agenda on our town, funneled through the Hartford-centric construction industry.

  • They Buried Our History: The citizen-led town plans of the 1970s, which championed environmental protection, were deliberately buried. In their place, we got a 2000 POCD written by the Bridgeport Regional Business Council—a plan that a town official admitted at the time was “not very good.”

  • They Falsified Our Reality: They eliminated the historic neighborhood of Black Rock to create a fake “Commerce Drive” district to justify the new train station—the mustard seed of our overdevelopment problems.

  • They Ignored Our Voices: They took page after page of detailed input from the public, from town department heads, from Board of Education leaders and most importantly, from Bill Gerber himself. They ignored all of it and produced a cryptic two-page summary that addresses nothing of substance. Putting public input after the reports have been filed is a clear misinterpretation of the law and a profound disrespect for the town’s constituency.

  • They Ignored our Leader’s Charge: In his final weeks, Bill Gerber made his powerful case for a new Town Manager system with Town Services supplied by empowering Fairfield’s 24+ neighborhoods. They hoped you would never see his final instructions for how to fix our town.

A Charter Written for Insiders, Not Residents

This failed process has produced a flawed document. JUST FOR INSTANCE:

It removes the residency requirement for the Town Attorney, a change that directly benefits the out-of-town lawyers who advised the commission. Yet the charter retains the requirement to have a town attorney and assistant attorney on staff. So we ignore our own rule to hire a who-knows-where vendor, who then eliminates the residency requirement. How does that benefit the town?

It extends the residency requirement for Police and Fire Chiefs to 35 miles, a specific change made with no public justification. Who told the CRC to do that?

The Mandate: We Must Fulfill Bill Gerber’s Vision

Bill Gerber was elected by the people. We are now duty-bound to fulfill the vision he laid out. He saw the system was broken and had the courage to say so. He called for a new Town Manager system. He championed affordable homes, not just rental “housing.” He knew we needed to empower our neighborhoods with real authority.

We cannot allow his vision to be buried along with the tape of his testimony.

We, the people, insist that the Board of Selectpersons Re-commission the Charter Revision Commission. We demand a new, transparent, citizen-led process that will build a charter for Fairfield’s future, not one that protects the failures of the past. A charter that is written by us.