Llodra Balances Challenges With Confidence In First 100 Days

By John Voket

(This is the second part of an interview with First Selectman Pat Llodra on the occasion of her first 100 days in office.)

After 100 days on the job, First Selectman Pat Llodra expressed surprise at how fast the time had flown by.

To date, according to her “punch-list” of accomplishments, the first selectman has helped craft changes to the way the town presents fiscal information in both the budget development and the town’s five-year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) projections; a proposal to move the town to self-insured employee benefits; a revenue monitoring practice that resulted in a historic January budget amendment; a process refinement on how the Board of Selectmen solicit and appoint board and commission volunteers; the initiation of a Fairfield Hills Master Plan review; introduction of a program for facilities assessment; utilizing the current budget process as the starting point for dedicated long-range planning; and influencing a new era of collaboration between town and school leaders in the areas of insurance, energy conservation, and capital planning.

Mrs Llodra continued expanding on her policy of almost always seeking as many voices as possible before making a decision. And her conviction that “...once I come to that decision, I remain pretty confident about what I need to do.”

The first selectman said she has been fortunate because she hasn’t yet been faced with a situation where she has had to act without the benefit of consultation. And she has not been forced to assert her authority as Newtown’s top elected official in defense of the community, or her own convictions.

“But I’m certain that time will come,” she said. “The decision-making pace is pretty quick. And one is not always granted the opportunity to think through things; all the ramifications and unintended consequences, even when action is called upon in a quick turnaround. The response of government has to be immediate sometimes, but I have been able so far to stay one step ahead of the challenges.

“I just hope I have learned enough — if I have worked really hard in this job — to be confident about what is the right thing to do, and be confident and go forward hoping my knowledge of the town is enough to strike the right balance.”

Referring to her Republican roots, Mrs Llodra described herself as, “fiscally conservative,” and an overall conservative philosophy has served her well in her professional and political careers.

“I think I’m the right leader for this time because of that,” she said. “I’d love to be a leader in a time when we have lots of resources because I can also be a creative thinker. But I can constrain that impulse to go very far afield, particularly now that our resources are depleted.”

Good Fiscal Policies

She said her job, in that respect, is made easier because of the town’s respected level of fiscal policies and practices, but at the same time, executing those policies “has to be done with the values held dear to this community.

“It’s not all about the bottom line,” Mrs Llodra assured. “It’s about what we do with the resources. It’s my job to forward and support those values as best I can.”

Responding to an observation that she came into office on a local Republican groundswell of support, Mrs Llodra nonetheless agreed that she faced some of the similar, albeit more localized challenges from the global financial meltdown of 2008 and 2009, as Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama faced upon taking office one year earlier.

“I do have empathy for everyone who is in a position of (political) leadership at this point,” she said. “And I have specific empathy for President Obama, who inherited some challenges that were daunting — many not of his own making.”

But she said the empathy is reduced significantly when she sees national political leaders “creating debt that is insurmountable.”

“My generation has had a tremendous choice of resources — a richness of opportunity that was not present for our parents,” the first selectman observed. “I want those same opportunities available for generations to come. I don’t believe adding debt is the way to fix the problems. We’re going to be tested, and we have to be confident in the outcome, but patient because we don’t have the access to resources, or the things we had in the past, in the timeframe we want them.”

Transparency And Fairfield Hills

Mrs Llodra campaigned on a platform of increasing local government transparency, and enhancing an already robust program of community-wide, long-range planning. And she said after just 100 days in office, the town is “making headway” towards the challenge, and continuing to engage the community with the media tools at hand.

“We’ve made an effort to open the selectmen meetings to more public discourse. It makes people more comfortable in the process of engagement and takes on the flavor of mini town meetings,” she said. “I think its important to give people that opportunity to speak on issues.”

The first selectman said if she had the resources, she would seek to add a communications director to the town staff, who would not only assist as a spokesperson for the local government, but who would be hired with the experience to support and expand all the media tools currently available to bring local governmental and agency transparency to new heights.

“When I see other towns that have that position, I see they are where I would like us to go — a great website; utilizing the local newspaper, as well as telecasting. Right now we are trying to piecemeal it. But I hope in the future, we will get there.

“The education side struggles with the same thing,” Mrs Llodra continued. “We’re so busy struggling with the tasks of governing, communication is an add-on, it’s not our main function. Certainly we are cognizant of the need to do it.”

The first selectman said she is happy to have begun addressing, and aggressively responding to, a vocal demographic supported by her colleague and IPN Selectman Bill Furrier, calling for a change in the way the town is handling management practices at Fairfield Hills.

“I hadn’t thought of reviewing the (Fairfield Hills) master plan as an olive branch to those who have a political focus on it,” Mrs Llodra said. “I think of it as a necessary thing to help the community heal. We’ve had tremendous conflict over the development of Fairfield Hills — in great part because the resources were depleted, and there were other needs not being attended to. Whenever there’s competition for scarce resources you have elevated passions.”

She is confident, as the community has a chance to step back and take a long-term look, the town-owned campus will be a venue that unites the community towards a common good. “And for those who are still not going to support that, at least be silent in their criticisms,” she added.

Educational Pursuits

As a former acting high school principal and education advocate, Ms Llodra noted that current student population trends may have inadvertently caused the current high school expansion to be overbuilt.

“My personal belief — I don’t think we will ever be confronted again as a community, with a need to expand our high school,” she said. “We will grow again — there will be more young people sometime in our future — but we’re bearing the cost now for that population growth somewhere in the future.”

Mrs Llodra said, “If we could turn the clock back, I wish we hadn’t overbuilt. The challenge to manage that facility and to staff it, certainly the overhead costs could have an impact on program development and delivery.”

Having worked closely with the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) for many years, the first selectman also believes the community has already addressed the prime reason that NEASC gave the high school a warning.

“Our district was placed on warning primarily because of the facility,” she said. “I think there is recognition that we are an excellent school system, and that we have addresses the NEASC issues.”

Finally, Mrs Llodra was asked a hypothetical question: If you had a million dollars to spend exclusively on the town, what would you get? She was asked the same question in regards to the school system.

She said on the town side, she would first hire a planner.

“In this town, the first selectman is also the executor and the planner. Both those roles, to be done well — to the level this town deserves — deserves that resource.”

 For the same reason, she would also hire a purchasing agent to explore even greater savings potential in all areas of town purchasing practices. She would also add the aforementioned communications director, and then use the balance of her “million dollars” to equip them to “be the best they can be on behalf of the town.”

On the school’s side, Mrs Llodra said she would offer every single district employee — from part-time starting level facilities personnel to the teachers, staff and superintendent, an opportunity for professional development.

“It’s not just about class size, but the support we give people on the front lines so they can be better at their work,” Mrs Llodra said. “We need to invest in that human resource. We’re just not investing in them enough.”