Waterford finance board race attracts varying approaches
Waterford — Capital projects, uncertainty over current and future state budgets and pending decisions by Dominion Energy on the future of Millstone Power Station are weighing on the minds of the people running for three open spots on the town’s Board of Finance.
The election on Nov. 7 could shift the balance of the seven-member board from the Republican majority, or it could deepen the GOP dominance the board has seen since 2009.
The Board of Finance is involved in all spending and taxation decisions for the town. The board amends the general government budget proposal submitted by the Board of Selectmen each spring in a weekslong process, simultaneously evaluating and amending the budget the Board of Education proposes.
Republicans are hoping to get two incumbent board members re-elected: Ronald Fedor, who is running for a fourth term, and Norman Glidden, who is running for a third.
A third seat is up for grabs after Democrat Elizabeth Sabilia said she would not run again, choosing instead to run for a seat on Waterford’s Representative Town Meeting.
The Board of Finance race has brought together veterans of Waterford politics and newcomers to the town’s ballots.
A third Republican, Mark Geer Jr., is vying for one of the three positions, as are three Democrats — Joanna Eldridge, Joseph Filippetti and Glenn Patterson — and one Green Party candidate, Kevin Kelly. Eldridge has not run for public office in Waterford before, while other candidates have held positions on smaller town boards.
Eldridge, according to a biography on the Waterford Democrats’ Facebook page, has lived in Quaker Hill since she was a child and became an advocate for veterans and their spouses when her husband was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress
disorder and a traumatic brain injury and later died.
Fedor, a regional director of operations for Subway, said he was running for the seat on the Board of Finance again because he wanted to maintain a sense of stability and keep a Republican majority that would work well with Republican First Selectman Daniel Steward.
Filippetti is a bank project manager who serves on the Zoning Board of Appeals and has been the president and treasurer of several local athletic organizations.
Geer is a systems administrator for the town of Waterford and an almost lifelong town resident who said his choice to run for the seat was a “last-minute decision” when town Republicans approached him to run.
Glidden, a retired Waterford police officer, said his focus on the board has been on supporting the town’s elderly residents and planning for capital projects.
Kelly, an administrator at the University of Saint Joseph, ran for the school board as a Green Party candidate in 2015.
Patterson, a Democrat who ran in 2015 for the Board of Selectmen on a ticket with Peter Davis, said he would be focused on planning for the possibility that Dominion prematurely retires the two reactors at the Millstone plant amid squabbles over legislation that would change the company’s position in the state energy market.
“Change is coming to Waterford,” he said. “Dominion is planning for our future, we’ve got to plan for ours.”
Each member of the Board of Finance represents the whole town and is elected to a fouryear term. The four other current members not on the ballot this year — Anthony Jessuck Jr., Cheryl Larder, John W. Sheehan and James Reid — will be up for re-election in 2019.