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| Niles |
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| Mayor Eldridge |
It’s strange that voter turnouts are usually significantly higher for national elections than for local ones. Generally speaking, it’s local elections that have a more direct impact on people.
Windham is one of a handful of towns that calls a time out when it's a local election. In 2009 the last time we elected a mayor 22.3% of Windham's registered voters trudged out to exercise their rights. A full 14% less then Connecticut's average town, the tenth lowest turnout in Connecticut.
Perhaps a school board race doesn't seem as monumental as a race for the presidency, but when your child or grandchild is affected by a new curriculum or a change in leadership, it matters. Voting in new town leadership – people who will set local policy and impact your property taxes – certainly matters.
Windham is one of a handful of towns that calls a time out when it's a local election. In 2009 the last time we elected a mayor 22.3% of Windham's registered voters trudged out to exercise their rights. A full 14% less then Connecticut's average town, the tenth lowest turnout in Connecticut.
Perhaps a school board race doesn't seem as monumental as a race for the presidency, but when your child or grandchild is affected by a new curriculum or a change in leadership, it matters. Voting in new town leadership – people who will set local policy and impact your property taxes – certainly matters.
We've heard "economic development" whispered during the campaign process, this year, but not one word of Conn Light and Power abandoning Willimantic and taking tax revenues with them. We hear whispers of downtown improvements as politicians sit back and allow a recuperative high school, catering to 14-24 year old overage, under credited students from Windham and 18 sending communities to locate in downtown. Not a whimper, not a peep from our leaders. In what other town could this happen?
The incumbent mayor, Ernie Eldridge, is running as a consensus maker. I say he is a Democrat butt kisser. His opponent's allegiance is to her party first. For 15 years as chairman of the Windham Democratic Town Committee Dawn Niles sat back and allowed the same Democratic board of education members to run a once respected school district into an education sewer.
To her, the party comes first, students and her town follow.
All is not grim. This season there is a handful of Latinos running for Windham office for the first time. I'll be voting for all of them. Lord knows the white boys disappoint year in and year out.
John Monaghan
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