GRANVILLE – Seeking a third consecutive term on the Select Board, Ted Sussmann is running against first-time challenger Christopher Bouwer in the Town’s election on Monday April 8th.
The 48-year-old Sussmann currently resides on North Lane and has lived in Granville for most of his life. Sussmann graduated from the University of Massachusetts, receiving his Ph.D. in 1999, is married with three children, and teaches civil engineering at the University of Hartford.
Prior to serving two terms on the Select Board, Sussmann was on the Finance Committee for about 10 years, with five of those years serving as chairman. He has also served on committees for the former Granville Village School.
After serving time on the Finance Committee, Sussman saw many problems that he wanted to help fix.
“There were a lot of challenges I could see from running the Finance Committee, from the budget perspective,” said Sussmann. “Emergency services were taxed, the highway department was making due, the education was increasing, and we had a lot of challenges we had to address.”
Looking at the present, the incumbent candidate wants to focus on four separate issues if he’s elected for a third term, with education being one of them.
“As an educator myself, I’m for substance in the classroom,” said Sussmann. “We seem to have a lot of distractions with our school administration (Southwick-Tolland-Granville Regional School District) that they want to do other things.”
Select Board incumbent Ted Sussmann. (Photo from Ted Sussmann)
Sussmann added that he’d like to see teacher’s in the school district receive better salaries.
“It’s a real competitive market to get good teachers in the classroom,” said Sussmann.
Emergency services is another part of Granville that Sussmann wants to focus on moving forward. When first on the Select Board, Sussmann pointed out that there was a problem recruiting people to join emergency services.
“We had really low attendance and somewhat poor morale and we’ve instituted some changes,” said Sussmann. “We’ve come a long way.”
Sussmann also mentioned that he’d like to continue to support the police department and figure out how to give all public safety departments more opportunities for equipment and other resources.
Although the Town of Granville hasn’t had an open space plan in about 10 years, Sussmann’s goal during his next term would be to revitalize the town’s open space plan.
“I’d like to reconvene the open space committee and redraw our maps and highlight the zones where there’s no longer access to state-owned property.”
Sussmann would also hope to get funding to have a planning grant to help with the open space plan.
Tying in with the open space plan, the longtime Granville resident noted that there hasn’t been swimming at the Granville State Forest for around 20 years. Sussmann is concerned about the lack of access that people currently have on the trails in the state forest.
“Where do our kids go for a nice hike?” said Sussmann. “People move to Granville for the recreation you would get.”
The discussion also led to the concern of how children will learn how to swim in town.
“You don’t really have decent access to a public swimming hole,” said Sussmann.
Besides the ideas and issues in town that he wants to address if re-elected, Sussmann also has some challenges that he’d like to pursue. Adding that all of the departments in town are in a position for success, the current member on the Select Board would like to make a lot of improvements to the highway department. There are other issues the highway department facility on Old Westfield Road has beyond the environmental constraints due to the wetlands nearby.
“The building itself is probably prior to 1950 and has drainage problems,” said Sussmann. “It’s certainly past its prime and could use a look.”
Sussmann also said that the town looked at making improvements with the highway department at least 10 years ago, but the costs were too expensive at that time.
Hoping to be re-elected, Sussmann wants to focus on continuing to listen to the residents of Granville and figure out the right path forward for the town.
“I don’t think we’ve done anything without trying to figure out what the majority of people like,” said Sussmann. “We’ve been through some tough things in six years and I think we’ve gotten through them with relatively little impact in town considering the challenges we’ve faced.”
