Thomaston First Selectman Candidates Interviews

Jeffrey Dunn

What inspired you to run for this office? 
That's a big question. I am a lifelong resident of Thomaston, and I've been involved with volunteering in the community for most of my adult life. This seems kind of a natural path to continue. I feel like the town is changing of the guards. Seems like a logical time to do it.

How do you understand the responsibilities of the office that you're running for? And how do you see yourself fulfilling them?
I've served on the Board of Selectmen now for nearly six years. So I certainly understand the office and its functions through that service. But I've been involved with town government for many years. I've served with the Economic Development Commission. I served as the chair of that. My job at the Thomason Opera House has interactions with the Opera House Commission and the Board of Finance. And that kind of dovetails into economic development and expanding tourism and visitation to Thomaston.

What professional, civic, or personal experiences have best prepared you for this position?
I'm not young, so I've done a lot in my life. My background is in communications, mass media, broadcasting. I worked in television for several years. I also owned my own business in Thomaston from the time I was in high school for about 25 years. So I understand retail business in town. I understand the basic needs for running a business. When I came to work at the opera house, I was a town employee for several years. When that changed and they had a nonprofit take over, I was the one who helped create that nonprofit. And I've headed it for the last 13 years.

What have you learned from observing and participating in various meetings, attending committee meetings, community discussions?
Well, nothing's easy. That's for sure. I've been a member of the Rotary Club for over 20 years. One of the first board meetings I sat in on, it was about seven o'clock in the morning and it was talking about buying a television and VCR for the meetings and we were going to share it with the Watertown Rotary Club. It seemed like a really simple decision to make, like it was a no-brainer, and yet the amount of division that there was on that board at the time…and it didn't happen. After all that discussion and everything, I said to myself, do I really want to die on this hill?

And I often ask myself that when I get into these heated debates. It's like, yeah, is this the hill you want to die on? You know, maybe we take another approach or think about it a different way. Creating a consensus among people, I think, is the best route and the easiest way of not dying on the hill.

What are your top priorities and what are some of the top challenges?
I would like to see more people get involved in town government. We are a small town that relies on volunteers, whether it's the fire department, ambulance, education, recreation. I think there's a lot of people out there that would take advantage of volunteering for the town, if asked.

We really have to look at our infrastructure. You know, I've lived here my entire life. It was very much an industrial town when I was growing up. A lot of it is small mom and pop manufacturing, and we want to try to maintain that and keep that as healthy as possible.

But I think as people age out, and whether they have family members that are willing to take over their business or if there's someone to buy it, those are things that I think our small businesses need help with. On economic development, we've created tax incentives and we've become part of the enterprise zone with the State of Connecticut to help businesses and manufacturers either expand and grow or relocate here or just keep them from leaving here.

We want to look at our sidewalks and roads. It's very difficult to maintain all those things. But I do think we have this great downtown, a walkable downtown. We should make that as inviting as possible.

Another hot topic is education. We're a small town that struggles to pay and sustain the educational system that we have. But I also want to make sure that Thomaston is a great town to live in. And part of it is because it is a small town it has small schools and small classes, and that's important to me. It was important to me when I was raising kids here in town and I think whatever the end results are if there's a consolidation of schools, if there's a partnership with other districts, I think we want to keep that in mind. Thomaston wants to keep its small-town roots.

Is there anything else that you'd like to share with voters? 
I hope to see a lot of people come out and have their voices be heard, whether it's voting for me or someone else. We do have a great list of candidates on both sides that are running.

Rich Sileo

What inspired you to run for this office?
Between the time I served on the EDC (Economic Development Commission) and on the Board of Finance, I really started to understand how the town operated. And then, when I took over as Chairman of the Board of Finance, I really started to see some opportunities where we could make some improvements. Taking a harder look at how we budget, really focusing in on growing the grand list. So it was several things, really, that made me take a look at it and then look back at my experience and my career over time and say, I probably have a good skill set to really make a difference here.

What's your understanding of the responsibilities of this office? How do you see yourself fulfilling them?
I see the role of 1st selectman is really threefold. It's almost like having a CEO, a CFO, and a CMO. CEO is the chief executive officer, making sure that everything's executing appropriately in town, things are happening, services are getting delivered, but that we're also managing to a budget that's given to us by the town.

From a chief financial officer (CFO) perspective, I think there's an opportunity to improve how we budget. But just as important is to make sure that we are looking everywhere for alternative sources of funding. There's lots of groups out there at the state level and the national level where we can leverage additional dollars to get some things done.

And then the last one is really being the chief marketing officer (CMO) for the town, that is really promoting the town in a lot of ways. One of those is to just make sure everyone in town is aware of what's happening. But also working to sort of grow the grand list. We have to be in constant contact with the businesses that are in our town to make sure that they have no blockers. We don't want to lose anything we have, for sure. But we also want to look out around us and say, OK, what other businesses are around us that we could maybe entice to move to our town?

What professional, civic, or personal experiences have best prepared you for this position?
On the Economic Development Commission, then the Board of Finance, and most recently, as the Chair of Board of Finance, I have dug into how things operate, where some of the struggles are, and how we really use our financial resources.

I have a lot of experience in the business world. I have a lot of experience managing people. And I've had a lot of business skills ingrained in me. How do you truly listen to people while they're speaking? How do you stay present? How do you gauge how people are feeling? How do you figure out how to help people when they're working on a project and they're getting stuck? And at the very bottom of that, I have a bachelor's in mechanical engineering. I have an undergrad in mathematics. I've got an MBA and a bunch of advanced certificates.

What have you learned from observing and participating in various meetings, attending committee meetings, community discussions?
The first thing I've learned is we don't communicate well in this town. We don't communicate enough. And when we're in open meetings, we don't listen carefully.

One of the skills is deep listening. I think we have a lot of folks who know the answer or think they know what the question is, and they just go right to that. That doesn't work for some people for a variety of reasons. One, they're not really asking for just the answer to the question, they're asking for understanding.

So that's part of deep listening, but it's also part of being able to have a conversation with someone that removes all the emotion.

There are town meetings where things get heated, and we have to work to diffuse that. I have had that situation in my Board of Finance meetings, where I've had to say, hold on, let's sort of diffuse what's happening here. Let's take it down a bit. Because once people start going back and forth, that's not productive at all.

What are your top priorities and what are some of the top challenges?
Grow the grand list, improve communication, and also really drive fiscal conservatism. Improve the way we're doing our internal budgeting process. I think the town departments need some guidance on how to do this better.

Beyond that, the next big priority is the school feasibility study that's going on. Right after that, we have some work to do to our water treatment facility.

Is there anything else that you'd like to share with voters?
Not a lot of people really know me in town, which is strange because I've been here for 33 years. My wife and I bought here the year after we got married. This is our first home and we've lived here ever since, and we came here because we thought it was a cute little town. We thought it had good schools, we came here for all those reasons that most young couples or young families look for. I want to try and protect that. I still want it to be someplace where people want to stay.