Democrats deserve the vote this year

It should be no surprise to readers of The Winsted Journal that this newspaper is endorsing the Democratic slate of candidates in this year’s municipal elections for the Town of Winchester. After two years of work under Mayor Candy Perez, the board has been faced with many challenges and opportunities, including hiring yet another new town manager, contending with an ongoing statewide budget crisis, addressing infrastructure needs and dealing with an underfunded, problem-laden school system. At each juncture, the mayor and fellow party members have attempted to bring forth positive, new ideas — only to be shot down by a Republican party that has seemed more interested in the politics of personal destruction than with promoting economic development or educational progress.The cases in point are numerous, but the key turning point in the current administration’s term was the battle over a Winchester Land Trust deal which would have brought in more than $400,000 to the town’s coffers, in exchange for selling the easement rights to a small group of properties. In essence, the town would have still owned the land in question, which adjoins local watershed areas, and the land trust would have secured the right to oversee environmental protection of the land. It was a simple deal that relied on historic precedents, but Republicans Ken Fracasso, Karen Beadle and Glenn Albanesius killed the deal, with help from Democratic Selectman Lisa Smith, who gave weak explanations for abandoning her supporters. Flash forward to this fall’s election campaign and it is Smith who is running as a so-called independent candidate, but she has taken her largest contributions from local Republicans who are opponents of — you guessed it — the Winchester Land Trust. u u uMuch more complicated situations have arisen with regard to the Winchester School District, which has been plagued with budget and infrastructure problems for more than a decade. Each year, as the school system is lambasted by critics for spending money on state and federally mandated programs, the education budget has been hammered from both the left and right. This year it was the Republicans who decided they would cut the proposed school budget to $1.3 million less than the state-mandated minimum budget requirement (MBR). In response, the state is investigating the town and will likely end up forcing Winsted to put the money back into its budget. Conveniently for the GOP, it will be the next elected board that will have to take responsibility for any subsequent supplemental taxes. Republicans on the Board of Selectmen, along with the now unaffiliated Smith, have gone to great lengths to criticize the Board of Education in public over ongoing fiscal difficulties; but in an act of cynicism and disdain for the system, the GOP has refused to put up any candidates for the school board this year. This is another obvious sign that party members on the Board of Selectmen are not interested in reaching a reasonable solution to the school system’s problems. Instead, they wish to play an adversarial role, loudly criticizing school board members in public but not attempting to negotiate reasonable solutions.Finding themselves in the minority now on a litany of other issues, Democrats on the Board of Selectmen have seen their efforts either ignored or thwarted by the new GOP-led majority. Selectman Smith has joined with the Republicans in opposition to Selectman Michael Renzullo’s efforts to restore downtown Winsted properties. Republicans now blame the Democrats for the town’s lack of economic progress, when they keep voting “no” on new ideas. The Republicans also clearly share responsibility for ongoing communication problems between town officials, but they act like they are never wrong.Democratic Selectman George Closson has been a voice of reason on the board, along with Mayor Perez, and has worked to keep selectmen’s meetings civil in the face of shouting and bullying from Fracasso, the GOP’s cantankerous leader. Fracasso’s partymates, Karen Beadle and Glenn Albanesius, have served as little more than rubber stamps for his ill-tempered diatribes. u u uIt is ironic that members of the Republican party have dishonestly suggested that Democrats on the Board of Selectmen have been responsible for inaction in town, as it is their four-member majority that has continued to vote against progress while so many storefronts have remained empty downtown. Businesses and new residents have been discouraged from settling here — in fact they are moving out — as the majority has done everything it can to shortchange the school district and create an unpleasant political atmosphere.Democrats only had a brief reign in the majority before being abandoned by Selectman Smith, a so-called “maverick” who is taking most of her campaign money from Republicans. As a result, the Democrats didn’t even get a chance to serve a full term before their plans were disrupted by the party of “no.” Incidentally, in a letter to the editor of this newspaper last week, local Republican supporter Porter “Skip” Griffin suggested that the one constant during the town’s past decade of problems has been Candy Perez. That is not true. The constant has been the Republicans taking over the majority on the Board of Selectmen and producing negative results.Mayor Perez and company — including new recruits Jim DiVita and the wildly popular former Mayor Maryann Welcome — deserve a true shot at putting their heads together to make this town and its school system a better place for everyone.It is critically important this year to exercise your right to vote on Nov. 8.

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