We-Ha.com is offering our readers the opportunity to meet the candidates running in the Nov. 4, 2025 municipal election. 

Compiled by Ronni Newton

We-Ha.com is offering our readers the opportunity to “Meet the Candidate” – designed to help them get to know the candidates running for office in the 2025 municipal election.

Identical questionnaires have been sent to all candidates, and each profile received has been submitted directly to We-Ha.com by the candidate or the candidate’s campaign management. The responses have not been edited but have been formatted to match our publication style. Questions left blank have been noted.

As profiles are received, they will be published on We-Ha.com under the “Government” tab. We-Ha.com is not making endorsements of any political candidates but we are publishing this information in order to assist voters in being informed and prepared when they go to the polls on Nov. 4.

If you are a candidate and wish to submit a profile, please return it by email to Ronni Newton at [email protected] as soon as possible.

TOWN COUNCIL CANDIDATE

Name: Sijie Jason Wang

Party affiliation: Republican

Family information: I live here with my amazing wife of 10 years, Angela, and our two kids: Vivian, 7 and Arthur, 4.

Primary occupation: I am an addiction medicine physician, both at Hartford Hospital and at my private practice in West Hartford. I am the President of the Connecticut Chapter of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. I am an Assistant Clinical Professor at the UConn School of Medicine and a faculty member of the Rushford Addiction Medicine Fellowship.

Previous political experience: None!

Other relevant experience that may be related to your desire to serve the community, and further qualifies you for the office you are seeking: I am a father of two and acutely feel both the joys and pressures of raising kids in the modern world. I’ve lived through times of extraordinary professional intensity, including as a rural ER doctor (on the overnight shift, I was basically the only immediately available doctor in a 25 mile radius) and as an internal medicine hospitalist during the pandemic, but I’ve also cherished time as a stay-at-home dad.  With my personal and professional background, I am highly concerned about trends in mental health and social media/screen use in our kids. I am a strong advocate for a bell-to-bell smartphone ban in school.

I’ve fought for safer streets both as a private citizen and as a board member of Bike West Hartford. I was a major advocate for quick-builds, because it was quickly clear to me that Vision Zero could not achieve its goals without a more agile approach. With Bike West Hartford, I help put on Center Streets each year, in addition to numerous other community-building events like group rides and helmet giveaways.

I am working on a number of ongoing road safety initiatives, including an effort to make our neighborhood traffic calming program less onerous so we can better curb speeding and aggressive driving on residential streets, and a pilot program to better protect our Jewish citizens on Shabbat. I have helped organize vigils when we have lost members of our community due to crashes. I am an ongoing advocate for more meaningful action from CTDOT.

Why are you running for office? I want to make our town a better place for current and future generations. I think our current well-intentioned government is often too slow to act, and struggles to noticeably improve people’s lives on a time frame that matches the urgency of the issues. West Hartford is already a fantastic place to live, but we face many challenges that I think I can help address. I also feel that young people and young parents are not adequately represented in our town government. We have faced a very different world than prior generations. We have historically high levels of educational debt and face extreme housing costs in an uncertain economy. Many of us came of age during the COVID pandemic. I am very worried that escalating cost of living is pushing the American Dream out of reach for many young people. I will be a voice for all West Hartford citizens, but I would especially like to give a voice to younger citizens who too often are left out of civic decision-making.

There have recently been numerous residential and commercial developments approved by the Town Council, and it is likely that more will be considered during the upcoming Council term. What is your overall opinion of the pace of development in West Hartford? I’m not personally against apartments – I lived in them for much of my childhood and loved it. In fact, I was able to access a much better public education on our modest family income because there was an ample supply of reasonably priced apartments in our town.

With that said, these new apartments are anything but reasonably priced. We have forgotten about homeownership and small scale traditional New England homes. I would not be in support of more large apartment buildings at this time. There are significant market distortions, including too much red tape and excessive zoning restrictions, which make it only economically feasible to build giant apartments. Building pretty much anything in this town requires a zoning change and extensive permitting, which is extremely expensive and time consuming. Therefore, modest housing like starter homes become cost-prohibitive. I also believe 8-30g, while well intentioned, introduces further market distortions that damage affordability. To provide income-restricted units to a lucky few, a subsidy must be either provided by the taxpayer or by increasing the price of unrestricted units. If there continues to be strong demand for housing that cannot be met with existing stock, we must focus on market-based solutions for small-scale homeownership. Jane Jacobs was right about the virtue of gradual money over cataclysmic money. She argued that slow, steady investment is the best way to grow a community, but our current regulations make giant disruptive projects the only feasible option.

What are your specific ideas for keeping future budget increases to a minimum?

• We must be comfortable saying “no” to things. Each expenditure should produce meaningful outcomes.
• We should look at other municipalities to learn best practices for cost-efficient outcomes. We’re told that every last penny is needed, so how can other places do more with less? In addition to drilling down into line items and requesting more detail when necessary, I will benchmark ourselves against highly efficient municipalities and adopt best practices from around the country.
• Locally, I think we should learn from Glastonbury’s success with insourcing special ed, which is saving them millions. Nationally, we should learn from the “Southern Surge” in educational outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged students.
• Our Homeownership Opportunity District housing plan combined with rollback of government parking mandates will more productively use land while enabling homeownership, reducing flooding, and reducing sprawl.
• However, we must not buy into the falsehood that we can grow ourselves to sustainability. We can’t! No amount of grand list growth will outpace our current spending.
• Stop treating parking emotionally. Start looking at it from an economic standpoint. There’s too much parking in the Center, but it’s mispriced, leading to perception of shortage. We lose $1 million per year in day-to-day parking operations. We charge comically low amounts for parking tickets, and only collect 73%. We are dumping $10 million into our underused Blue Back parking garages over the next two years. The taxpayer should not subsidize parking!
• Spend less money on consultants, and less money on reports in general!

How do you think the town will need to/be able to respond to cuts in federal aid to education, Medicaid, and food assistance? I believe a strong town is a self-sufficient one!! Despite media hysteria, we will get through this. For example, getting worked up over $300,000 of threatened federal education cuts that never even materialized is a little silly when you consider that’s equivalent to renovating just 30 mostly empty parking spaces is about to cost us ($10 million garage renovation divided into 1,000 spaces).  Our federal budget is totally unsustainable so it was never reasonable to expect the profligate spending could go on forever. The vast, vast majority of our local spending comes from local revenue. The onus is on us to make sure West Hartford is fiscally sound. I believe that in a strong community like ours, we can support those in need on a local scale, such as through food banks and churches, rather than relying so much on an overburdened federal government. We need to look within ourselves and our community for solutions.

Do national issues affect your approach to local governance, and if so, how? My priorities are mostly local level issues:

• Can you and your kids walk or bike to school safely?
• Do we have enough before and after care for our schools?
• Are we adequately protecting our children’s mental health and raising confident, independent, ethical young adults?
• Are we good stewards of your tax dollars?
• Are we fixing roads in a timely fashion?
• Can we create homeownership opportunities, if the market demands it, while respecting our existing residents, our historic New England town character, and our infrastructure?
• Can we foster a healthy, open, good-faith civic discourse, free of hate?

What do you feel is the biggest challenge facing West Hartford today, and how do you plan to address it if elected? I believe road safety is our biggest challenge. Unfortunately, car crashes are the primary cause of violent death for West Hartford residents. The Bike West Hartford vigils were meant to draw attention to each loss, because these deaths are not inevitable. They are preventable. Dangerous roads suppress the independence and mobility of our children, our elders, and truly every one of us. Dangerous roads damage our sense of civility and community. For those of us who are physically unhurt, our quality of life still suffers. We must end red light running and excessive speeding. We must stop the madness.

What do you feel differentiates you from the candidates from other parties – or your own party – who are also running for this position? I have an educational background in engineering and medicine, combined with an interest in the intersection between sociology and urban planning. I take a data-informed, yet holistic approach to the world, which comes from my heritage, my family, my interests/hobbies, and my professional work. My daily medical practice combines hard science with spirituality, community building, advocacy, and preventative medicine. I am inspired every day by the incredible kindness and resilience of my patients and my colleagues.

Because I work in a high stakes field and serve an often marginalized patient population, I’m pragmatic, resourceful, and focused on delivering results. I am willing to speak up about bad ideas when I see them. I think I have a knack for asking pointed, tough questions. I have an unwavering focus on making people’s lives meaningfully better, and I’m willing to dispense with a lot of red tape to get there.

I stand strong in rejecting divisive identity politics. I respect people for their individual values and achievements, while celebrating our shared heritage as Americans.

Finally, I have a can-do attitude and a heck of a lot of energy! I want to bring back the American sense of optimism and confidence, as we continue building our great town in the greatest country in the world.

Anything else you would like to share relevant to earning votes on Nov. 4? Thank you everyone who is participating in the democratic process, from the voters to the staff to the candidates. Your passion, hard work, and civic engagement are what make West Hartford a wonderful place to live.

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