Thank you
The results for tonight are in, and unfortunately they are not what we were hoping for. It was the most votes a Democrat received for mayor in over 30 years, 300+ more than we received in 2021, but it was not enough.
I congratulate Vincent Cervoni on being the next mayor of Wallingford. I wish him, and all of the other successful candidates from tonight, the best of luck as they navigate this new chapter in Wallingford's history. May it be a chapter that brings this town we all love in the right direction.
While words will fail to do me justice, I want to thank, from the bottom of my heart, each and every person that supported us over the course of this campaign. The 16,000 doors we knocked, the 1,000's more phone calls we had, none of this would have been possible without you. You have proven in every way, shape, and form that you love Wallingford, and that is what makes this community so special.
Being your candidate for mayor, something that I've been so fortunate as to experience twice, will always be the greatest honor of my life. I've made countless friends on this journey that will last a lifetime. While I can tell you that this is officially the last time I will run for mayor, I promise to never stop trying to make my community a better place; for our future, and for all of our futures.
-Your neighbor, Riley
How We Write Wallingford's Next Chapter
The most common question I get is “how are you going to pay for these improvements.” This is how: through a combination of modern budgeting, improved technology, competent investment strategies, and competitive grant applications.
Leaves are changing color, days are getting shorter, and before you know it Election Day will be upon us. After months of campaigning to be Wallingford’s next mayor, I’ve spoken to thousands of you while going door to door. My platform of modernizing town hall, repairing our crumbling infrastructure, and lowering taxes, has resonated with just about all Wallingford residents. The most common question I’ve received, however, is “how are you going to pay for these improvements.” That “how” is exactly what today’s column is about.
Let’s set the table for this discussion with some context. Wallingford has endured 18 consecutive years of proposed tax increases from the current administration. There has been no increase in the quality or quantity of public services offered to justify these increases, but rather they are the consequence of poor fiscal policies.
Budget
Our budgets consistently overestimate expenditures while underestimating revenues, often by millions of dollars. This artificially creates a surplus by raising taxes with no honest expectation of spending the additional revenue, the definition of overtaxing. While we’ve all been facing record high inflation and increases to the cost of living, my opponent has successfully voted to raise taxes every year he’s been in office.
My first priority is to freeze the mill rate. Using historical budget data, incorporating expected increases in wages and inflation, this reliably leaves us with more than a million dollars a year to work with. A decent start, but much more can be done.
Pension Fund
A far bigger, albeit less talked about, problem with our current fiscal policy is the mismanagement of the pension fund. The good news: we currently have about $245 million in the fund, about 75% of our liability. The bad news: the investment returns have been abysmal. Over the last decade, this fund has averaged 6% annual returns. Over this same period, the S&P 500 (widely used as the market standard) has returned over 12%.
A fund this size should consistently outperform the market if managed properly, let alone match it. The difference in these percentages, even for just one year at the current balance, is $15 million. With compounding interest, the gap only gets worse the wider the view you take. Over five years, that gap grows to over $100 million, and more than $300 million over ten years.
Before 2004, no tax dollars went into the pension fund; it was self-sustainable with employee contributions. Years of terrible investment, however, have resulted in us having to subsidize these lost gains with over $10 million from taxpayers each year, and this number only grows.
You get what you pay for, and it’s abundantly clear that the contract for managing this fund needs to go back out to bid for competitive results. Over 30% of the fund currently resides in assets (receiving virtually 0% interest), which is substantially greater than would ever be needed to insulate against a multi-year recession. The other 70% still significantly underperforms the market average. By addressing these problems alone, we can simultaneously establish a pension fund that removes any future burden on taxpayers, while also ensuring our civil servants’ pensions are protected for generations to come.
Technology
Wallingford’s Town Hall is one of, if not the most antiquated in the state of Connecticut. Needless to say, this wastes money. Online bill pay services, for example, would pay for themselves. They have proven to increase the percentage of bills paid on time, and require fewer resources to process. It may only come out to a few thousand dollars saved, but it’s also a long overdue convenience for residents.
In a similar vein, but with a greater fiscal impact, is direct deposit for town employees. The money spent on the paper checks, stamps, and efficiency costs alone are estimated to be nearly $200,000/year. Additionally, some employees have thirty minutes of paid leave built into their contracts to go pick up their checks each week, which wastes an additional estimated $100,000/year. Switching over to direct deposit is a win-win for taxpayers and employees, and should have been implemented years ago.
Grants
The absence of a full-time grant writer costs us millions more in state and federal funds. This is a position that, when done well, pays for itself 100 times over. It’s common sense. Wallingford currently has a reduced capacity to apply for grants, so we apply to fewer than we should. Even out of the grants we do apply for, we have a worse success rate because we are relying on already overstretched employees to fill out these applications internally.
Many towns of comparable populations and socioeconomics are receiving 2-3 times as much in state grants per year (totalling nearly $50 million). For a recent example of this, look no further than the $56 million that was available for air-conditioning in public schools. Wallingford didn’t even apply. The Record Journal reported last October that our Board of Education did not pursue the grant because they were unable to put together an application in the short timeframe provided. A grant writer to do the bulk of this work would solve that issue.
Before any naysayers claim we wouldn’t have been awarded that grant anyway because of our comparable wealth, let’s look at a couple of towns that were: Guilford ($1.25 million) and Fairfield ($6.2 million). In addition to both of these towns having significantly higher average incomes than Wallingford, what else do they have in common… dedicated grant-writing positions.
These changes to our fiscal policy ultimately only scratch the surface of how Wallingford can save money. There’s additional millions to be saved from increased efficiencies, better planning, innovation, growing our grandlist, and so much more. The bottom line is Wallingford can make progress without raising taxes, and without mortgaging our future. It won’t be easy, and it will take time, but it is more than possible under the right leadership with the right plan. This is how we write Wallingford’s next chapter.
Obituary: Honest Debate
It’s that time of an election year again when it is impossible to turn on your evening programming without being inundated with campaign ads. While this is nothing new, it has become perhaps the best, albeit rather depressing, representation of how truly far modern political debate has fallen. Good faith arguments have been replaced by misinformation campaigns, and facts have been replaced by fear.
For a great example of this, look no further than Bob Stefanowksi’s ad criticizing Governor Lamont for increasing our property taxes. The premise really hits home for many of us; times have already been extremely tough with tax increases only making things harder. The problem with this accusation, however, is the simple fact that property taxes are set by local governments, not the state. When our tax rate increased here in Wallingford, full credit goes to Mayor Dickinson (marking his 18th consecutive year of putting a tax increase in the budget), not Governor Lamont.
Either Stefanowski desperately needs a basic civics lesson on how the government he intends to run actually works, or he is purposefully misleading voters, either of which should disqualify anyone from seeking the highest office in our state. The real issue though is that Stefanowski is by no means unique in his campaign tactics. The misinformation strategies that have plagued our national politics in recent years have only increased in their intensity, and have now begun seeping into local politics as well.
In another example, we see Republican candidates across the state claiming that crime has increased, when in reality both violent crime (decreasing 9% last year) and property crime (decreasing 2% last year) have steadily declined over the last decade, with CT ranking as one of the safest states in America. That is not an opinion, that is a fact. To be clear, crime still exists and is certainly worthy of being addressed, but that requires proposing actual solutions to crime. How can we ever hope to agree on potential solutions when our candidates cannot even agree on the underlying data?
The current landscape of political debate does a disservice to not only Republican voters, but to Connecticut and American voters of all political persuasions. A healthy two-party system, one in which our candidates’ platforms differ on philosophy rather than fact, fundamentally coincides with a healthy Union. Unfortunately, honest Republican candidates have increasingly become exceptions to the norm, and reasonable conservative arguments have fallen by the wayside in favor of “alternative facts.”
It’s natural to want to place blame on voters for buying into this nonsense, but that is an unfair oversimplification. We, as voters, all have busy lives: our careers, our families, our passions. It’s impossible to be completely informed on everything, so we’ve instead chosen to trust our respective candidates/elected officials as reliable sources of information.
Unfortunately, we live in a time when many of those “leaders” have become predators that prey upon our trust and innate patriotism, and have become more and more flagrant in their abuse of this trust over the last few years. Conspiracies around the legitimacy of the 2020 election serve as a distressingly poignant example of this.
When we become a government run by people solely interested in promoting their own-self-interests over the truth, that is when our Democracy is truly lost, and I fear we are venturing dangerously close to that future. All I can recommend is do your own research for every candidate on your respective ballot.
This November, I’m going to proudly cast my vote for candidates like Rebecca Hyland: someone who sticks to the truth rather than relying on weaponized buzzwords, and proposes a detailed platform based in fact rather than vague promises meant to elicit emotion.
Honest debate once formed the bedrock of our Democratic Republic, but now that it has been pushed to the brink of death in recent years, perhaps we should not be surprised to find our society as a whole on equally unstable footing. This is my call for us to return to a time when political differences were about how to best address issues, not about whether or not these issues actually exist. My hope is that my pessimistic prognosis on the state of our politics is proven neither terminal nor irreversible.
Finally, when I find myself once again on the ballot for mayor of Wallingford one year from now, you will hear similarly dishonest claims of my plans to raise taxes, sell our electric division, or [insert baseless accusation here], as have already begun to resurface by my opponents. I encourage you to employ the same level of educated skepticism then as this November.
-Riley O’Connell
Park & Rec Commission Resignations
On Monday, September 26th, the three remaining members of the Wallingford Parks and Recreation Commission resigned in a unified letter (below). After serving the town reliably for many years, they cite their reasons for resigning as due to "frustration and a complete and thorough neutering of this commission over the last few years," adding that "projects have not moved an inch [and] major safety issues continue to be ignored."
"I was devastated to learn of the Commission resignations this week," says Riley O'Connell, "but with as out of touch as Mayor Dickinson has become, it's barely surprising. When you have a mayor that neglects the needs of our community, and moreover blocks efforts by dedicated volunteers whose only goal is to improve our community, this is what happens."
In May the same members of the Commission expressed similar frustrations when they officially suspended the Community Pool Renovation Subcommittee after staunch resistance from Mayor Dickinson. $477,000 of taxpayer money had already been spent on planning and designing a new Community Pool when the Mayor terminated the project.
"These volunteers have dedicated countless hours to this community, but instead of praising them our Mayor has restricted their ability to carry out their mission, so much so that they felt no other option than to resign. I sincerely thank Jason Michael, Michael Savenelli Sr., and Dave Gelo for their years of exemplary service to our town; everything they have worked on and accomplished does not go unrecognized. If only we had a mayor who shared their commitment to helping Wallingford reach its full potential."
Campaign Kick-Off 2023
I'm proud to announce that I'm once again running for mayor of Wallingford, and we couldn’t have asked for a more successful kick-off event than we had last night at Center Street Brewery! Last year we came closer than anyone has in over 30 years, and with your support, I'm positive this time we are going to win!
I truly hoped that the thin margins of last year’s election would be a wakeup call for Mayor Dickinson, but already this term he has raised taxes yet again, played politics with potentially life changing ARPA money, and done nothing to address our crumbling infrastructure.
This community demonstrated that there was an appetite for change last election, and now I’m ready to deliver on these promises. The challenges Wallingford faces only continue to grow, but our message remains the same and more important than ever: For Our Future.
Thank you…
Thank you… that’s really all I can say about yesterday, and I can’t say it enough. No, we did not win this election, but thanks to all of you we came closer than any other challenger has in the last 30 years, and it was incredibly close at that. Only 300 votes separated us.
Below is the closing address I gave at our election night watch party, and while it was a bit emotional to deliver after such a long journey to this point, I couldn’t be prouder of what we accomplished as a team. Despite not achieving the result we ultimately wanted, we fundamentally changed the game; Wallingford is not the same town it was when we started this campaign ten months ago.
Rest assured that this is only the beginning. I will never stop fighting for Wallingford, in whatever form that fight may take, and I assure you all that our best days lie just ahead of us. For our future, now and always.
DTC Community Picnic
Thank you to everyone who joined today’s picnic to show your support for our incredible slate of Democratic candidates this year. A special thanks to the Carpenters Union and the Plumbers & Pipefitters Union for their crucial support today as well. We were also delighted to hear some inspirational words today, not only from our local candidates, but also from Senator Matt Lesser and Representative Hilda Santiago. A perfect end to a perfect weekend in good ol’ Wallingford CT.
Celebrate Wallingford
Another successful Celebrate Wallingford in the books! It was great getting to talk to so many voters this weekend, and a special thanks to Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro for joining in the festivities.
Wallingford’s First Pride
Taking part in this event was one of my proudest moments of being a lifelong resident of this town. The community truly came together to drive home the message that Wallingford should be a welcoming place for everyone. I salute everyone who had the courage to speak or perform tonight; your stories remind us why celebrations like these are so important. A special thanks to Amy Bui for once again making this all possible. Record Journal article below.
By Faith Williams
WALLINGFORD — A local teen is bringing a Pride celebration to her town for the first time ever just before Pride month ends.
“My friends and I were saying Wallingford hasn’t had any sort of Pride event that I can remember as long as I’ve lived here,” organizer Amy Bui said. “We do have a lot of LGBTQ+ residents in Wallingford and I just thought they would want a voice, especially the youth.”
Bui has called for change in Wallingford before. She organized a Stop AAPI Hate rally in March following a fatal shooting in Atlanta-area spas on March 16. AAPI refers to Asian American Pacific Islander. Eight people were killed, including six Asian women. The shooter, Robert Long confessed to the shootings but told police they weren’t racially motivated. Long has been indicted on multiple counts of murder.
The rally was emotional for the teenagers that spoke out about their experiences as being Asian American in Wallingford.
The Pride rally will include singers from Wallingford and Cheshire as well as speakers. Local bakeries will be accepting donations in exchange for baked treats. Attendees are encouraged to bring signs and wear Pride clothes.
The organizers have been using Facebook to spread the word and the event already has over 50 people reported to be going with more people interested.
“I want this to be a celebration,” the Sheehan graduate said. “I think it’s important to make sure they know they have a voice and are being heard in Wallingford.”
Bui has had help from many of her high school friends and Alexa Tomassi, an exploratory candidate for Wallingford Town Council. Tomassi also helped Bui with the Stop AAPI Hate rally.
Tomassi said it was great and “brave” to see Bui and her friends get involved with various social issues.
“It’s great to see this new generation of young people be so involved in these things that are so important,” Tomassi said. “But at the same time realizing how much still needs to be done and that all of these issues are still so pressing for so many people.”
Wallingford Celebrates Juneteenth
It was an honor to work with the Wallingford Democrats to organize our town’s first ever Juneteenth celebration. Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to make this event happen, especially our guest speakers, Councilwoman Sonya Jelks and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro.
By Faith Williams
WALLINGFORD — Meriden City Councilor Majority Leader Sonya Jelks applauded Wallingford and Meriden for holding their first annual Juneteenth celebration on Saturday while also looking forward to future changes.
“It means so much that this country is finally acknowledging its history, its true history,” Jelks said. “We hope that we can use this moment, use this day, to continue to educate and work on irradicating racism and discrimination that has plagued this country since its inception.”
The Wallingford Democratic Town Committee collaborated with the Meriden-Wallingford NAACP for the celebration Saturday at Johana Manfreda Fishbein Park. From noon to 2 p.m., residents enjoyed music, speeches and refreshments including juice and cupcakes from Cupcakeitis, a Black-owned bakery business in Hamden.
Juneteenth is a holiday celebrating when Union Army General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, TX on June 19, 1865 to enforce the emancipation of over 250,000 enslaved African Americans.
This came three years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, which went into effect on January 1, 1863. Texas was the last state of the Confederacy to have slavery abolished.
John Connelly, a Wallingford resident and history teacher at Choate Rosemary Hall, attended the event on Saturday. He has been researching the history of Wallingford and contributing to Wallingford’s “Black Stories Matter” project since fall 2020.
“This is terrific, I think the timing is perfect,” Connelly said. “I think its one step in bringing an unknown chapter out into the open.”
Music by famous Black jazz artists like Etta James, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday played in the background and Sherri Wheeler, a Meriden resident, sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the Black National Anthem, to kick the celebration off.
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro also attended the event. DeLauro said she was so proud to be in the position to vote in favor of Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday.
“It really is a moment and I think a transformative moment in the history of this country.” DeLauro said. “It is indicative that we understand what has gone on in our society. There is no going back to normal, our role is to be able to go forward.”
The event ended with the reading of a list of enslaved African Americans found in Wallingford’s records in the 1700s. This list was compiled by Wallingford Historic Preservation Trust and is part of the “Black Stories Matter” project.
A bill designating Juneteenth as a federal holiday was signed into law by President Biden.
Lt. Governor Kicks off Day of Action
It was an honor to have Lt. Governor Susan Bysiewicz stop by our DTC headquarters today to kick off one of our best days of collective door knocking yet! With a rousing speech on the importance of getting our in the community and directly listening to residents’ concerns, our slate of candidates and volunteers were ready to go. She’s living proof of why it is absolutely crucial to meet with your constituents and to always keep that line of communication open.
On that note, if I haven’t rang your doorbell yet, expect to see me very soon!
SAVE OUR POOL Rally
Riley O’Connell Announces SAVE OUR POOL Rally
(WALLINGFORD, Connecticut) — In cooperation with the Wallingford Democratic Town Committee, Riley O’Connell, Democratic candidate for Mayor of Wallingford, has announced the upcoming Save Our Pool Rally, to be held June 5 (at 1PM) at the Wallingford Community Pool, at 739 North Main St Ext, Wallingford.
Once the largest outdoor concrete pool in the country, forty years of neglect from the current Republican administration has left the pool in dire condition. Against the bipartisan wishes of the Town Council, this important community center remains closed and in desperate need of refurbishment for the second year in a row.
“Growing up in Wallingford, I remember going to the pool as a kid,” said O’Connell. “The pool was a great place for young families and seniors alike. It brought businesses and people, and gave us a sense of community. I’m deeply disappointed our current mayor doesn’t recognize its importance—economic and otherwise—to the town.”
First opened in the 1950s, the pool embodies the civic investment so critical to driving growth in Wallingford. Over the first decade of its existence, Wallingford’s population nearly doubled as young families were drawn to the town, driving down the tax burden for residents and bringing new economic activity.
“Investing in the families and seniors of Wallingford should be an obvious priority,” said Wallingford DTC Chair Alida Cella. “The current mayor clearly doesn’t care about the young families, teenagers, and seniors who rely on important town services like the pool. He’s had almost forty years to demonstrate he’s interested in investing in our future, with nothing to show for it.”
As Connecticut emerges from the pandemic and demand for recreation and amenities like the pool skyrockets, Wallingford risks being left behind by the current administration’s disinterest in the future. Riley O’Connell represents an opportunity to move past the failed status quo, and fight for our future.
Millennials seize the day
Below is Lorraine Connelly’s latest piece on the Millennial candidates seeking elected office in Wallingford this year, as well as the greater trend of Millennial’s getting involved in politics across the country.
According to the Millennial Action Project (MAP), which tracks young people running for office nationally, record numbers of people under 45 are running for office. From 2018 to 2020 researchers tracked a 266% increase in the number of people who sought local and state offices.
This momentum continues for the 2021 election cycle in Wallingford, as five millennials (born after 1981) and one member of Gen-Z generation (born after 1996) are exploratory candidates for the Democratic Town Committee. They are Nicole Barillaro, Sam Carmody, Whitney Mooney and Alexa Tomassi for Council, and Riley O’Connell and Jacqueline McFarlane for mayor. The youngest candidate is 25, and the oldest, 37.While all generations are diverse and complex groups, millennials and Gen-Zers are racially and ethnically more diverse, progressive, and pro-government, according to the Pew Research Center. Pew’s President, Michael Dimock, notes that examining generational cohorts gives researchers “a tool to analyze changes in views over time. They can provide a way to understand how different formative experiences (such as world events and technological, economic and social shifts) interact to shape people’s views of the world.”
A commonality among these local candidates is their desire to have a hand in shaping policy that will affect Wallingford’s future. Among the six, only Carmody, a legislative and government relations aide for Lt. Governor Susan Bysiewicz and former staffer for Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, has experience as a political operative. Carmody, whose family has called Wallingford home for six generations, says, “Municipal governments are now dealing with many broader issues. I think it is realistic for our own town council to address larger issues that are very important to my generation including matters of equity, health care, and climate change.”
For Tomassi, a 2009 Sheehan graduate, running for office has been a longtime dream. She notes, “The time was right. After what we’ve all been through collectively with the pandemic and culturally over the last many months, it’s time to re-evaluate how we can cultivate and continue to grow an inclusive community, make sure our businesses thrive, and keep up with and invest in infrastructure.”
Like Tomassi, Mooney felt the pandemic exposed the town’s tectonic fault lines. A 2011 Lyman Hall graduate who has recently returned to Wallingford, Mooney says, “We should never go through a crisis again without town wide communication, texting programs, and regular leadership updates.” Another imperative for Mooney, addressing the elephant in the room –“racism.” Mooney who serves on the DTC’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee along with Jacqueline McFarlane, would like to initiate town-wide discussions and educational opportunities to help Wallingford move toward “a more anti-racist, equitable community.”
According to MAP, the increase in millennials running for office is evident in both parties. Republicans comprise 40% of candidates under 45 who ran for the House of Representatives in 2020. But a future tipping point is that millennials are more likely than other cohorts to identify as independent – they do not fit into the ideological box of either party.
Ideas do not win elections, votes do. So how to persuade those independents who comprise most of the Millennial demographic? Says Tomassi, “Millennials are communicators. We have so many avenues of communication – online and traditional media – that we can use to our advantage to collaborate and reach out to new demographics: underrepresented people, people who are traditionally non-voters, and people disillusioned by politics. Our access to different systems of engagement will help us mobilize to create better solutions, ensure more collaborative problem-solving, and bring new or previously unheard voices into important conversations that affect people in town.”
O’ Connell, whose family has also called Wallingford home for six generations, is the youngest candidate. A member of Generation Z, he notes, “Everyone in my generation has become completely disillusioned with politics because we’ve never been alive in a time in which politics actually worked, at least on the national level. The baby boomer generation has held political power in our country for significantly longer than any generation before, so we’ve all grown up only knowing the people in the same positions of power, more or less. In a way it can feel as if nothing will ever change or improve. In no case is that more true than in Wallingford.” He adds, “Winning the voters in my generation is about proving to them that not only can change happen, but it is right on the horizon.”
Aspiring stars on Wallingford’s political horizon, this group of candidates represents a growing youthful trend in political engagement. Remember, Wallingford once had the confidence to elect a 36-year-old as mayor, which to the generational cohort at that time must have seemed risky, almost unimaginable.
Lorraine Connelly is a Wallingford writer and resident.
Day of Action 4/17/21
Today was the Wallingford DTC’s first official Day of Action, and it was a resounding success! Once a month between now and the November election, all Democratic candidates for elected office in town, myself included, will be meeting up with volunteers for a unified door knocking effort. It is so important for us to get out there and hear the issues our residents need addressed, and thanks to our incredible volunteers we are able to multiply our efforts on these special days.
I’m out door knocking everyday, so if you would ever like to join me or one of our experienced volunteers, just reach out to us through this website’s contact page; the more the merrier! We hope to see you at our next Day of Action.
To Not Condemn is to Condone
The following is my recent LTE in the Record Journal. The protest itself was a truly outstanding event thanks to its organizers, and the counter-protesters failed to minimize that. However, it is still our responsibility to call out those who sought to disrupt this powerful message, as well as those individuals who did not use their own voices to condemn these actions.
Last Saturday was an inspiring display of solidarity outside of Wallingford’s Town Hall, as our community rallied behind a group of brave Asian-Americans who shared their personal experiences with hate.
While I commend Mayor Dickinson for attending, it is what he did not say that bothers me. When he began to speak, several pickups full of counter-protestors disrupted proceedings by revving their engines and yelling profanities.
There was no ambiguity about who these people were, they proudly flew their Trump flags, and yet the mayor continued with his prepared speech as if nothing was happening. As the local leader of the Republican Party for almost four decades, it is Dickinson’s moral obligation to condemn these acts for what they are — acts of hate — but when handed the opportunity to directly address these fringe members of his own party, he did nothing.
I do not believe these individuals represent the majority of Republicans or even the majority of Trump voters, but silence from elected officials is precisely what gives them the confidence to commit these brazen acts of bigotry.
For an example of how a leader should rise to the occasion, look no further than the response of William Tong, state Attorney General. The agitators returned during his speech, but rather than ignore them, Tong acknowledged what had occurred. He condemned their actions without hesitation, reflecting on how the moment serves as a poignant reminder of what it is like to be a minority everyday.
While a rebuke from Mayor Dickinson may now be too little too late, it would still be better than silence. Given the last 38 years of silence, however, I will not hold my breath. Instead, I draw hope from the courage displayed by the event’s young organizers, and their demands for a better future.
COVID Lawsuit Against Mayor Dickinson
Below is a link to the original March 6 story in the Record Journal that broke the news that a longtime town employee had filed a lawsuit against Mayor Dickinson for allegedly retaliating against her after she complained to the state human rights commission over work requirements related to COVID-19.
Record Journal article link (March 6, 2021)
I believe the reality of the situation was summed up well by fellow Wallingford resident, Ray Palermo, in his recent article LTE, copied below. Simply put, Dickinson’s behavior throughout this story is inexcusable, and now our town will be footing the bill as a result.
Record Journal LTE (March 31, 2021)
Town is ill served
Editor:
Consider a hypothetical situation: Your neighbor has worked 19 years as a mid-level employee of a $172 million business. When the pandemic hits, she’s expecting the company to adapt to reality and impose work from home options. But the CEO orders all employees to physically work in the office. Given she’s over 60, survived cancer and has a compromised immune system due in part to a lung disease, she requests an accommodation that most every other company is providing.
HR denies it, telling your neighbor to report to work or forfeit her pay, and she reports it to the State. Then the CEO of the company calls her into his office and tells her: No dice. And any changes to her hours will require his personal approval.
She files a lawsuit against the company, and the shareholders pay up.
Now consider that this hypothetical actually happened (Record-Journal March 26, 2021), but with some troubling role changes. Your neighbor works not for a callous corporation, but for the Town of Wallingford, and the intransigent CEO is the mayor. But here’s the kicker — the ill-served shareholders footing the bill are you, the taxpayers through direct payment, insurance, and insurance premium.
Wallingford is ill served by a mayor who doesn’t understand that part of his job is safeguarding the health of his own Town employees, and the health and financial well-being of all residents.
— Ray Palermo, Wallingford
Stop Asian Hate
Last Saturday was an inspiring display of solidarity outside of Town Hall, as our community rallied behind a group of brave Asian-Americans who shared their personal experiences with hate. I commend everyone who attended this important event, but above all else I congratulate the courage of these speakers and organizers. The responsibility of making Wallingford a more welcoming and accepting community for all should never fall squarely on the shoulders of our youth, and yet they carried this weight with the utmost dignity and grace; the least the rest of us can do is dedicate ourselves to joining them in building the better future they demand and deserve.
By Faith Williams
WALLINGFORD — About 100 people, including the mayor and a U.S. senator, attended a rally at Town Hall in response to the fatal shootings of six Asian women and two others in Atlanta-area spas earlier this month.
Mayor William W. Dickinson Jr., Sen. Richard Blumenthal and state Attorney General William Tong, who were in attendance, condemned racism and discrimination and praised the teens who organized the event for bringing awareness to the issue.
“Kindness is important,” Dickinson said. “If we all treated everyone with kindness, none of this would be. People needed to be reminded of that.”
Amy Bui, a Vietnamese-American Sheehan High School student, organized the Stop Asian American and Pacific Islanders Hate and Black Lives Matter protest Saturday that featured teenage speakers.
Robert Aaron Long, a 21-year-old white man, is accused of killing eight people. Four of them were inside two Atlanta spas and the other four were inside a massage business. According to police, Long has confessed to the shootings but say they weren’t racially motivated.
People in the crowd carried signs with messages like “Stop Asian Hate”, “End Violence against Asians” and “Black Lives Matter”.
Bui, along with classmates and other high school students, lined up on the steps in front of town hall to talk about their experiences as Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
“I am not happy to be here. I am scared,” Bui said. “Scared for my parents who own their own small business. I am scared for my little sister who broke my heart when she came home from elementary school telling me about the jokes her classmates made against her.”
Bui gave everyone in attendance a burning incense stick to hold in remembrance of the victims in the Atlanta-area shooting.
Heather Rae Gaydowen, 16, fought back tears as she talked about the jokes and taunting she has experienced.
“We were told to brush it off, to treat it like it just harmless jokes,” Gaydowen said, “But these jokes created an environment that allowed xenophobia and racism to become normalized in this pandemic.
“We must remember that we are stronger than any of the hate thrown at us,” Gaydowen added. “Our love, unity and respect for one another will always overpower the hate and fear that has surrounded us for too long.”
Wallingford Democrats Announce Exploratory Candidates
The Record Journal published a story about Wallingford’s Democratic Town Committee’s plans to endorse a slate of candidates this election cycle. I’m honored to be running alongside an outstanding group of candidates, who bring a level of passion and determination unlike anything we have seen before. I can already confidently say that this is going to be a great year for our town.
By Lauren Takores
WALLINGFORD — Democratic Board of Education member Patricia Pursell won’t be seeking re-election this fall, but hasn’t ruled out another run in the future.
Pursell, a retired physical education teacher who is in her fourth year on the school board, said Monday that she wants to spend more time with her family, including her seven grandchildren.
The school board, which meets four to six times a month, has been meeting virtually since the start of the pandemic. This has allowed Pursell to participate from wherever she is, but when in-person meetings resume at some point, she anticipates not having the time anymore.
“I’ve enjoyed doing it, I feel like I've really contributed,” she said. “I may some day go back to it, I don't know, but right now, the way my life is, I need to spend time with family.”
Pursell’s bowing out of the race comes as the Wallingford Democratic Town Committee is exploring which candidates to endorse for the local election this year.
Municipal offices on the ballot include the mayoral seat, the nine seats on the Town Council and and the nine seats on the Board of Education.
Each party generally runs a slate of six candidates for Town Council and six for the Board of Education — the maximum number of seats a single political party can occupy on each body, as stipulated in the Town Charter.
No endorsements will be made officially until the party’s caucus in July. There is an important deadline before then — the Town Clerk must file all candidate paperwork to the state Secretary of the State by May 6.
The Wallingford Democratic Town Committee is getting an early start, forming an exploratory candidate committee and reaching out to local Democratic voters.
“We want to know if the vision of the WDTC aligns with our voters,” party chair Alida Cella said via email Monday, “and ask our voters to come help us make that vision a reality.”
She added that the DTC’s vision includes investing wisely in schools, updating technology, not letting physical infrastructure, such as Community Pool, crumble beyond repair and helping small businesses by ensuring a town planner is in place and pursing grants.
Candidates seeking the DTC’s endorsement for Board of Education include current members Patrick Reynolds, Kathy Castelli and Mike Votto, as well as Maureen Reed and Mike Urban.
Republican Mayor William W. Dickinson Jr., 74, has been in office since 1984, racking up 19 consecutive terms.
For the mayoral race, the DTC is considering current Town Councilor Vincent Testa, Riley O’Connell and Jacqueline MacFarlane.
Testa, 61, challenged Dickinson in 1997 and 2011. He said Monday that he has “every intention of running for council again” but considers himself an exploratory candidate for mayor.
“I'm just exploring the possibilities like I do every two years,” he said. “Because we're approaching it the way we are, I thought it was important and fair to anybody else who's considering it to at least say, “‘well I'm thinking about it, too.’”
O’Connell, 25, left his job in Washington, D.C. as a paralegal specialist at the Department of Justice to focus on his campaign for mayor full time.
A Wallingford native, O’Connell graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall and earned a bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College, double majoring in political science and environmental studies with a minor in psychology.
“It's really planning for the future,” O’Connell said about what made him want to run. “We haven't really seen any of that foresight in our town government for far too long, and I think we're seeing the effects of that now.”
He said he’s very concerned with state and local population demographics, as more young people and young families leave the state.
“There's just not that many people that I grew up with in town that are still here,” he said, “people that very much love the town … but it just wasn't easy to find good paying, entry level jobs for everyone in the current dynamic that our town has.”
No one from Generation X or the Millennial generation has served as Wallingford’s mayor due to Dickinson’s long tenure.
MacFarlane, 36, moved to Wallingford from West Haven six years ago to raise a family with her husband and two children.
She works as a banking analyst for Transact Campus, but her education is in music — she has a bachelor's in classical performance and is a classically trained soprano.
She calls herself a “concerned citizen” and repeated many of the DTC’s new talking points about the state of the school facilities, lack of investment in town infrastructure and development of our downtown small businesses.
“Dickinson has been there since before I was born,” she said, “and I think it's time for for new leadership.”
MacFarlane would be the second woman ever to challenge Dickinson.
Lucille Trzcinski ran for mayor as an unaffiliated candidate in 2007, garnering 19.8 percent of the vote. The Democratic candidate that year was James Vumbaco, who came in at 22.8 percent.
Door-knocking has begun
Seeking DTC endorsement for Town Council are current councilors Gina Morgenstein and Jason Zandri, as well as Bruce Conroy, Alexa Tomassi, Sam Carmody, Nicole Barillaro and Whitney Mooney.
Mooney and Tomassi have started canvassing, going door to door surveying the community.
Mooney, 27, is a graduate of Lyman Hall High School. She recently moved back to Wallingford from Boston, although she’s still working remotely for YWCA Cambridge as a development and marketing manager.
She said it’s always been a dream of hers to get involved in local politics, and she’s been honing in on the Town Council for the last three or four years.
“I spent the last two years really educating myself,” she said, “and learning about issues that affect people, because I want to make change, and I know that the only way to do that is to learn and listen and then be at the table, be the voice for people.”
Tomassi, 30, graduated from Sheehan High School. A lifelong town resident, she works at the Yale School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics as associate communications officer.
She’s been involved with the DTC since 2018, volunteering and campaigning for others. A run for office herself has “always sort of been on my radar,” she said.
“In the last year, everything has changed,” she said. “Life is just not what it was. We've done a lot of things the same way for a long time in this town, and so I thought, what better time than now for a change.”
Wallingford has 29,734 registered voters as of Feb. 1, according to the town data.
Of those, 8,218 are registered Democrats, 6,357 are registered Republicans, 544 belong to other parties and 14,615 are unaffiliated.
Time for Wallingford to Embrace New Technology
I couldn’t agree more with Larry Morgenstein’s letter to the editor in yesterday’s Record-Journal. These are exactly the types of opportunities our town should be rising to rather than shrinking from as we have in the past.
A relic of the past?
Editor:
The failure of dinosaurs to adapt to change led to extinction and their fate of becoming fossil fuels.
In previous discussions the mayor, his administration and some councilors dismissed investment in electric vehicle charging stations as too expensive or as a passing fad.
At Tuesday’s Town Council meeting, Wallingford took a tentative step forward into the 21st century and a green future. Information was presented that there was an array of possibilities that encompassed everything from private investment to grants that would subsidize the installation of EV charging stations. There could actually be a possibility of no cost to the town or a possible revenue source.
The small step forward reached was an agreement for the Town to put together RFP’s to seek various proposals and grants. Hopefully it should be a start that ends with an installation of charging stations in various areas of the town.
Vision, innovation and adaptation are key to our town’s future. Our POCD calls for EV technology as a goal. Actual implementation of charging stations markets Wallingford as a destination. It markets us as a forward-looking town. It markets us as a town that attracts a younger and greener demographic. It sends a message we are forward-thinking and that we are not content to just survive, but to thrive.
Dinosaurs did quite well for a long time, but it didn’t last. Fossil fuels were key to development but times have changed and what once encouraged growth is now destructive to growth. Political administrations that coast on the status quo become history.
Once upon a time Wallingford embraced new technology and the benefit of a Wallingford Electric Company still pays dividends to the community. Isn’t it time now for Wallingford to make history instead of continuing to be a relic of history past?
-Larry Morgenstein, Wallingford