Newtown has accepted a $480,000 federal Community Project Funding grant that it will use to install non-impervious parking on the Fairfield Hills campus in the area around where the Farmer’s Market is located.

The Board of Finance accepted the grant at its July 27 meeting, and the Board of Selectmen approved it at its July 17 meeting. The Legislative Council was expected to take up the matter at its August 2 meeting.

The grant was made available to Newtown through the office of Rep Jahana Hayes (CT-05). According to hayes.house.gov, “This project would be a valuable use of taxpayer funds because funding would be used to design and install systems and non-impervious parking areas to accommodate incremental and current parking demand on the Fairfield Hills Campus due to ever increasing activity, especially that which may be related to the renovation of historic abandoned brick buildings.”

The town made the request for funding in 2021; it was approved by congress in 2022, and the money was made available to the town this year.

The parking area will provide additional parking for the Farmer’s Market.

Non-impervious parking, instead of being pavement, has hard surface rings of material that allow cars to travel and park on it, but also allows water to move freely into the underlying soil.

Newtown’s match for the grant is $120,000, which can be in the form of funding or in-kind services. Public Works Director Fred Hurley said that Newtown will not require the use of any town operational funds; it will use town staff and already purchased materials on the project.

It will cause no delays in other town projects, as Hurley said he’ll look for a point when there is a slowdown in work either this fall or the upcoming spring to assign the staff the work.

The amount of area to be paved is “substantial,” according to Hurley, roughly 50,000 to 60,000 square feet, or two acres of property.

In other Board of Finance news, Finance Director Bob Tait has reported that he has refunded roughly $15,000,000 in bonding from 2015, 2016, and 2018, which will save taxpayers $576,000 in interest payments over three years.

Tait said that the refunding was done “just in time” as there was a deadline to complete the transaction. After August 3, the town would be unable to conduct the refunding unless it received a reaffirmed bond rating from S&P Global.

The action Tait completed lowered the interest on those bonds from 3.17 percent to 2.65 percent.

“That’s good news,” said Tait.

The town will reduce its bond payment by $132,000 in the 2024-25 budget year, $202,000 in the 2025-26 budget year, and $208,000 in the 2025-26 budget year.

“That will help reduce the debt service schedule,” said Tait, who noted that reducing bond payments will help budgeting in those years.

Associate Editor Jim Taylor can be reached at jim@thebee.com.