You need to come to understand that you have all the power. Not a little bit of power, ALL of it, like if you had all the infinity stones and could use them for good. Once you realize that, you will make great, sweeping changes to create the Fairfield you want to live in, and leave behind. Since the dawn of civilization, the public sector (your local, state and federal government) has operated with a brutish but highly effective 3-part formula: You won’t know what we’re doing; If you do know, you won’t care; and If you do know and care, What are you going to do about it? The thing is, times have changed, but they haven’t. It’s 2026 now, not 1976. We CAN know what they’re doing, we DO care; and THIS is what we’re going to do. Here’s your executive summary before you start doom scrolling: our solutions are remarkably simple. We only have to revise the Town Plan, rewrite the Charter and reform our legislative form of government. And we have to do the same thing at the same time to help Bridgeport, our mother.

Leading this neighborly revolution is the job of our 40-member RTM, but they have been eviscerated. You don’t even know who your reps are, you can’t reach them and they can’t reach you. Initiatives come to them already baked. They want to serve you but are denied. The root of this goes back to 2000, when for the first time an external vendor wrote Fairfield’s POCD. They dumped our historic neighborhoods like Tunxis and Black Rock specifically to create the artificial Commerce Drive (District 6), then proceeded in subsequent years with a numerical 1-10 redistricting to control our town.

This giant, 100-year old system all comes from Bridgeport and hinges on keeping it afloat to this day. The central Democratic party machine in upstate CT is not only aware of the malfeasance, they are behind it. They keep Bridgeport alive because it delivers CT’s largest city 100% Democrat, so it preserves their 2-1 supermajority in Hartford. It’s also the source of the Nile for construction projects, primarily schools and infrastructure, for hundreds of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, the city is dead last for education in the state and doesn’t even have a PTA. They keep closing schools and building new ones, even though a new facility is far down the list on creating positive student outcomes. The most important thing is a strong triangle of invested students, teachers and parents. That mostly means more and better-paid teachers and paras. It has nothing to do with location – look at Patrick Henry elementary school in NYC – it’s in the middle of Harlem and it’s the #1 PS in the city.

Fairfield’s Dwight School expansion? That’s nothing — a bag of shells. The big money is in Bridgeport, and by extension Fairfield County. Last year, they closed six schools before inspecting them, awarded the lead new schools construction contract to a two-person startup, then expanded the scope to include ALL the schools and the POCD. They say by building new schools, they’re going to save over $700 million in maintenance costs, but that’s a bunch of hooey. They also closed Harding, Cesar Batalla and Bassick (all now vacant) without pushback, and built a new monstrosity in a flood zone. Other upcoming non-school examples include repairing the Stratford/Devon Bridge (for billions!?!) to the Stamford RR station to overpriced tiny bridge repairs in Fairfield (Commerce Drive, Riverside Drive, Pine Creek). They are vehicles for construction companies, none of which are based here.

TOWN PLAN (POCD): Detailed article here. Look at lengthy requirements from the state, then the POCD the vendor submitted (with my 236 comments). It doesn’t come close to meeting expectations. It’s not worthy of Fairfield, but the obscure SoS department called OPM doesn’t care because 8 of the 10 executive items are for construction. Input is dismissed by our TPZ department as “public comment” and not considered or read. I have written multiple articles and sent countless emails. I have dropped decks on TPZ’s chairs before meetings. I’ve drawn on the whiteboards so they have to stare at it during boring meetings. After a year of looking, I found the five Plans written by our village elders that they maliciously shelved because they stressed environmental conservation. I pointed out all the deficiencies, from incorrect maps to neglect of entire sections, like education or the environment. I made a detailed narrative outline that I posted at the-voice.com/Fairfield. I have been stonewalled by our TPZ department. I have tried to present the scope of the problem and to develop a plan fit for a leader -- us. I can’t spoon feed it to you anymore. You need to carry the ball.

CHARTER: What outside vested interests have done to our charter is hard to process and offensive to a lot of people, myself included. The charter is a sacred document. The Charter Oak is a true story – in the 1600’s, brave citizens in upstate CT hid it from the king’s men in the hollow of an oak tree. I was at NYC Mayor Mamdani’s inauguration, and I had chills up my spine (maybe it was frostbite) when he swore to defend the Constitutions of the US and state of NY, and the charter of NYC. But our charter has been blasphemed. The most glaring example of that is a charter revision commission meeting last summer, which is not even posted online (a favorite trick of our adversaries), where there was not a quorum among the Board of Selectmen and was NOT approved by Bill Gerber. Again, I have written multiple lengthy emails with input, and called out their inserting things at the last second, and the hidden manipulation of the postcard, to no avail.

Bill went on medical leave less than a month after the charter commission presentation, and vested interests have swooped in, passing the charter over his objections, as well as opening the door for HB 8002, the CMDA and other bad acronyms, firing and smearing David Becker unjustly, and more. In particular, Bill urged the Charter Revision Commission to form a new system of government away from the Board of Selectmen. He suggested Town Manager but only to explore it. The point is, his goal was to make Fairfield a model of governance, but that runs counter to the current structure now in place.

COMMERCE DRIVE: Two RTM reps from District 6 (Commerce Drive) now have high-level jobs as the governor’s Director of Communications and Deputy Secretary of State. Do you think there was an open & fair hiring process for those jobs, or perhaps other motivations ruled the day. And who are they serving, the governor or Fairfield? The REAL 2nd Town Center is Tunxis, but it and Black Rock Harbor have been eliminated from existence on the maps. And Commerce Drive keeps expanding, and with it more high-density housing. We need to return to the neighborhoods of Fairfield, and with it the power of our local, elected reps.

Have you ever been in a relationship that suddenly ended, whether you were the dumper or the dumpee? That’s what it is like for the public sector. It’s over but they are in denial. They maintain their position through heft and inertia. The Voice only uses public sector documents and eye-witness accounts. No interviews, press releases or supplied material. As a journalist, I have access to Pinpoint, which is a deep-dive tool from Google that provides visibility into records, OCR of pdfs, transcripts of videos, emails, etc. – everything. I am merely the messenger – a dot connector – but on my own, The Voice has written one groundbreaking story after another. I can’t even keep up with the volume. Last year, The Voice was accepted into a master class by the Google News Initiative. I was alone with six other major American newspapers. It was validation from Google – them saying we know you are one guy, but your premise is correct. It was a Rudy moment for The Voice and we bonded with our cohorts. Google has changed the world, in terms of access to public sector documents. And unless our adversaries un-invent Google, there’s no going back.

But while there’s now transparency and access, we’ve also seen the rise of misinformation. The media landscape has changed, and what you absorb is through somebody else’s filter. Tik-Tok was just acquired by an American conglomerate last week, and it’s already censoring data. CBS, ABC, FOX and the legacy media in CT are owned. That’s one reason Substack is emerging - it’s honest writing from real reporters. When you read something from The Voice, you know without blinking that it’s 100% true, because it’s just the facts. I am your ally -- and an insanely strong one.

If we redo our Plan, Charter and system of governance, and help Bridgeport do the exact same thing, we’ll be golden. We need to escape the tyranny and control of upstate CT. The real victims here are thousands of children in Bridgeport. They have nothing and we have plenty. We have it in our power to pull them up.

Matthew Hallock

Fairfield, CT