If we want the Town of Seymour to be a leading economic model, we absolutely must create an environment in which that can happen.
We must redesign and streamline our town website to be simple, intuitive, attractive, and highly functional, catering to prospective and existing residents, businesses, and tourists.
By providing information and forms directly on our website, along with a litany of other tools for business, it becomes easier than ever before to do business in Seymour.
This must be coupled with a comprehensive assessment of the ease of interacting with town hall. We must use web technology to create better channels of communication between the residents and businesses of Seymour and our town hall, while revamping existing channels.
The town’s webpage serves as the front door, marketing poster, and official communications hub of a town. I cannot stress enough how easily this is overlooked, as well as the difference it makes.
We must extend town hall’s hours to 5 days a week for the purpose of accessibility to residents and businesses and immediately implement an open door policy at town hall to accommodate concerned residents and business owners. We need to market our promising little patch of Connecticut to potential businesses, looking to start fresh or move here, so that they know we exist and that we are strong.
This must be done now.
We must ensure that Seymour is putting out a clear message that “We are the best place to live, visit, and do business, period.”
We must journey beyond practicality and into prosperity.
The Valley is a strong place with determined people and a wonderful sense of community pride. It’s time for us to band together and use our strengths in a way that helps us prosper even more.
To me, government is meant to be a tool by which the community as a whole can be given the maximum opportunity to become greater than the sum of its individual parts. When we come together as a solitary force, we can achieve amazing things that help us all.
We can achieve lower taxes and a higher quality of life. We can reduce utility costs and raise the reliability and quality of those services. We can innovate with product offerings like municipally-owned gigabit internet, community solar, and public recreation, such as campgrounds, an increase in events, and organized trips.
It’s all about figuring out what is right for our community because, while these ideas have worked elsewhere, we need to decide together on what is right for our town. These programs should pay for themselves, with extra earnings being returned back into the tax pool.
This effectively lowers the mill rate, simultaneously creating a more rich and vibrant community. I’m here to tell you that this is both possible and necessary.
My name is Michael Boroski, and I’m running for Seymour’s Board of Selectmen.
I’m confident that we can lower taxes, drive our economy, and bring a brighter Seymour of tomorrow to fruition.
The writer is running for the Seymour Board of Selectmen on the Democratic line.
