North Stonington is facing big turnover in leadership

New selectmen will have little experience

North Stonington — With the caucuses for upcoming municipal election only two months away, Town Hall leadership is at a turning point.

This election will be the first in decades without longtime former First Selectman Nicholas Mullane II, who has said he won’t seek re-election in the fall.

Neither will current First Selectman Shawn Murphy, who took over in December 2015 after Mullane’s 28 nearly uninterrupted years in that position.

That leaves a slim number of potential selectmen candidates with substantial municipal experience. So far, few have declared their intention to run.

While town officials say it’s normal for candidates to wait until the town party committees caucus in July to announce their campaigns, the election comes as the town is moving to construct the new Center for Emergency Services building and soon hopes to renovate Wheeler Middle/ High School and North Stonington Elementary school.

“You’re getting all those thrown at you at once, and have to keep the town moving forward. Someone (might be) coming in with a learning curve,” said Republican Town Committee Chairman Brett Mastroianni, who also serves as chairman of the town’s Economic Development Commission.

“It kind of feels like it’s not a good position for the town to be in,” said Selectman Mark Donahue, who also serves as the chairman of the Democratic Town Committee. He too said he is unsure if he will run again.

In part to keep continuity and experience at Town Hall, Murphy hopes a new finance and administration officer will be funded this year to keep town government moving, should less-experienced candidates be elected in November.

“I’ll feel more comfortable bowing out after my first term if we’re able to have this position in there,” Murphy said Wednesday in an interview at Town Hall.

A committee studying the government, convened last summer by the selectmen, re-envisioned the town’s leadership with two new positions: a stronger planning and community development officer, who would take the lead on land uses issues, and the finance job.

The first selectman then would be less involved in the day-to-day managerial tasks and take more of a strategic and policy role.

Part of that vision was fulfilled when Murphy hired Juliet Hodge in a new position that consolidated the Planning and Zoning Officer with the Economic Development Coordinator. Hodge wrote the town’s Plan of Conservation and Development when she worked for Town Hall five years ago.

But Murphy would like to see more support to complete projects he feels have stalled.

When he arrived at Town Hall, “there were a lot of open-ended things that were never finished,” he said.

The town, for example, has never established an Emergency Services Plan, a long process that sets performance standards for the town’s ambulance and fire companies. The absence of a plan has hampered town officials’ negotiations with the North Stonington Volunteer Ambulance Co., which struggled to respond to calls last year.

Under this altered leadership structure, the first selectman still would represent the town in organizations and work on projects, such as affordable housing proposed for the town’s Wintechog Hill property, but would be able to delegate the work so that “things would move at a better pace,” Murphy said.

He went as far as to recommend that the first selectman’s salary be lowered to effectively 30 hours a week, saying that the full-time finance officer and the cut-back first selectman still would accomplish more than he can on his own full-time.

However, the selectmen agreed to keep the position fully funded in the budget during their meeting Tuesday.

Mullane served as first selectman in all but two years from 1983 to 2015 and had made tribal recognition and sovereignty a focus of his tenure. He simultaneously served in that role and as a chief in the contract change department of Electric Boat until he retired from EB in 1995 to focus on his work as first selectman and handle recognition issues full-time.

He has spoken out against federal recognition for the Historic Eastern Pequot tribe, traveling to Washington to testify on tribal issues, and has been credited with keeping the expansion of Foxwoods Resort Casino at bay in the rural town.

Mastroianni said Mullane also was a welcoming, approachable first selectman in town, who greeted him with a “welcome to the area” packet of information when he first moved to North Stonington years ago.

In his most recent term as selectman, Mullane has advocated in the face of potential budget cuts for funding the town’s road-paving, drainage and tree-trimming work. He said the most recent budget season left him feeling frustrated, and he was beginning to enjoy retirement.

Murphy said he was fortunate to have experience working on the boards of education, finance and selectmen prior to his election to the first selectman job in 2015. Since then, he has made economic development and fighting state budget cuts his priorities.

“Nick did a lot of learning on the job,” Murphy said. But a new candidate might not have as much time.

Mullane also worries there will be few town officials nearby left with experience with tribal issues, with the potential departure of longtime First Selectman Robert Congdon in Preston, who said in 2015 that this will be his last term, and turnover in the mayor’s job in Ledyard.

“I’ve seen the trend in the last eight or nine years a lot of people who will come in for two or four years and leave,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Republican Town Committee is working on a change to its bylaws that would allow the party to endorse unaffiliated or independent candidates. It won’t be effective until after the caucus, but Mastroianni said it will allow town Republicans to accept a broader range of candidates. He admits it is rare for a person who isn’t independently wealthy, especially a younger person, to accept the first selectman job.

“How do you get a qualified person that’s not retired to run for a position or to leave a job where they currently have a salary for two years?” he said.

“The bylaws change will in the future make sure we get someone qualified” if no Republican chooses to run, he said.

A new first selectman will have to learn the statutes, regulations and guidelines governing the town. In particular, they will need to learn the stringent regulations governing the U.S. Department of Agriculture loan the town secured for both the $38.5 million school renovation and the Center for Emergency Services, which also received money from the Department of Economic and Community Development. Not to mention that every time the town wants to buy or sell something, the first selectman must write a detailed request for proposals and vet the contractors.

Likewise, incoming selectmen will need to develop relationships in Hartford to monitor the effects of potential budget cuts and advocate for the town.

“Our town hasn’t grown a whole lot (but) all the paperwork has,” Murphy said.

Both he and Mullane said they would like to see “new blood” stand up to take charge.

So far Patrick Chute, a 36-year-old Army veteran of the Iraq War and volunteer firefighter in North Stonington, is the only publicly declared candidate, though other names have been circulated.

After Chute announced his candidacy at Tuesday’s selectmen meeting, Mullane gave him a deadpan look.

“You don’t know what you’re getting into,” he said.