It has truly been my honor to serve as First Selectman of the Town of Seymour for the last 22 months.
Having grown up in this community, I take a great deal of pride in the place we all call home. With the help of my exceptional team, I think we have done a great job of moving Seymour forward. While many of these progressive steps haven’t been flashy or newsworthy, they are the things that needed to be done. Our foundation is now stronger than ever and will be a stepping stone for a better future.
In my campaign kickoff speech, I talked about the need to rebuild Seymour’s foundation which would allow us to move forward. I was very careful not to make any bold promises that I knew I could not keep. I knew that before Seymour could be successful, it needed to get back to its roots to establish itself once again as a strong and viable community.
I also knew that I could not accomplish this alone. With an understanding of the task at hand, I put together a team of hired staff, elected and volunteer officials across party lines that had professional experience dealing with these kinds of situations. Having this kind of experience and knowledge has made our decisions stronger and more effective.
I also made many changes to the way our professional staff is organized and managed. We completed a major overhaul of our organizational chart to improve communication amongst departments and to provide more effective and efficient services to our residents. The new structure of the Operations Department has allowed them to oversee and improve the day-to-day running of the town including reducing costs while improving the maintenance of our buildings and equipment.
The town’s employees are critical to its success and to move us forward. The new Human Resources Department has initiated improvements such as updated job descriptions, establishing semiannual performance reviews, creating and implementing an Employee Handbook and new policies and procedures all with one goal in mind — to increase productivity and customer service to you the residents.
On the financial side, we have taken steps to improve the budget process to provide more information to our residents. We have strengthened the town’s financial position by improving our fund balance, organizing our current debt, establishing proper long-term capital and road improvement plans all of which will help to stabilize our mill rate in the years to come. This stabilization will allow us to continue to move forward, but with limited impact to our mill rate.
Finally, we have worked to improve our overall communication to our residents with a strong social media presence, improved use of the Code Red system, and with a new state-of-the-art website which will be unveiled in the next few weeks.
It is for these reasons and many others that I ask for your support; not only me, but the entire Republican team on Nov. 5.
