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Thank You, Joe

After eight years having him in office as first selectman, we’ll soon be saying goodbye to Joe Mazza when he retires at the end of his term.

Our town owes him and his Republican team a debt of gratitude for pulling us back from the fiscal brink, after a period when the Democrats had complete control of Guilford’s administration.

Inevitably, it seems whenever there’s one-party Democrat control, fiscal disaster is the result. Just look at the mess in Hartford—both the city and our state government bankrupt, and we’ll have to pick up the tab.

In Guilford’s case, despite large annual tax increases culminating in a 6.9 percent proposal in 2009, there was never enough to satisfy Democrat spending so they irresponsibly spent most of the town’s rainy day fund. This resulted in us losing our triple “A” credit rating and put up our debt servicing costs. Remember, at this time we were moving toward taking on our biggest debt ever, for the new high school.

Fortunately for us, we elected Joe Mazza and his Republican majority to the Board of Selectmen, and through prudent management they restored our rainy day fund and recovered our top credit rating in time to save taxpayers millions of dollars into the future.

It should be noted that despite our tax dollars being carefully spent, services have still been improved with no layoffs, and of course we have the new high school.

Thank you, Joe, for bringing sensible and responsible Republican governance to our town’s administration.

Now our town has been restored to fiscal health, we should be very careful in selecting our future leadership. This especially now, when we anticipate losing most or all revenue from the state and are threatened with having to pick up the tab for teacher pensions.

David Roberts

Guilford