Brumback: Town's Future "Challenging But Positive"

The future of Southington could go in many different directions, but Garry Brumback has a plan. This week’s edition of Southington Heartbeat gives a glimpse into what lies ahead for the town.

Q: Seven months into your tenure as Southington Town Manager, how do you see the priority of issues requiring your attention?

Brumback: Rarely are there one-dimensional answers to the challenges confronting us. But my top four or five would be first to bring the town’s technology into the 21st century. We’ve already taken our first steps to get that underway. We need to begin to identify and establish a plan to tackle our infrastructure challenges, i.e. roads, the sewer system and town facilities. 

I see the town as a customer service organization. I also have very high standards as to how to provide those services to our citizens. So I’ve got to ensure that we’ve got the right people, the right equipment and the right support, doing the right things.

This town is extremely frugal in its willingness to pay for government services. My first commitment is to facilitate a townwide community discussion to have the citizens define what they want and to what level of service. I don’t think that’s ever been done before. The rest develops from there.

Q: What impressions do you have of Southington as a community thus far and can you provide illustrations of how they came to you?

Brumback: My first impressions of Southington are almost exclusively positive. It’s a beautiful, very well kept, successful and fundamentally sound community. It’s a very giving community.

I’ve seen the people of Southington rally around special events such as the “Southington Remembers 9/11” project, as an example. The community rallying around the Mehovic family who tragically lost both their parents, and similar situations, have been really impressive.

The community has its priorities straight. People are focused on the young folks.  There’s plenty of opportunity for them here to be engaged in the S.T.E.P.S. program, the YMCA, Camp Sloper and our schools to mention but a few of the advantages in Southington for our youth. 

Other communities I’ve seen have actually neglected their young people by assuming they’re just going to come along. Southington, however, is active and forward thinking in developing its boys and girls.

Now, as I’ve said, the community is very frugal.  That’s one of its challenges. We spend extraordinary amounts in developing an infrastructure. But, once we build it, we must be sure to maintain it. We probably haven’t done as good a job at maintaining as we could have. 

That’s not to assign blame but to set the stage for things we need to start doing going forward. 

Q: With such challenging, sometimes urgent needs, the cost and time to properly address them, what is your plan of attack and what period of time do you foresee in getting plans in place?  Are you considering a master plan or a checklist of priority projects?

Brumback: A master plan implies that it’s all-inclusive. I doubt that I’m going to be able to do that but certainly there’ll be an over-arching plan with subsets. We are pulling that together.

To begin, we need to identify the issues. As I already mentioned, one of the first is the state of our current technology, which is antiquated almost to the point of non-existent capabilities. So that’s first.

The next thing is capital improvements: again, roads, sewers, facilities and equipment. We’re doing that now with the intention of merging them with the needs of the Board of Education so that we can put them through the appropriate review and political process. 

Right now, I don’t know how much funding that’s going to require but the work we’re presently doing is part of a developing plan. I hope to have that plan completed in time to incorporate it in the next budget year process, i.e. in the period of January through March 2012.

Thus far, I’ve had nothing but support from the town council, the various boards and committees and the Board of Education. As for a timetable, conservatively speaking, we’re probably looking at a 15 to 20 year period to fully implement it.

Keep in mind that our school’s capital needs are huge so the real challenge is in meeting those needs along with the town’s capital and infrastructure requirements, which I’ve identified apart from education.

It will become my job to propose a plan that meets the priority needs of the people of this town, go out, market it and implement it! 

As the interview continued, Brumback expressed deeper insights into the kinds of challenges and opportunities that lay ahead for Southington, including the present state of the economy, the prospects for funding our needs and various scenarios that could follow. Brumback, however, answered each question with a positive but realistic outlook. 

Be sure to check back in the weeks ahead for a final look at Brumback, Southington and what lies down the road.