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10/17/2017 12:00 AMDemocrat Lauren Gister doesn’t feel that a two-year term has been enough time.
“It is very difficult, if not impossible to take a project or issue from start to finish in a two year term of office,” she said.
“When I came into office, I was tasked with finishing Phase I of the Main Street Project, getting through the State replacement of the Main Street Bridge, and inherited a partially completed schematic design for a revitalized landscape, playground, drainage and new library at North Quarter Park.”
She believes that there is a lot of good and meaningful work to be done still and “that the idea to revitalize the park and provide a multi-generational space accessible to all residents could be the catalyst to spark many positive results, including attracting new families to town and providing a community gathering place for both casual interaction and multi-faceted programming.
“This is not my grandmother’s library, it needs to be an elastic and future looking resource,” she continued. “How we do it and how it gets paid for are really the questions at the moment.”
Regionalization, for Gister, is working together to meet common goals and with the notion that many are stronger than one.
“We already do this in many of our organizations—sharing equipment such as street sweepers or speeding alert signs, sharing personnel [Chester and East Haddam share an assessor], or having common agencies that we support in a communal way [Tri-Town Youth Services, for example]. These things, when planned and used properly, are ways to make our tax dollars go further and strengthen our abilities to care for our residents.
“I personally believe that full regionalization of the school districts may be possible at some point in the future, but that it only really makes sense if there is substantial cost savings to the taxpayer without jeopardizing the quality of our education or our beautiful and warm local elementary school,” she added. “I don’t know if that will happen, but if it is to be explored in the future, it cannot be imposed from on high—it would need to be a holistic community discussion with buy-in on every level.”
She doesn’t think the conversation is there at the moment.
Can Chester can weather the state budget storm? Gister believes it will.
“Luckily, but not by luck, Chester has had a careful and conservative spending policy for many years. We have been disciplined about keeping our rainy day fund at a moderate level to provide emergency funds in the case of a natural disaster, hurricane, etc. In this year’s budget, we knew that we were likely to get a decrease in state funding, so we budgeted accordingly,” she said. “What is in the governor’s emergency order far exceeds the amount of decrease we expected, however we will not really know what the situation is until we actually have a state budget. In the worst case scenario, we would probably cover the difference with a balanced combination of measures, including using a portion of the rainy day fund along with only that supplemental billing or tax increase as is absolutely necessary.
“I am hoping that, if we are to continue losing state revenue, that the legislature will find a way to do that gradually so that we can prepare and adjust accordingly, instead of a massive wipe out of eight percent of our revenue all at once, which I believe is irresponsible and will cause more problems than it solves,” she said.
“This is our town, not a corporation—towns are people. My job is to care for them in the ways that count—health, safety, infrastructure, economic security, quality of life, education, recreation, and others,” she said. “I think that Chester folks know I am listening to them and hope to continue to serve their interests for another term.”