2025 Patch Candidate Profiles: Stephanie Summers​, Willington Board Of Finance

WILLINGTON, CT — Stephanie Summers is running for the finance board in Willington.

Candidate's Name:
Stephanie Summers

What office are you seeking?
Board of Finance member

What town do you live in?
Willington CT

Campaign Website
https://www.willingtondemocrat...

Party Affiliation:
Democrat

Occupation:
career journalist, editor/writer

Family:
I'm married to Mike Oehler, retired lumberman and a 25-year town volunteer firefighter/EMT. Our 25-year-old son, Nathan, is a product of Willington schools and EO Smith with a degree in physics/math from Wheaton College, Norton MA.

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

Previous public office, appointive or elective:
--Willington Board of Finance, 2019-present; former chair
--Willington Board of Education, 2015-2019
--Capital Improvements Program Committee, appointed 2015-present

Why are you seeking this office?
Willington faces a unique time-sensitive opportunity to benefit from a statutory offer of an almost 80% share in state aid for a new preK-8 school or full renovation. The clock runs out in June. As a BOF co-creator of the Capital Savings initiative in town for these large projects, I'd like to help see it through. As a board colleague and former chair, I'm known for careful spending choices, finding fair, lower-pain economies, and balancing that against the town's responsibility to serve its whole community.

The single most pressing issue facing my constituents is ____, and this is what I intend to do about it:
Balancing a small-town's resources with its need to address very outdated public buildings.

I intend to employ my best skills to arrive at budgeting and financing solutions on BOF (and as BOF representative on CIP) to help the town take advantage of this one-time state offer to offset 80% or more of the full cost to address our school buildings problem. I also will help steer us toward wise economic development choices to suit our town personality, revive our declining revenue picture, and relieve property taxpayer impact.

What are the major differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?
BOF experience, some as a former chair, budget acumen, energy to research, an instinct to keep residents in the loop, and the broader view on competing public agendas.

What other issues do you intend to address during your campaign?
As you know, with the drying up of reliable new sources, the public is struggling to know what's really going on and what role they play in it. It's a personal and professional tenet for me to seek ways to close that gap. It may take investment. But, otherwise, what hangs in the balance in governing, even on the local level, is falling prey to pretty aggressive bad actors, who skew facts, posit conspiracies, attack officials, employees, and others who disagree on issues, in public or on the very few social media outlets here. People and town initiatives are hurt by it. That's a bigger fight, but one I hope to continue to address constructively at the public's table.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?
On Board of Finance, a big one is brainstorming with a colleague to come up with the idea of putting savings aside in anticipation of a large capital expense, such as a local school project. I dubbed it the "shock absorber" in the early days in hopes it would soften the impact on taxpayers in the early years of paying down a school or firehouse bond. It came from thinking about what most of us do in our personal budgeting when we see a big expense coming.

As Board of Finance chair, I instituted a 5-year look back on annual departmental budget requests to give the board historical context with fairness in mind.

This year I suggested and worked with the town business manager and the opposing party first selectman to create a one-sheet handout on the proposed budget as a quick reference for the public at pre-referendum town meetings.

As an assistant managing editor at The Hartford Courant, I oversaw multi-million-dollar newsroom budgets -- payroll, operating, new programs and, yes, we even budgeted column inches of news space.

As a career editor at The Courant, Northeast magazine and The Kansas City Star, I edited news, features, columns, investigative pieces and narrative journalism. From that I developed an attention to detail, balance, fairness, the import of message, focus on the reader, and point of view. I have website editing experience as international editor at Global Sisters Report, at National Catholic Reporter in Kansas City, MO.

What is the best advice anyone ever gave you?
Speak truth to yourself and work hard to live up to it. (Might have been Shakespeare...)

And verify everything. "If your mother says she loves you, verify."

Is there anything else you would like voters to know about yourself and your positions?
I'll do my best to do right by you.