Enfield Candidate Profile: Mike Ludwick, Town Council At-Large

ENFIELD, CT — Enfield's election season is heating up, and there are plenty of contested races with candidates eager to represent their town in November's municipal election. Enfield Patch asked candidates in the town council and Board of Education races to answer questions about their campaigns, and has been publishing candidate profiles each weekday as election day draws near.

Mayor Mike Ludwick, a Republican, is running for re-election to the Enfield Town Council, seeking an at-large seat.

Name: Mike Ludwick

Age: unanswered

Position Sought: Town Council at-large

Party Affiliation: Republican

Family: married, two daughters, a dog and 4 cats

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government: No

Education: MPA, University of Hartford. BS Political Science Western New England University

Occupation: Director of Group Underwriting, over 20 years

Previous or Current Elected or Appointed Office: Currently the mayor and member of the Enfield Town Council

The single most pressing issue facing our town is:

1. Continuing to develop a local business environment where it is easier for all businesses especially for small businesses to thrive and grow. We are currently working every day to make Enfield a dynamic health, wellness, and economic center of Northern Connecticut.
2. Developing alternative revenues other than local property taxes. The creation of the Eagle Academy and moving Head Start into the Stowe Early Childhood Learning Center is an example of providing a great service that will be reliant on those that use that service. Adult Education and the innovative Homelessness Prevention program are two other examples where the service will be provided on a self-sustaining basis. We need to continue to develop services that are self-sustaining and not solely dependent on local or state taxes.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post: I truly enjoy serving and working hard for the Enfield tax payers. I enjoy meeting with, and discussing all things Enfield with our residents. I am approachable, I have a sense of humor, and I respect everybody who gets themselves out of bed every day to do their part that makes Enfield such a great place to live.

List other issues that define your campaign platform: Strong Municipal Leadership

• We maintained our town's bond rating at AA stabilizing our long term debt despite an $8 million dollar cut by Gov. Malloy to our municipal funding.
• We funded the elderly tax credit ($750,000) after the state cut the funding, thus helping 600 Enfield seniors pay their property taxes.
• We implemented a 12-month budgeting process to review the budget line-by-line.
• We implemented"sinking funds" to have the funding streams needed to maintain our buildings rather than needing yearly referendums.
• We increased our collection of unpaid taxes to 98 percent and focused on getting back taxes paid and collected $700,000 of unpaid sewer fees last year alone.
• We installed cameras and increased police presence in town.
• We have modified and updated our zoning regulations and added a Blight Board to move blighted properties back onto the tax rolls.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job:

1. FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY: Balanced our budget, did not send out supplemental tax bill in 2018, reduced our expenses by approximately $7-$8 million dollars, maintained our Fund Balance, negotiated 0 percent Salaries with majority of our unions enabling the Town of Enfield to reaffirm our strong AA bond rating which lowers our debt liability onto the taxpayers.
2. NEIGHBORHOODS: Established Blight Board to allow residents an appeals process for bringing our properties up to code.
3. PARTNERSHIP: Established Joint BOE and TC Facilities Committee to review which town properties we consolidate into and which we will try to sell to bring back onto the tax tolls.
4. INNOVATION: Completely redesigned our Local Town Staff: Hiring Town Manager, Asst. Town Manager, Chief of Police, Director of Public Works, Director and Deputy Director of Community Development, etc. and just to highlight a few.
5. FORWARD THINKING Financing capital projects through Sinking funds which enabled the Town to start long over-due roofs including Henry Barnard.
6. CREATIVITY: Hired through competitive bids a Real Estate Firm to actively market blighted properties to get them flipped, sold, and back on our tax tolls.
7. MANAGEMENT: Using carrot and stick approach to collecting unpaid back taxes and fees. To date, collected approximately $800k in unpaid sewer fees and over $100k in unpaid car taxes.
8. ADAPTATION: Completely updated majority of our job descriptions across all departments in an effort to provide employees greater opportunity, and to provide our residents improved service at same cost.
9. SAFETY: Re-Established Joint Security Committee (BOE and TC), installed security cameras in Thompsonville with plans to install throughout the entire town, added additional canine for a total of 3 canines to help assist our officers especially locating drugs, and expanded School Resource Officer (SRO) program to cover all schools including parochial schools
10. LEADERSHIP: Standing up for our residents by our opposition to Tolls and to the "road diet" proposed for I-91 and Enfield Street. Improved our pavement road index for over 70 percent of our town roads which is one of the highest percentages within the State of CT
11. COMMUNICATION: Added additional public presentations before all regular Town Council meetings to provide more information out to our residents. The presentations are then immediately posted under Town Manager site on our town website. Released numerous press releases and Tweets from our Town Manager to better inform our residents.
12. FUTURE: Continue to develop public and private partnerships that will position the Town of Enfield as the Economic and Educational leaders of Northern CT.

The best advice ever shared with me was: "Lying is a sin" - my mom and dad, and "Rising waters raise all ships" - a friend

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions: Over the past couple of years through Republican leadership, the Enfield Town Council and the Enfield Board of Education have developed a healthy and productive working partnership. I believe that I have played a vital role in growing that partnership including serving as the lead on the Joint Insurance Committee. Working together we were able to save both the Town side and the Public Schools side significant money by selecting the proper funding arrangement for the health insurance program. Teamwork works best! I respectfully am asking for your vote on Tuesday November 5th for myself, Michael Ludwick and for all my republican colleagues on Row B!