ORANGE — Unlike their counterparts on the national stage, the candidates for selectman in this year’s local election managed to get through a public appearance without slinging water or overt insults.
Thirty-seven turned out to hear from Richard T. Kwiatkowski and Richard P. Sheridan in a candidates night hosted by the Pioneer Junior Women’s Club, a charitable group, in the Orange Armory.
Polls will be open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday in the Orange Armory building, 135 East Main St.
Kwiatkowski, of 345 Mayo Road, is a former Orange town administrator and Charlton selectman. Sheridan, of 101 Daniel Shays Highway, is on the Planning Board and served three terms as an Orange selectman, overlapping with Kwiatkowski’s time as administrator.
The two are not on friendly terms.
Sheridan positioned himself as pro-business, anti-regulation and anti-secrecy in his opening statement, while Kwiatkowski spoke of maintaining the board’s role as the policy-making arm of government and leaving management of the town to capable hired administrators.
Sheridan, 69, has lived in town for 45 years and has owned a used car lot and a gas station and built another, worked as a contractor and real estate agent.
Kwiatkowski, 57, came to Orange as town administrator in 2001 and built a house here in 2004.
Asked about the powers of the board, Kwiatkowski said selectmen are responsible for making sure townspeople know what’s going on, holding accountable those departments they oversee and letting the public go after misbehaving boards and committees not under their authority, and it is important that all boards and residents are aware of their responsibilities.
Sheridan stressed the lack of authority of individual selectmen to act outside a meeting. “There has to be a curtailing of runaway selectmen going around like they have some authority,” Sheridan said.
Channeling questions through the moderator, residents focused on finances and development in the cash-strapped town.
Asked what the town development office could do to promote employment beyond minimum-wage jobs, Kwiatkowski said the director has been doing just that, the town could use a copy of Athol’s playbook following their recent successes, and officials need to publicize the good qualities of residents.
Sheridan also said the development director is hard at work with the Exit 15 re-zoning, but isn’t shutting off minimum-wage job creation, saying those jobs are needed, too.
Kwiatkowski said something needs to be done about the many empty storefronts, and the town should look to the example of those businesses that have succeeded.
Sheridan said he believes the downtown’s demise was brought on by regulations stifling redevelopment, which he hopes to reverse.
Both agreed on the need to prevent further hacking of the town’s computer system, with Kwiatkowski saying that this happened after his time.
In closing, Sheridan said that his record and his opponent’s are out there, and asked residents to vote for him if they don’t want everything to continue as it is. Kwiatkowski said there is a clear choice, and it is a question of vision and of knowing how both sides of the table feel, and defended his record. “I don’t think it was a bad 10 years, I think we did a lot,” Sheridan said.
Both decried low voter turnout for elections and town meetings.