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Dear Editor:

After lots of consideration, and hard work by my exploratory committee, I’ve made the decision not to run for West Hartford Town Council.

West Hartford faces many challenges, and through the process of considering a run I was able to meet great people on both the town committee, and current and former Town Council members.

Our Town Council understands the issues and is doing all they can to address them. One of the most important things I learned is the need for involvement from the community. As passionate as we are about our children’s education, I argue that we need to take that same level of interest when it comes to working on the town’s policies and politics.

The issues I am most concerned with are the following:

The UConn campus property purchase by West Hartford. I believe this represents one of the greatest opportunities we’ve seen in many years for our town. While some of the land is unusable due to environmental concerns and regulations, much of it can be used and can provide opportunities for new sources of revenue for the town. We must seize that opportunity while it is out there.

Property taxes are also a major problem. Increases have far outpaced cost-of-living and earnings increases for our residents. I will be lobbying our candidates for the Council to put a freeze on property tax hikes for all current homeowners. We must make our community affordable to attract and keep a great community.

Thirdly, we need to focus on outreach to attract corporate and manufacturing jobs to this area. West Hartford has incredible strategic advantages over so many other communities. We also have ample land and industrial areas that can be developed or redeveloped for that purpose. The lifeblood of this town is its people. The source of that life blood is industry and business. They provide incredibly valuable tax dollars and jobs.

I would like to thank Aaron Weinermann and the rest of my bi-partisan exploratory committee that helped and assisted through this process.

I plan on getting much more involved regarding the issues. With that in mind, I am announcing that we are going to host an open house at our home sometime this fall prior to election day. We are calling it an “issues party.” Politics does not work without having participation from the community. We’ve seen that many times in recent years. By hosting this party, it is our hope that we can get our friends and neighbors involved in active in the process.

I will post the exact specifics on the “friends and neighbors” Facebook page once we have them set up. We plan on inviting current and past members of Town Council as well as members from the Democratic Town Committee.

I’m looking forward to an exciting election season.

John Lyons
West Hartford