Town’s Growth Merits

A Town Manager

To the Editor:

Our first selectman, Herb Rosenthal, has been under attack recently from several people and groups in our town. Some are claiming that he has not been cooperative with individuals and organizations seeking to gain information regarding Fairfield Hills. Others are accusing him of attempting to push through a large spending item to build a new town hall, motivated by selfish and egotistic reasons. There are also those asserting that a collusion exists among the selectman and the Board of Selectmen to conduct governmental business in a vacuum, in order to avoid opposition to their pet projects.

I don’t know how much of the rhetoric being circulated is true and how much is without merit. What I am convinced of is that town business should be administered by a professional town manager. There are many towns which have opted to be governed by a legislative council and town manager, who is hired under contract, much the same as is done with the superintendent of schools.

Newtown is growing every year along with our problems and our budgets. Governing is no longer a simple matter as it might have been decades ago. On the contrary, it becomes increasingly complicated each year and politicizing the process has to stop.

Limiting the politics to the broader spectrum of a legislative council is enough politics for a town of this size. It is time to move to the town manager/council concept and let a professional administrator, beholden only to the council, get this town to run more smoothly and less expensively.

There are some people asserting that Mr Rosenthal wants a new town hall “edifice” as a self tribute to his terms in office. I don’t know if this is true but let us begin to give serious consideration to a better way of managing our government before the bronze plaque bearing the name of the First Selectman is affixed to a new building.

George Caracciolo

Schoolhouse Hill Road, Newtown                     December 26, 2006