I have lived in New Fairfield for ten years. And I love it here. Every so often I am reminded that it is not a perfect place, but that doesn’t change how I feel.
One of the things I love about this place is our form of government. It’s simple: we make big decisions together. Everyone gets to vote; every vote matters.
If the decision is big enough we hold a referendum with a machine vote. This gives as many of us as possible a chance to participate over the course of a day.
Just because everyone gets to vote, doesn’t mean that everyone does vote. Most of the time, less than 35% of the people who could vote actually do.
Sometimes we make decisions at town meetings. Depending on the question, we might have a couple of hundred people show up to be counted, or a dozen.
Some people see this as a problem. I don’t think you can force people to vote.
It’s not practical for us to vote on every single operational matter that comes up in the course of running a town. So we select people to run things for us: the Board of Selectmen. The First Selectman acts as the chief executive officer of the town and manages day-to-day town business.
The neat thing about this arrangement is that while we give a lot of leeway to the First Selectman on day-to-day problems, any big decisions are brought to us.
It is fair to say that John Hodge has gotten a lot of things done as First Selectman over the past four years. But he couldn’t have done any of it without us.
When I say “us” I mean the majorities that voted to support the Senior Center project, new athletic facilities (tennis courts, the track, and the artificial turf football field), and saving historic houses, among many other things.
And we couldn’t have done it without John Hodge. The alternative was to say it was impossible, fight over how to do it, and ignore grant opportunities. We needed someone to get things done, to pay attention to the details, and to fight for us.
But most of all, none of these things would have happened if it weren’t for someone else.
That person is Ron Oliveri.
On a three-person Board of Selectmen, it takes two to get things done.
That is the way it has always been.
For the past four years, Ron Oliveri has been the vote that matters on the BOS.
Without Ron, there would be no Senior Center. We would never have had the opportunity to vote on buying the land, if the BOS had failed to move the question to a town meeting in 2006.
Without Ron, all we would have of the Hubbell House and the Parsonage would be photographs. The houses themselves would have been demolished. Again, the BOS needed two votes to bring this decision to us, to make our votes matter.
(Yes, I know there is no bridge yet. But it seems to me that the people who are complaining the most about the missing bridge are the same ones who would have let the houses be destroyed.)
Without Ron, a lot of good things that we’ve done together would not be.
There are many times when our Selectmen, confronted with an issue or an opportunity to improve the town, see an obvious path forward and act unanimously.
And there are times when the path ahead is not so clear.
There is room for honest disagreement over the best course of action.
But over the past four years, when it was time to take action, when it was time to move past the planning and the politics, Ron Oliveri was the vote that mattered.
Now, after ten years as our Selectman, Ron Oliveri is stepping aside.
He is leaving New Fairfield. But he leaves behind a legacy of progress.
New Fairfield is in great financial shape, better than most towns in Connecticut, even in these tough economic times.
We have had four years of growing fund balances, our taxes have gone up on average less than 2% a year for the past four years, and our bond rating has been upgraded to AAA. Over those four years we have gotten a lot of things done.
Once again, the town faces a decision. What is the new Board of Selectmen going to look like? How do we want it to act?
Do we want to keep moving forward, or do we want to fall back?
We are forced to make this decision without a lot of information, because one side has decided that their best strategy is to avoid a debate.
That’s strange, since these are the same people who have been telling us that we need more information, we need to plan, we need to delay before taking any action.
That is what you do when you don’t know what to do. But I think the town has been pretty clear about moving forward these past four years.
This would have been exposed in a debate, and so there was no debate.
Seems like there was alarmingly little consideration for what the town needed.
It would have been nice to learn why Monika Thiel opposed the school project that the town approved. And whether she will do anything to stop what we approved, if she were elected.
The same goes for Art Azzarito: he has been against just about everything Hodge and Oliveri did for us for four years, many of the things we have voted for as a town.
It comes down to this:
Do we like the way the town has been managed over the past four years, and do we want it to continue? Or would we rather not have done these things?
As for the future: we have voted for a school construction project. We agreed to make improvements to our emergency communications systems. Now we need to see those projects completed.
Are people who opposed those projects the right people to get them done?
John Hodge can get these things done; he has proved it time and again.
But he can’t do it without help.
He needs our help, and he needs Susan Chapman on the Board of Selectmen.
Susan is ready. She is qualified. She wants to move New Fairfield forward. She will support John, and us, when it counts. Without her, the BOS will stop serving us. Things won’t get done.
This November 3 I’ll be voting for John and Susan. The team that works together for New Fairfield. The vote that matters.