To the Editor:

Last autumn, two sincere, qualified and very capable men ran thoughtful, issue-oriented campaigns to become Killingworth’s First Selectman.  In a razor thin vote, Martin Klein prevailed.  His term as First Selectman began less than a year ago, and as the months have passed it’s been my pleasure to keep in touch with him, discussing a broad range of issues.  As I look back over where we’ve been in that very short time, I see the following:

Marty has finished a road re-configuration (Alder’s Bridge Road) and is at work on another (Green Hill Road and Route 81); he has completed a substantial open space purchase (Wettish) and obtained State consent to transfer a $500,000 grant from the (appealing, yet defunct) Town Center project to a new plan to construct recreation facilities on the Wettish land; he has repaired the roof on the Town Hall; settled two pesky lawsuits (one, brought by AFSCME to recover a share of the Town’s windfall from overpayment of insurance costs settled for a nominal amount, a settlement extremely favorable to Killingworth); established a traffic study committee; and, has moved forward with repairs of not one, but two bridges in need of immediate attention.

In short, Marty has fulfilled the pledge he campaigned on: to be a man of action, and get things done.

I’ll be the first to acknowledge that sometimes moving forward means leaving the agendas of others behind, and in a small town this is bound to ruffle some feathers.  There have been some bumps in the road (Lover’s Lane, if you’ll pardon the pun), but isn’t Marty simply doing what he promised?  Isn’t that why so many people pulled the lever beneath his name?

No First Selectman is perfect or can please everyone; I wasn’t, and didn’t.  During my time in office I never understood – and still don’t – why we tolerate such invective directed at our chief elected official.  True, when you accept the nomination, you agree to take all that comes with it, the good, the bad and the ugly.  Yet a year out of office, I still can’t believe there aren’t more civil and productive ways to settle our differences than breaking down gates to open roads, insulting our First Selectman in the press, or working to indict him by running to the Attorney General.  Most of the time, our elected officials treat us with courtesy.  When they don’t, no one benefits from a response that is equally disrespectful.          

Election Day 2007 is less than 400 days away, and the Marty Klein I know isn’t going to change who he is or the way he does things between now and then.  If you’re upset with our First Selectman, go to work now finding a better candidate.  Until then, can’t we just let the man do his job? 

David L. Denvir