IPN’s Walczak Formulates Marching Orders To Enhance Performance

By John Voket

If elected this November, the Independent Party of Newtown’s first selectman candidate Bruce Walczak has news for those elected or assigned to local boards and commissions: be ready for regular performance report cards.

In a recent campaign release, Mr Walczak said if elected, he “would implement a new reporting system for town departments that would encourage operating efficiencies and better communicate to taxpayers how their tax dollars are being invested.”

Mr Walczak said that prior to the beginning of each year he will ask each municipal department to develop a plan as to what they will accomplish during the next 12 months. This plan will lay out specific objectives along with committed dates to accomplish the objectives.

“Each department’s goals will be put up on the town website, something that is not done currently,” the IPN candidate stated.

On a quarterly basis Mr Walczak pledges to post “actual accomplishments...so the voters can see the progress being made on the annual departmental goals.” He would also continue the practice of holding monthly staff meetings, but with the added focus on whether the town is accomplishing the objectives it promised to accomplish to the voters.

“Coordinating all town department objectives and accomplishments will result in more efficient municipal services and the accomplishment of more goals with less tax dollars,” said Mr Walczak. “Duplication of efforts will be reduced and opportunities to work together will be increased.”

He acknowledged the Legislative Council’s Ad Hoc Facilities Committee, which is currently engaged in exploring the possibility of combining school and town facilities management, as well as developing a town purchasing director.

Mr Walczak said he would work with whichever other candidates are elected to establish annual goals for the Board of Selectman as well, reporting back to taxpayers quarterly about how his board is doing in meeting commitments. And the IPN candidate says he will reach out to each appointed and elected board to ask them to consider implementing the same process.

“Having specific goals for the year and working towards accomplishing those goals is how we will begin to efficiently manage the activities of the town,” Mr Walczak said. “This process will allow the voters of Newtown to understand how their tax dollars are being utilized and what benefits they are receiving.”

Having no apparent issues with the operation or business practices of the town’s school district, Mr Walczak instead said it is “time to reenergize our town government, the side that spends in excess of $35 million a year, with contemporary management performance tools.

“There is an old saying, ‘You get what you inspect, not what you expect.’ We must work diligently to drive higher levels of performance here in Newtown,” the IPN candidate added.

Mr Walczak noted that that building short- and long-range strategic plans for the town and associated implementation plans will einsure the community is moving in the same direction the voters want. But translating that direction into actionable steps by each town board and each municipal department, that are well-recognized by the public, is also a needed and necessary step.

“I am not reinventing the wheel,” said Mr Walczak. “Town departments work hard, and try to work efficiently. We do some planning. What I’m suggesting is that we can make government work better, more efficiently, and with a long-range vision in a way that is better understood by the voters.”