Our Plan for Wallingford

This past May, the 3 incumbent Democrats on our Town Council (Vinnie Testa, Sam Carmody, and Jesse Reynolds) fought valiantly for more Board of Education funding against their Republican colleagues. Unfortunately, being outnumbered by 6-3, they faced an uphill battle, and the budget was indeed cut by about $850K - on top of more than $1.1 million in cuts last year. While serving on the Board of Education, Melanie Rossacci saw the impact of these cuts firsthand, and that’s a big reason why she’s now running for Town Council. These types of cuts have been all too common under Republican majorities over the past two decades, with more than $11 million in cuts to our Board of Education’s sustained budget proposals just in the last 12 years alone. These types of cuts are unsustainable and the proof is in the pudding - just over the past decade, our district rankings have dropped significantly and our proficiency scores are dead-last in our 24-town reference group. Our children and teachers deserve much better. With plans for new schools on the horizon and our current ones crumbling before us, we can’t afford to keep forcing our Board of Education to do more with less.

Our Democratic slate is committed to prioritizing our schools, as they have done time and time again, and it’s imperative that we provide our district the funding it needs to succeed–this will help to promote growth, benefiting our entire town in the long run. We must invest in our crumbling infrastructure. This last round of cuts to the Board of Ed budget meant that elevators at two schools will not get the upgrades they so desperately need. If those elevators break, it could be devastating for our students who depend on them – students who are likely already facing other challenges that not being able to get to class will worsen. This is just one example. We need a Mayor who will help the BOE develop and verbalize their vision and execute it – as well as fund it. If the Mayor and Town Council continue to undermine the BOE budget, how can we ever expect our school system to thrive? The high-school renovation/redevelopment project is long overdue; we wouldn’t be in this position if we had been renovating and repairing our schools as they needed the work. But here we are. There is no better time than now. We must move forward with a plan. We need leadership that is going to deliver the best educational experience we can provide. We need to make sure we have community involvement and buy-in at every stage, and this needs to be a top priority for the Mayor. We cannot afford to drag our feet any longer while construction costs continue to rise.

As for infrastructure, there are many projects that need addressing, but what ideas could we formulate that would be as ground breaking as Wallingford Electric Division was 100 years ago? Well, what about public internet access? We’d like to explore creating a Wallingford Internet Company that could do for the internet what WED does for electricity. The Internet has become as important as any other public utility, and really, why shouldn’t we offer it like any other service?

This is one of the biggest issues in our town right now. Wallingford has a 4.2% “affordable housing” rate, well below the 10% recommended by the state of CT. Home sales in Wallingford have dropped to record lows, and people across all demographics are struggling to find housing that’s commensurate with their income level. In spite of  efforts from the town to incentivize developers, our affordable housing rate has declined from over 5% just a few years ago. This is not just about low-income housing, either. How many boomers or Gen Xers do you know who are eager to downsize, but have nowhere to go? How many millennials or zoomers with college degrees are still stuck living with their parents, or (if they’re lucky) sharing a rental with multiple roommates? We need our elected leaders to take the lead on this crisis if we expect things to get better any time soon.

Our Democratic slate is committed to making this one of our top priorities, not just for seniors, but for all Wallingford residents. While senior housing is a crucial part of the puzzle, and the Community Lake Project will continue to be a focal point for our ticket, the simple fact is that we need MANY more options for homebuyers across Wallingford. Particularly those looking to downsize, and those looking to start their lives. We need to encourage a variety of housing options, including multifamily housing, mixed housing and ADU's — there are ways to provide more affordable housing and living situations for many families in Wallingford without changing the character of our town. We need to take a hard look at any zoning regulations that might be considered antiquated and counterproductive to growth in Wallingford. During their time on the Planning & Zoning Commission, Jeff Kohan and Bryan Rivard have been influential in the push for more affordable housing options, and our entire slate is committed to making this issue a priority. We will also work to promote high-efficiency housing to reduce the cost of heating and cooling for residents in town. Under Democratic leadership, our Mayor and Town Council would work closely with our Planning and Zoning Commission to explore options to increase housing for ALL income levels in Wallingford.

There are many opportunities for revenue in town. First of all, we need to take advantage of any and all grant money that might be available to us. We have missed major opportunities in the past for all sorts of projects, including rebuilding our schools. On the industrial and commercial sides, we are seeing far less revenue for the town compared to a decade ago. I’d like to see us reorganize our Economic Development Commission and move to a stronger “town planner” model of government to combat this. We should be actively recruiting dynamic businesses to Wallingford to grow our tax base, using our central location and Wallingford Electric Division to our advantage. Finding a new owner for the long-vacant Bristol Myers property would be a top priority. I would also be open to exploring PILOT programs with some of the well-endowed entities in town that pay no taxes. Perhaps most importantly, I would NEVER veto a revenue-generating opportunity for Wallingford that has been approved by our Planning and Zoning Commission and/or vetted by our Economic Development Commission. We need an administration that will work proactively across different sectors to make sure our Grand List is equitable and sustainable for future generations of Wallingford residents. Homeowners are far too tax-burdened under our current Grand List, and it’s time to build a more sustainable one for Wallingford.

I’d like Wallingford Electric Division to stabilize and future-proof our energy costs by incentivizing and installing solar over every roof and parking lot, generating clean, free (except for the cost of materials and installation) energy that will power the town for 20 years or more and can be recycled and repowered. A solar panel recycling plant in town would be ground breaking and generate jobs. I would also like to see a food composting business partner with our local restaurants and schools to take their food waste – maybe for a fee but for less than the garbage company – and use those food scraps to create compost, or perhaps natural gas for cooking, power, or heat. I also think we could beautify areas of town with contour swales and rain garden-like retention basins in key places to reduce the load on our water division, decrease water pollution, and prevent flooding where the potential exists. We will fight to keep Wallingford clean and beautiful and make sure that local companies are doing the same in our backyard. I also believe we owe it to the next generations to address our relationship with plastic waste. The fact that we continue to pump it out with no solution is incredibly disheartening, to say the least. It’s an environmental catastrophe that no world leader is taking seriously enough. I hope we figure out how to shut it off and reverse the damage.

The fight against bigotry and injustice is as urgent as ever, and we will always stand up to ensure our friends and neighbors in the LGBTQ+ community are guaranteed the same basic rights as anyone else. And how often we forget that just 58 years ago, the Supreme Court forced 16 states to allow interracial marriage, or that the March on Selma was only 60 years ago. Meanwhile, from Los Angeles to Meriden, immigrant communities across the country are being targeted with cruel and unconstitutional attacks from the federal government. As ICE continues to wreak havoc on law-abiding (and tax paying) families everywhere, we have a civic obligation to protect our neighbors and broadcast their constitutional rights widely. We cannot tolerate systematic injustice in our own backyard–everyone has a right to live with dignity in the United States of America. The basic freedoms that American heroes like John Lewis and Harvey Milk fought for are not negotiable in a democratic society!

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

While this might sound cliche, it’s an unfortunate fact that Wallingford has seen a lot of political infighting in recent years, while also developing the reputation as a “backdoor town” due to a lack of transparency. This is a disservice to taxpayers and counterproductive to any tangible progress. Our Democratic slate is committed to working as a team and always putting Wallingford first. On top of possessing impressive and diverse professional backgrounds making them well-equipped for politics (researchers, Fortune-500 execs, and grant-planners, just to name a few), our slate of Democratic candidates also share deep local roots. Sam Carmody, Jesse Reynolds, and Melanie Rossacci all grew up here and continue to live in town after all these years, and Jeff Kohan, Vinnie Testa, and Bryan Rivard are all decades-long Wallingford residents who have raised their own families here. Our candidates all love our town and share a unified vision for Wallingford’s tremendous potential moving forward. They also recognize it will take teamwork, and not egos, to get there. To quote Melanie Rossacci, “This isn’t about politics - it’s about making sure Wallingford is a place where families can thrive for generations to come. It’s about making Wallingford a place that everyone wants to call home”.

At-large voting was outlawed on the state and federal level 100 years ago, yet this is how we vote in Wallingford. That’s a problem, because at-large voting unfairly benefits incumbents and those with name recognition (or money to buy name recognition). The system does not ensure that the best candidates are winners. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a Town Councilor who represents your neighborhood – just one person who represents you at the town level? Right now all 9 Town Councilors are directly responsible (or not) to all, and that doesn’t always work out so well. When everyone is responsible sometimes it means no one is responsible, and we need to be able to hold all of our elected representatives accountable. We also need to look at the balance of power between our Mayor and Town Council carefully. The Mayor should obviously have some power, but right now the office holds way too much power–the Mayor can essentially override anything, from a referendum to a Town Council veto. Under a district voting system, our representation would be far more equitable across different demographics and neighborhoods across town. This would only be a positive for our town in the long run, allowing for more competitive races which promote more talented candidate fields.