Editorial: Thank You, Dionna and Amy

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Take a minute to thank Dionna Carlson and Amy Murphy Carroll.

Two of New Canaan’s most capable community volunteers raised their hands this summer because they’d grown concerned about the approach, tone and direction at the top level of our municipal government.

Turns out nearly eight in 10 Republicans agreed.

Yet at the time that Carlson (a Republican) and Murphy Carroll (a Democrat) announced, it was only rumored that the incumbent first selectman would seek an unimaginable fourth term, which of course he did. 

Agreeing, if it came to it, to face off against someone with a track record of slighting perceived enemies required considerable strength and resolve. (We give credit here, too, to Republican Kimberly Norton, a Town Councilman who threw her hat in the GOP Caucus ring.)

It also required a willingness to absorb discomfort for the good of the town. We believe that both Carlson and Murphy Carroll agreed to challenge for the first selectman’s office for the right reasons. We’re grateful to them for safeguarding the community we love.

That said, we have a contested race for New Canaan’s top job. Here’s how we’re looking at it.

We’re looking for three qualities in New Canaan’s next first selectman: collaboration, strong management and financial acumen.

Collaboration—We’ve seen what happens when important decisions are made without input from the public or members of our elected and appointed municipal bodies. It’s not just a question of tapping expertise, such as that which the Utilities Commission is exercising now or the Affordable Housing Committee hopefully will exercise in this life. We’ve seen the head of the town devise plans, out of the public eye, to build a new police station on a baseball field at one school and erect a cell tower behind another (and then advocate for those proposals despite opposition from the public as well as other town officials). Our next first selectman should have the wherewithal to seek input, brook suggestions, work with others and build consensus.

Strong manager—The first selectman has limited span of control in overseeing a group of experts in New Canaan’s municipal department heads. We think a critically important part of the first selectman’s job is to hire the best people for those positions, support them so that they can do the best job for the community and then let them work. Again, we’ve seen what results when that doesn’t happen. Morale at Town Hall is low. New Canaan needs an approachable, respectful leader for our valued municipal workers.

Financial acumen—New Canaan taxpayers’ fixed costs have risen under the current administration with the addition of several new positions at Town Hall, such as grant writer and paid emergency management director (formerly a volunteer position, locals may recall). We’ve seen unexpected costs and overruns with capital projects such as The Playhouse and the ADA fixes at Waveny House, among other places. Members of the Board of Finance have complained repeatedly about not receiving the documentation they need to make timely decisions on spending. We want a responsible, tight-fisted, transparent first selectman who understands finance.

Here are some of our thoughts on the two candidates vis-a-vis these qualities:

Collaboration—Both candidates have demonstrated an ability to work well with others, Carlson in her eight years on the Board of Education, including three as chair, and Murphy Carroll in 10 years on the Board of Finance. Murphy Carroll additionally co-chaired the diligent Buildings Evaluation & Use Committee, an appointed body that six years ago produced a comprehensive and useful—and basically ignored—study of town-owned structures. Carlson told us that she believes in “teamwork, collaboration and soliciting the expertise of leaders and experts.” Murphy Carroll said New Canaan must “actively seek and engage the input and expertise of all our citizens as we tackle challenges and realize opportunities irrespective of political affiliation.” Both good answers to a question about management style. 

Strong manager—There’s little in the way of track records here in town to go on in this regard, and we sense that both candidates are capable of crossing from decisive to headstrong in dealing with others. We do note that in chairing the Board of Ed, Carlson collaborated daily and successfully with the superintendent of schools, though the first selectman job requires a different type of oversight—whereas the school district has a kind of “CEO” already in place in the superintendent, the next first selectman doesn’t. We also note that Murphy Carroll has helped manage at least one major capital project successfully as a member of the Saxe Middle School renovation/expansion (on time, on budget), and is part of what appears to be another successful team bringing in the Police Department renovation (a project that’s expected to get underway this month after years of planning). 

Financial acumen—Both candidates are highly qualified in this regard, Murphy Carroll even more so, given her decades of experience in municipal finance specifically. Murphy Carroll as a finance board member also has been looking deeply at annual municipal department spending plans for a decade. We like her call for more controls in capital projects. Carlson also has years of experience as a professional in finance, and while on the Board of Ed she helped put together the largest portion of the town’s annual budget, giving her unique insight. Her priorities include “keeping bonded indebtedness at a manageable level, maintaining our AAA credit rating and a low mill rate.”

The two candidates have some things in common—for example, they’ve both said they oppose a cell tower at West School. There are also real differences between them.

We preferred Carlson’s more decisive response in our podcast to a question regarding improperly hired staff at Town Hall. We also liked that Murphy Carroll in her podcast shared concrete ideas for what to do on the first day of the job, and that they included not only meeting the staff at Town Hall but maintaining a visible and continually updated list of major priorities in the first selectman’s office. 

Carlson appears to us to be a highly independent and clear thinker, while Murphy Carroll strikes us as a straight shooter who is thoroughly nonpartisan—to the point where she operates on the finance board as an unaffiliated person (note that she has received endorsements from prominent Republicans). They’re both no-nonsense.

In our opinion, Carlson provided a more specific answer to how she would start to tackle New Canaan’s affordable housing issue (another moratorium) at last week’s League of Women Voters debate. In our view, Murphy Carroll had a better answer to a question at the debate about bringing more unaffiliated voters into municipal boards and commissions, saying that “not working aggressively to include everybody in government is leaving a tremendous amount of talent on the side… I think it makes people feel less connected and less included in their community.”

We agree, and we think there’s plenty of room for the next first selectman to open up Town Hall and government generally to be more inclusive of the community. 

We would expect Carlson and Murphy Carroll to do just that. We’re not labeling this opinion piece as an “endorsement” because we don’t have a strong enough preference between the two candidates and don’t want to manufacture one—for us, Carlson and Murphy Carroll share an essential quality of being “not him,” and we are grateful.

As we signaled in endorsing Kevin Moynihan in 2019, an effective leader must represent all of New Canaan and not show preferences—in appointments, chairmanships or anywhere else—based on party affiliation. That includes not just overt partisanship but also the slimy kind that political establishments tend to like. We don’t expect either candidate to fall into a trap of partisanship. 

Polls open at 6 a.m. Tuesday. Here are some resources on both candidates for New Canaan’s highest elected office:

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