The last time a sitting Shelton mayor was defeated for re-election, a gallon of gas was $1.09, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was hovering around 3,000 and The Evening Sentinel was still around.
That was 24 years ago, when Mark Lauretti, then a downtown restaurateur, won the city’s top elected post in November 1991 from Michael Pacowta, a three-term incumbent.
Two and a half decades later, downtown restaurant owner Michele Bialek knows he has her work cut out for her — but she’s never been one to shy away from a challenge.
The Shelton Democrat is gearing up a challenge to Mayor Mark Lauretti, who has served in the city’s top elected post since November 1991.
Click here to visit her campaign website.
A kickoff fundraiser is scheduled for July 1 at 6 p.m. at Bricks and Barley, 441 Howe Ave.
Bialek, 42, a city resident for nearly all her life, already wears many hats in her professional and personal life.
She’s a mother of six children — ages 12, 11, 9, 7, 5, 3 — and active in the school system.
She is a founding member of the Soupstock Music and Arts Festival, an annual downtown event benefiting the The Mary A. Schmecker Turtle Shell Fund, named in honor of her grandmother, a former art teacher.
She and her husband, Fred, own Liquid Lunch, a restaurant with locations in Shelton and Milford.
The business’ former Howe Avenue location — rendered uninhabitable by a January 2014 fire — will reopen with a new name, “Grow,” emphasizing farm fresh, locally sourced, seasonal ingredients.
’It’s Time For A Change’
Growth is a key aspect of Bialek’s plan for Shelton — responsible, inclusive growth.
In outlining her views and her decision to run during an interview at Liquid Lunch’s Research Drive location last week, Bialek didn’t “go negative” with a litany of complaints about Lauretti.
In fact, she went out of her way to praise him.
“It’s just that my passion and my ideas are at the point at which I’m confident that I could make a difference,” Bialek, who ran unsuccessfully for the Board of Aldermen in 2013, said of her decision to run for mayor. “I’ve said it before, I think that the mayor’s done a great job up until now. But after 24 years, it’s time for a change.”
Article continues after photo of a front page story from The Evening Sentinel of Nov. 20, 2991, when Lauretti took office.
Bialek says the city has potential that isn’t being fully realized as things stand.
“We’re in this space where we’re part of Fairfield County, we’re party of the Valley,” she said. “We have all of the resources at our fingertips. That’s why i say that (Lauretti) has done a great job up until this point. Because he’s put all the pieces in place to really take us to the next level, but it’s going to take some new ideas.”
Development
Take downtown, for instance. The city is in talks with landowners to buy land and possibly relocate City Hall downtown.
No firm plans have taken shape yet.
Bialek would like to see the city do more to include residents in the conversation — and to think bigger in terms of downtown redevelopment.
“What i would like to see is a larger scale plan that involves even Derby,” Bialek said. “I’ve actually been talking a lot with the mayor of Derby. We’re very excited to work together.”
“We are at a point where we have an opportunity that doesn’t come along very often, and it all seems to be coming together right at this point,” she went on. “We can’t miss that opportunity, and I think we can make that a larger scale, cooperative area. It’s not going to happen overnight, but if everyone works together then it can happen a lot quicker.”
“I see a space that’s filled with culture, and artisanship, and small businesses,” she said. “And cooperation. That’s a big deal.”
SchoolsCooperation and involving residents more in decision-making is a recurring theme for Bialek, a prominent voice in last year’s push to make Shelton the last municipality in Fairfield County to offer full-day kindergarten and an advocate for more school spending during this year’s budget discussions.
For the past several years, the city’s budget debates have centered mainly around school funding — and the war of words between city and school officials about how much money the school district needs.
The city’s schools superintendent announced last month he was resigning over funding frustrations.
Returning to the theme of involvement, Bialek said parents like herself just want to know more about where the city is coming from.
“To me it comes back to communication,” Bialek said. “It starts with cooperative planning, and knowing what the issues are, and the changing needs. That’s the frustration, is that there are changing needs and more expensive needs. Simply because we have less students does not mean it’s cheaper. There just needs to be more open communication.”
“Maybe we don’t know certain things,” she went on. “It’s patronizing.”
Bialek said the city could commit more funding to schools without raising taxes — because the city routinely returns multi-million dollar surpluses after not spending all the money it budgets.
“From what I have seen, all we would need to do is shift around the budget, and the things that i talk about, it sounds like it’s expensive, but I wouldn’t be talking about it if I had to raise taxes,” she said. “I live in Shelton, I don’t want my taxes raised. And seeing what i see, we could rearrange and reorganize the budget and we wouldn’t have to raise taxes, and that’s awesome. That’s exciting.”
“There’s a lot of working parts, and I understand there’s a lot of different avenues and perspectives,” she said. “There’s not one cookie-cutter answer for it — ‘just give them all the money’ — it’s a dynamic balance.”
Can She Win?
That Bialek is committed to the campaign isn’t in question.
But can she succeed?
Democrats are something of an endangered species in Shelton government.
Lauretti has been mayor since 1991.
Of the city’s eight Aldermen, only one, John “Jack” Finn, is a Democrat.
Part of the Dems’ challenge is pure numbers.
Of the city’s 22,658 registered voters, only 4,904 are Democrats.
There are 5,895 Republicans.
But unaffiliated voters outnumber both parties put together, at 11,799.
In terms of the mayor’s race, recent history shows that though Lauretti has been in office for more than two decades, his electoral appeal has not waned significantly.
Article continues after chart, which shows that since at least 2001, regardless of opponent, Lauretti has never attracted fewer than 6,000 votes, while the Democratic candidates have not been able to reach that number.
In 2013, the mayor bested the Democratic candidate, local party chairman David Gioiello, by more than 4,000 votes.
Lauretti’s last challenge of any real note — in terms of a winning margin of fewer than 2,000 votes — came in 2009, when he defeated Chris Jones, a popular firefighter and local business owner, by roughly 1,500 votes.
Bialek said she hopes to model her campaign on Derby Mayor Anita Dugatto’s successful challenge of then-Mayor Anthony Staffieri in 2013, which incorporated big data to identify likely voters and an Election Day get-out-the-vote effort.
“It’s my mission to get more people to understand who’s running and to make their own decision and vote,” she said.
She said turnout in 2013 — a paltry 38 percent — was “crazy.”
“Investigate and make it a point to know that municipal elections affect you more than anything else,” she said. “The people you vote in or don’t vote in affect your daily lives, your tax rate, your schools. That’s a huge thing, and that’s something I really want to bring to light. So my campaign is geared towards information and trying to reach the people that don’t think it’s either worth it or don’t think they have time.”
