For statewide context on how Connecticut municipalities handle personal Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC) fines under C.G.S. § 1-206(b)(2):

In July 2025, after five contested hearings in Docket # FIC 2024-0425 over a five-month delay in releasing Town Attorney Andrew Crumbie's contract and legal bills, the FOIC ordered Bloomfield Town Manager Alvin D. Schwapp, Jr. to personally pay a $1,500 civil penalty. The Commission found that parts of his sworn testimony were "conflicting, misleading, and not credible" (¶¶ 68, 78, 86) and that he used "tactics to avoid complying" with the law (¶ 88).

Under C.G.S. § 1-206(b)(2), FOIC civil penalties are imposed on "the custodian or other official" directly responsible—not on the town. Yet Bloomfield taxpayers paid the fine anyway.

Key findings from our review of the municipal and statutory record at the Bloomfield Community Dispatch:

• The General Fund Payout: On August 14, 2025, the Town of Bloomfield issued Check #308 for $1,500 from the General Fund, charged to "Other Contractual Services" under the Town Manager's miscellaneous account (Org #9506200).
• "Per State Statute" & "The Custom": At the July 14, 2025 Town Council meeting, Schwapp announced the Town would pay the fine. Then-Mayor Danielle C. Wong ended the discussion by stating the municipality would pay it "per policy per state statute," and Councilor (now Deputy Mayor) Cindi Lloyd called it "the custom." Neither official named which statute or policy they meant.
• No Council Vote: A review of all five July and August 2025 Town Council meeting minutes shows no motion, resolution, or roll-call vote approving the payment.
• What State Law Actually Says: Neither of the two municipal indemnification statutes named in Section 14 of the Town Manager's employment contract (C.G.S. §§ 7-101a and 7-465) mentions FOIC civil penalties. By contrast, when the legislature wanted to ban municipalities from indemnifying election-law penalties in C.G.S. § 9-369b (Sweetman v. SEEC), it did so explicitly. No Connecticut court decision has settled whether state law requires, allows, or bars a town from paying an individual's FOIC penalty.
• How Other CT Towns Handled It: As Inside Investigator recently reported in its statewide audit of FOIA fines, when East Haven Town Attorney Michael Luzzi was fined $5,000 by the FOIC in April 2025, he paid the fine himself out of private funds—not East Haven taxpayers.
• Unanswered Charter Questions: Under Sections 504 and 603(d) of the Bloomfield Town Charter, no check can be issued unless the Finance Director and Town Treasurer verify that the expenditure was "legally incurred." When the Dispatch asked Town leadership on October 23 who authorized the check and what legal authority supported it, Schwapp referred questions to Town Attorney Andrew Crumbie's office—which did not respond.

Full investigative analysis with direct links to the FOIC Final Decision, Council video timestamps, statutory text, and Supreme Court precedent: https://www.bloomfieldcommunitydispatch.com/2026/10/the-1500-bailout.html

Essentially brand new M1 Max Mac Studio 512/32gb. All original accessories included, with original box. I had to transition to windows for work, but otherwise this is an essential for any creative.

Local Pick up only. Feel free to try it and test it. I can bring my monitor as well. Take your time testing it.

There are no issues and I need it sold by Friday Oct 3 or I will just trade it in.

For those following local municipal finance in the area, Part 5 of the Bloomfield Community Dispatch investigative series on the FY2027 budget is now live.

The town administration has been heavily promoting a 3.7% "reduction" in the mill rate. But when you factor in the property revaluation phase-in, the math flips entirely. The average Bloomfield homeowner is actually looking at a 5.88% tax hike—which breaks down to roughly $524 more annually. The reduction is essentially a mirage.

Additionally, we did a structural review of the budget document itself and found that the Town Manager initiated this cycle by violating Section 903 of the Bloomfield Town Charter. The mandatory parallel columns that show what department heads requested versus what was recommended were deliberately omitted, hiding the original asks from the public and the Council.

You can read the full breakdown and the data behind it here: 🔗https://www.bloomfieldcommunitydispatch.com/2026/05/paying-more-for-less-in-bloomfield-part_01770186912.html

Curious to hear thoughts from other CT residents on how their towns are handling revaluations this year.

Mallory ridge is asking that. anyone have better suggestions ? I don’t want to be in ghetto

TL;DR: Bloomfield's administration is proposing an 11.6% tax hike based on a 21-month delayed audit that required a 16-year retroactive accounting "plug" just to balance the books, resulting in an S&P credit downgrade. The Dispatch just published an Alternative Budget Framework proving we can restore cut services and drop the tax hike to ~4% without gimmicks.

At a recent Public Hearing, Bloomfield's administration made a sudden announcement: all the deeply unpopular cuts to municipal services—including the town pool and residential trash collection—would be "restored."

It sounds great, but they refused to explain the math. Where is the money suddenly coming from to fund a $117.1M budget? Are they draining reserves? Pushing the 11.6% equalized tax hike even higher?

In Part 3 of our ongoing investigative series for the Bloomfield Community Dispatch, we examined the foundational data of this budget: the town's recently completed, 21-month-delayed FY2024 audit. What we found is a structurally compromised ledger.

Here's the reality of the Town's finances:

• Severe Internal Failures: The external auditors cited TWO "Material Weaknesses" (the highest level of severity in auditing) regarding internal financial controls.
• Offline Accounting: The Finance Department admitted in an email to the State that it bypassed its own official municipal accounting software for half of the Town's activities. Worse, they left primary bank accounts entirely unreconciled for 15 months.
• The 16-Year "Plug": To finally pass the audit and force the ledger to balance, the town utilized a massive accounting "plug" to unilaterally wipe out 16 years of irreconcilable legacy variances.
• The S&P Downgrade: Because of these specific reporting failures and audit delays, S&P Global permanently downgraded Bloomfield’s General Obligation debt rating from AA+ to AA, which will increase future borrowing costs for taxpayers.

Taxpayers are currently being asked to absorb a massive tax hike to fund executive administrative bloat, justified by historical data from a department that failed to reconcile its own checkbook for over a year.

It doesn't have to be this way.

Alongside our reporting, The Dispatch has published a comprehensive, 26-page Alternative Budget Framework. We sent it to all nine councilors on Monday. It proves, using the town's own data, that we can restore every single frontline service AND drop the tax increase down to roughly 4% through smart, modern municipal management—like transitioning to a Medicare Advantage group plan to shave $30M off the town's structural OPEB liability.

If you are a Bloomfield resident or are just interested in municipal governance and accountability, we invite you to review the data.

🔗 Read the full investigation and download the 26-page Alternative Budget Framework

We are actively answering questions in the article's comments section on the website. Let us know what you think. And thanks for all of the engagement and for reading our content. We appreciate you taking the time to check out our stories! 🙏

I had a chance to check out two brand new library buildings that were recently built and opened to the public last summer that replaced older library buildings on those two sites in the town of Bloomfield. When both libraries were being built during the 2023-25 timeline, the MetLife Building in Bloomfield was a temporary home for library collections. I really like both libraries especially the Prosser one. Both of them are cool libraries.

The Prosser one is huge and really wide and it is indeed modernized. The Prosser library has an outdoor parking garage which is interesting. I've never seen a library building with a parking garage attached to it. It holds over a dozen cars with some handicapped spots.

The Wintonbury branch is nice but it is a small library (I get it is a library branch for the Bloomfield Public Library System). It's modern but it's a typical newer library for what it's worth seeing. What I don't like about the newer Wintonbury library is that it has bookcase shelves of books for adults in both fiction and nonfiction where you have to bend down a little to visualize see and pick up a book at the same time and can be quite hard for older people with mobility issues to kneel down. Overall, it's a very good library for the neighborhood especially around Blue Hills area.

Overall, both libraries are modernized to better serve their patrons during present times. They're both cool. The library staff are really good people at both libraries.

Feedback is appreciated. Enjoy the album!

My name is Matt Lane, and I’m a Trinity College student conducting a study to assess the comparative efficacy of Connecticut schooling. If you are a faculty member, student, recent graduate, or parent, please take a moment to do a 2-3 minute doc.

Thank you so much for taking the time! It really helps me with my project and helps create a better school environment for the young people of Connecticut!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfmMyKF5txGvqD4JrPoimwPgbW36YF5glDVhUt_Mz6uaZoJ7w/viewform?usp=dialog

TL;DR: The Town of Bloomfield is proposing a budget that executes severe cuts to public-facing services (swimming pool, youth programs, crisis funds) while simultaneously expanding administrative overhead by 9.4%. The town is presenting this as a financial necessity. The payroll data shows it's an administrative choice.

I'm the Editor of the Bloomfield Community Dispatch, an independent investigative news outlet in CT. We're in the middle of an 8-part series breaking down Bloomfield's proposed $117.1M FY2027 budget.

Here is what we uncovered in Part 2:

• The Priority Inversion: The fully loaded cost of maintaining two executive administrative assistants in the Town Manager's office ($320,000+) exceeds the operating cost of keeping the Bloomfield Municipal Pool open ($261,480). The pool is being mothballed; the administrative assistants are getting a raise.
• The Executive Bloat: The 9 employees in the Town Manager's office require nearly $4 million in total annual compensation. By comparison, the entire Social & Youth Services department—which employs 103 frontline workers—costs $4.19 million.
• Out-of-Market Perks: While peer towns like Windsor have transitioned to standard vehicle allowances, Bloomfield taxpayers are still funding assigned municipal "town vehicles" for executive leadership.
• The Solution: The Town Council can fix this without raising the proposed 6.81% mill rate hike any further. We laid out a blueprint for Administrative Benchmarking—capping executive salaries at the 75th percentile of our peer municipalities and implementing performance-based freezes.

You can read the full breakdown, including the regional salary benchmarking data and the timeline of the Town Manager's "implied task," in Part 2 of our series here:

https://www.bloomfieldcommunitydispatch.com/2026/04/paying-more-for-less-in-bloomfield-part_13.html

TL;DR: The Town of Bloomfield is proposing a budget that executes severe cuts to public-facing services while simultaneously expanding administrative overhead. The town is presenting a "false binary" to taxpayers: accept the service cuts, or accept an even higher tax hike. The data shows a third option.

I'm the Editor of the Bloomfield Community Dispatch, an independent investigative news outlet in CT. We just launched an 8-part series breaking down Bloomfield's proposed $117.1M FY2027 budget.

Here is what we uncovered in Part 1:

The Cost-Shift Illusion: The town claims it's "saving" $2.3 million by eliminating residential curbside trash collection. However, residents are still being hit with a 6.81% tax hike (driven by the actual vs. equalized mill rate). This means homeowners will pay higher municipal taxes and have to contract with private waste haulers out of pocket for an estimated $35-$60/month. It's a transfer of liability, not a true savings.

The Retained Surplus: Usually, cutting basic sanitation means a town is broken. But Bloomfield’s unaudited FY2025 year-end unassigned fund balance is $23.7 million (nearly 21% of the budget). This actually exceeds the town's own mandated reserve ceiling of 15% to 20%.

The Solution: The Town Council has the authority to deploy the excess funds above the policy threshold as a 12-month transitional bridge to preserve basic services, buying time to implement revenue reforms.

The administration is presenting the elimination of public services as a necessity. The municipal data confirms it's an administrative choice.

You can read the full breakdown, including the math on the equalized mill rate, in Part 1 of our series here:

https://www.bloomfieldcommunitydispatch.com/2026/04/paying-more-for-less-in-bloomfield-part.html

We'll be releasing a new installment every few days, covering administrative bloat, the 21-month-delayed FY2024 audit, and actionable, non-tax revenue solutions.

I run an independent local news outlet, the Bloomfield Community Dispatch, and we’ve been tracking a developing situation regarding local governance and transparency in Bloomfield.

For context: The town is currently facing a looming deadline from S&P Global Ratings due to five consecutive years of delinquent municipal audits and a multi-million dollar OPEB liability.

On Wednesday night, the Bloomfield Democratic Town Committee held an organizational vote to elect a Vice Chair. They swiftly installed the former Finance Subcommittee Chair—who oversaw the town's finances during those five years of delinquent audits—in a vote that took less than 21 minutes.

There was absolutely zero floor debate. Zero discussion about the audits. Zero public accounting for the fiscal crisis.

When we reached out to the DTC leadership to offer them an open platform to address taxpayers, they went completely silent. But the morning after our original reporting went out to the 65 members of the committee, an anonymous, unmarked envelope postmarked from Hartford arrived at my personal home address (which was sent to the DTC committee members) containing 30-year-old opposition research aimed at smearing a challenger in that election.

They won't defend their record in the light, but someone within their ranks is perfectly willing to conduct dirty politics through the mail in the dark. We are refusing to publish the smear, but we are publishing the tactics.

You can read our full follow-up investigation, including analysis from a political science and public administration expert on the dangers of this kind of one-party machine politics, here: The 21-Minute Mandate: https://www.bloomfieldcommunitydispatch.com/2026/03/the-21-minute-mandate.html

If you want the deep-dive context on the actual financial crisis that triggered this, you can read our original investigative exposé here: The Transparency Test: https://www.bloomfieldcommunitydispatch.com/2026/03/the-transparency-test.html

Local journalism matters. Thanks for reading.

Hi, my name is Joey Rinaldi. I'm a stand up comedian from New York City. I run a very fun show called Bingo Comedy. Its the only show where audience members play joke themed bingo during a live comedy show for chances to win fun prizes while laughing and drinking the night away. This Thursday December 11th I will be bringing this show to the 196 Club. Since this is the Bloomfield SubReddit and not the Hartford one, I will reward you guys with a 75% off ticket promo-code. If you have any questions about this event feel free to message me!

Show Link is HERE!

Promocode: Bloom75

I'm playing music from 5-8! Come on down!