Goshen First Selectman Candidates Interviews

Todd Carusillo

What inspired you to run for this office and what do you hope to accomplish if elected?
I just love this town. I mean, I love serving the people. I've been a public servant my whole life. Those are the reasons why I ran the first time and I want to continue because it's an unfinished business. I've got many, many grants throughout the last four years. The Public Works grant, I've been working with the State and the engineers on the rotary, they secured those monies of $5.4 million. I just got another grant for the West Hyerdale bridge Project. There's things that have to be done.

How do you understand the responsibilities of the office that you're running for? And how do you see yourself fulfilling them?
The legacy of day-to-day operations. I mean, there's so much that happens. I mean, everybody thinks, oh, it's a little town. Nothing happens there. There's so much going on in this town hall. There's so much to it, like all the reporting to the State of Connecticut, the fiscal responsibilities where every dollar is spent. I mean, I had to learn it. There's a lot of challenges, the day-to-day stuff, going to meetings, the grant writing.

What professional, civic, or personal experiences have best prepared you for this position?
Oh, well, like I said to you, I’ve been a public servant my whole life. My first job was with the City of Waterbury, and then I had a job with the Department of Mental Health with the State of Connecticut, and then I was a police officer in the City of Bristol. Working with the public, I was used to that, the day-to-day public relations, communications with people.

What have you learned from observing and participating in various meetings, attending committee meetings, community discussions?
Maybe the police officer in me made me a little bit hard, where I had to make quick decisions, so maybe sometimes I might make decisions quicker than most people because I was always in a life-threatening situation. I've learned if somebody asks me something, think about it for a couple of days, then give my answer.

To more inform the residents, I honestly think my administration is quite transparent. At least I know I am. I'm out there, I have an open-door policy. If people come in and they want to know what's going on, I let them know. I'll print out minutes for them. In the meeting, they should understand why decisions are being made or what responsibility a board has. So that's what I tell people. I try to be transparent in my selectmen's meetings. I watch how P&Z is run. I watch how Inland Wetlands is run, and the Library Board is run. But keep an eye on everything.

And there's probably a couple issues that people have to get straightened out about.

What are your top priorities and what are some of the top challenges?
I'd like to see some of these projects started and finished before I leave office. I ran on public safety. I wanted to get something done with the rotary to make our residents safe, and it's going to be done. I’d like to see a lot of things done. I’d like to see the West Hyerdale bridge done before I'm out of office.

There's things that have to be done, a code of conduct, a code of ethics, things that have to be done to keep everyone, board members, employees, kept by the rules. I mean, everybody has to follow the rules. I think there's going to be some difficulties on the library board until that could be straightened out.

Is there anything else that you'd like to share with voters?
I have four years’ experience. I offered the town a lot. I kept taxes low. I've been for Goshen in every emergency experience. It doesn't matter if it's a snowstorm, rainstorm, ice storm where roads are shut down because trees are going across the road. I was there. I'm the one that's out at midnight ‘til three, four o'clock in the morning with the plow trucks and I don't know who else is going to do that, who's going to be writing these grants.

I worked hard for that million five grant. I mean, it's all about the narrative. You don't write that narrative right, you're not getting that grant. So I got the grant for public works, the bridge. I get the bus grants all the time. There's so many things that I'm doing and people don't see it.

There would be no on-the-job training with me. I know how to do all the day-to-day operations, all the reporting to the State of Connecticut.

Todd rolls up his sleeves and works. I've been a worker my whole life and I'll continue to be a worker. I will do everything between now and November to continue to get grants. I'm going to be applying for a grant for the fire department for a new firehouse. I would love to see that grant. And so, we don't have to hit the taxpayers for monies to put an addition on the fire department.

Seth Breakell

What inspired you to run for this office and what do you hope to accomplish if elected?
Except for a couple short stints, I've lived here all my life.  But particularly in the past four years, even a little bit before that, I've seen a continuing kind of degradation of the discourse and just the overall atmosphere in the Town of Goshen. I think there's a lot of chaos, a lot of unhappy people, a lot of divisiveness.

I just feel that Goshen needs to change their direction a little bit and move forward. I think almost all of our issues stem from two things. One is a lack of leadership. Second is a lack of management. You can almost pick a topic, whether it's 190 Sharon Turnpike, that's the property across from the firehouse; the Library Board is a constant source of turmoil; Planning and Zoning.

There's a few things that kind of stay out of the fray. The Fire Company has no issues. It's well run. Public Works, same thing. But other than that, most of those boards and commissions, the level of discourse that's allowed to take place during the meetings is not good.

What's your understanding of the responsibilities of this office? How do you see yourself fulfilling them?
Obviously the first responsibility is for the quality of life and then the safety of the residents. Fire protection, police protection, that kind of thing.

Secondly would be the fiscal responsibility, to be able to work with the Board of Finance, to keep our fund balance healthy and our credit rating healthy, which we've had a spectacular, I mean, phenomenal success with that in the past, and I hope to continue that.

I don't know specifically some statutory responsibilities. The State of Connecticut requires x or y or whatever it is. I'm sure there's plenty out there that I don't know. The good part about that is I'm a fast learner. I'm not afraid to ask questions and you have a fantastic staff in that fiscal office with the administrative assistants that know all this stuff.

What have you learned from observing and participating in various meetings, attending committee meetings, community discussions?
I've physically attended almost all the Selectmen’s meetings that I can, obviously the Fire Commission meetings because they're my meetings, P&Z, Recreation. But the ones I haven't actually physically attended, I've watched numerous of them on Zoom. I've watched dozens, if not maybe hundreds of meetings over the course of the last couple of years, and certainly enough meetings to know that there needs to be a different direction taken to get us back to where we need to be.

What professional, civic, or personal experiences have best prepared you for this position?
I think it's two things. It's leadership and management. And I think those are kind of my fortes. That's what I've been hired for time and time again, in the construction industry, is to go in and take a job that's gone south and fix it.

But in addition to that, human resources stuff, I've hired and fired people, I understand the process. I understand the risks. I understand the procedures between hiring people and the procedure to be able to terminate someone for cause without incurring legal trouble.

I've been in the construction business as a business owner for a little over 30 years, now. So managing people, managing money, managing budgets, all that stuff is second nature to me. And a budget is a budget. It doesn't matter if it's in the construction industry, or if it's in a widget factory, or if it's in the Town of Goshen.

I've managed teams of well over a hundred people. I've worked on large $200 million construction projects. Not to make it sound insignificant, but the $12 million budget that the Town of Goshen operates on is a fraction of some of the budgets I've operated through. So it's not an intimidating number to me.

What are your top priorities and what are some of the top challenges?
Maintaining our infrastructure, our roads, bridges, those are probably our most valuable asset. Our town buildings, which is probably our second most important asset, Town Hall, Camp Coch, the Public Works Department, the Fire Company building, all those buildings are probably on the downhill side of their lifespan. And some have been neglected, some have been kept up, but none of them are probably in great shape.

I think [the Town] website needs a complete overhaul. The Communications Committee had all kinds of good ideas on that years ago. I don't think they're active anymore. One of the things I wanted to do was reinstate that committee and go back and see what their recommendations were. A better website for sure, a better communication system to get information out there. It's very difficult to find, and even if you know that it's out there, our website is difficult to navigate.

Is there anything else that you'd like to share with voters?
I've lived here all my life. I love the little town of Goshen. I think it's a fantastic place to live. I just want Goshen to be more of the community that it was when I grew up. Fiscally, we're doing well. I think everything, for the most part, is going well with the exception of that leadership and management that I keep going back to. And I think I can fix that.