Dunn, Belden win; Hinger nabs other seat on Board of Selectmen

By Scott Benjamin

BROOKFIELD – When Steve Dunn moved to Brookfield in 1983 the municipal center on Pocono Road had just been constructed and some residents thought it was too big for a small town.

The Parks & Recreation Department move out of there to the former Town Hall years ago and other operations might go to different sites after the residents decide what to do about expanding police facilities and how to utilize the site where Center Elementary School has stood for generations.

When Bob Belden moved to town in 1988, Republican Bonnie Smith was in her first year of what would be a 12-year stint as first selectman. For 20 years – from 1987 to the 2007 election – Republicans always garnered the first selectman’s office, even though there were some brutal primaries for the nomination.

When Karl Hinger was greeting voters at the polls outside the 75-foot zone in November 2024, Brookfield Republican Town Committee Chairman Bob Guarino said to him, “You should run for first selectman in ’25.” Hinger recalls, “I laughed at him, because I thought that he was making a joke.”

Dunn, a Democrat, took 53.2 percent of the ballots on Tuesday to be elected over Hinger, a Republican, for first selectman. It will be Dunn’s fifth non-consecutive term as the town’s top elected leader – a position that pays just over $126,000 annually.

It marked the seventh time in the last nine municipal elections that the Democrats prevailed.

However, Hinger - by three votes over his running mate, Alan Donnelly - captured a seat on the three-member Board of Selectmen that will be seated early next month.

Belden – a former Republican who became an unaffiliated voter about five years ago – ran again on the Democratic ticket and will start serving a second term as one of the Other Selectmen. He previously has served as chairman of the Board of Education and the Board of Finance.

Dunn and Belden are retired business executives – Dunn at J.P. Morgan Chase and Belden at IBM.

They have underscored their managerial experience as an asset as the town embarks on either expanding the current police headquarters on Silvermine Road or moving to another site on the municipal campus or elsewhere, and the decision on what to do with CES, which closed in 2023.

Hinger, 31, works as an inventory manager and graduated less than a decade ago with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Western Connecticut State University in Danbury.

Said Belden, “It will be good to have him join [the Board of Selectmen] Steve and I have been around a long time. It will be good to have a young man join us and learn.”

Dunn served as first selectman from 2015 until late 2021, when he lost to Republican Tara Carr. However, he rebounded to take nearly 54 percent of the vote two years later and reclaim the position. However, that was well below his victories in 2015 and 2017, when each time he collected about 65 percent of the ballots, or in 2019, when he took 56 percent of the votes.

He annexed 2,964 votes in 2025 – 154 more than he had totaled two years earlier against Carr, who served in the U.S. Army for 25 years.

Carr. who annexed a seat on the Board of Selectmen in the 2023 balloting, participated in her last regular meeting on Monday night, and a resident spoke during public comment to thank her for her work over the last four years, starting with her two-year tenure as first selectman.

Regarding the election results, Belden said, “Turnout was a big factor. We got a lot of Democrats and unaffiliated voters.”

Recent voter registration figures indicated that Brookfield has 5,064 unaffiliated voters, 3,801 Republicans and 3,068 Democrats, as well as 211 residents that are registered with minor parties.

Hinger commented, [The results] could be a reflection of national issues,” an apparent reference to the federal government shutdown and the No Kings rallies protesting the administration of Republican President Donald Trump.

He said that, in retrospect, there is nothing "he would have done differently" in the campaign.

Hinger announced his candidacy on February 14 - early for a municipal campaign - and promptly raised campaign funds.

"I think we made some good decisions and pivoted well from 2023 [when the Democrats also swept the municipal offices]. I think there is a path forward," he said.

Belden said that is was a "friendlier" campaign than in 2023 - noting that some of the candidates on the Republican slate are friendly with him and Dunn.

The early voting turnout was only a fraction of voters that exercised its option in the 2024 presidential election, when Connecticut offered it for the first time.

Belden said a year ago there had been much more media attention on early voting, since it was happening during a presidential race.

"I talked to a lot of voters [this year] that didn't even know that early voting was happening," he commented.

Hinger, the vice chairman of the Zoning Board of Appeals, made frequent reference during the campaign to the surge in multi-family housing in the 198-acre Brookfield Town Center central business district that has emerged in the last decade. Brookfield, unlike many neighboring towns has lacked a New England-style business center.

The Republicans even posted lawn signs calling for a stop to the overdevelopment.

Said Hinger, “I am not sure whether or not that will happen with the way the results came in. But I will continue to raise my concerns.”

Belden said Hinger's message "resonated with some voters," but added, that many of the projects now under construction were approved more than a decade ago.

In 2024, under Dunn, the town imposed a moratorium on new applications for multi-family housing in Brookfield Town Center.

Belden has said there had been “too much, too fast.”

He said that moratorium will expire in 2026, but could be extended following dialogue between “a lot of players,” including the Planning & Zoning Commission.

Belden said the town has been grated two moratoriums from the state regarding the affordable housing requirements. He said it could apply for a third moratorium, but the state has never granted such a request.

All of the candidates for the Board of Selectmen said during the campaign that they opposed the proposed expansion of the Iroquois natural gas compressor station near High Meadow Hill Road. They each said it could post environmental hazards and noted that it is located near a neighborhood and Whisconier Middle School.

Belden said Tuesday night that the town has filed an appeal and a lawsuit against the recent approval by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection ruling to approve the expansion.

During public comment, some residents thanked the selectmen at their Monday, November 3, meeting for vigorously opposing the application for the expansion of the site, which has been in operation for about 15 years.

Regarding the ad-hoc Police Facilities Committee, Belden said the selectmen recently “authorized” money for that panel to do design studies. He said an update will be presented to the Board of Selectman in the coming months and the panel will seek input from residents.

Dunn said earlier this fall that the committee will make a recommendation next June and that proposal will be on the ballot in the November 2026 election. Dunn has said that by then the bond payments for the renovation of Brookfield High School, a project that was approved at referendum in 2003. He has said that not only will that lessen the bond load, but that payments for expanded police facilities would probably not start until at least 2028.