Letter: Change in benefit package hurts business

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To the editor,

My wife Marion and I have owned and operated the Beacon Falls Pharmacy since we opened it in late 2005. We do our best to serve the people of our hometown.

Now we are extremely disappointed to learn that the Town of Beacon Falls has changed its benefit package for town employees. The prescription plan, which is similar to the one Gov. Malloy forced on state employees a few years ago, is structured in such a way that we cannot accept it, as we would take a substantial loss on every prescription that we fill under it.  We are here to run a small business and make a fair profit, not to subsidize our town and state budgets, and unlike our state, we cannot simply raid our “rainy day fund” in order to stay in business.

We support countless civic, sport and charity organizations in town, including the Beacon Hose Company, Lions, Rotary, St. Michael Church, the United Church, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, the American Legion, United Way, and countless sports teams and clubs. We donate the use of our lot to the Beacon Hose Company to park its trucks for the annual carnival and to many organizations to hold can drives, car washes, tag sales, and other fund raising events. Last year alone, we estimate that over $10,000 was raised by these groups in our lot. We deliver prescriptions in any weather, and have never closed even once in nearly 12 years, staying open in hurricanes, blizzards, and through prolonged blackouts.

Time and time again over the past 12 years we have left family gatherings and holiday celebrations to open our store for emergencies. Ironically, last Christmas, we even came down and opened the pharmacy to fill a critical prescription for a town employee who had forgotten to pick it up. Somehow I doubt that would have happened at CVS.

Marion and I consider this to be a slap in the face. It is insulting and should be an affront to any and all Beacon Falls businesses and residents that the town would allow and make such a choice so directly detrimental to any Beacon Falls business, much less one which is owned and operated by town residents. It is shameful.

Robert and Marion Bradley

Beacon Falls