Celebrating the ‘Best of West Hartford’ is no easy task – after all, how do you determine who or what is BEST about our great town? 

By Tom Hickey (Edited from the version seen in West Hartford Magazine) 

Vote, get tickets and share (using #bestofweha).

Well, we have been working on this for years and simply put, we didn’t want to introduce the Best of West Hartford (BOWH) until we could do it first class … the only way you and West Hartford should be represented!

For many years our publishing advisors at Moffly Media have been advising us and even provided us with something I refer to internally as “the red bible.” The “red bible” is a Moffly guide to producing a “best of …” that we’ve referred to quite often, and although our approach is very different, we think we took what was best about their event(s) and adapted it for our own BOWH.

Because there are so many other “Best of” events in this area, we felt obligated to be certain we raised the bar and standard so this BOWH award would truly have meaning. Allow me to walk you through our process:

Our Editorial Board selected the categories – only 32 to begin with, because we wanted to keep it simple. Then for about six weeks all were invited to nominate their favorite businesses, by category, and those businesses that received the top three highest number of nominations made it to the finalist round. Of course in West Hartford we should have anticipated that the extremely popular categories of best Pizza, Burger, Hair Salon, and several others, would result in multiple ties. That’s why in some categories there are as many as eight finalists!

In total, 150 businesses are represented as finalists. Congratulations to all that made it that far!

It was a necessary requirement from day one for us – and so important for you to realize and appreciate – that only one nomination and only one vote can be cast per email address. After your vote is cast, you’re requiree to reply via email and confirm that you have indeed cast your vote. You are required to fill out at least two-thirds of the categories as well. These rules validate, to the best of our ability, that no ballots are stuffed/rigged/gamed.

Those of us on staff have not selected our favorite businesses; these are your favorites, and no matter how much or how little advertising a business does with us has no impact whatsoever in the voting process. (Actually many of the nominated businesses have not been active advertisers.) This is truly a people’s choice award and your vote does matter and it will count!

Tom Hickey. file photo

The voting has been underway and because we don’t want to exclude those of you who haven’t been in West Hartford due to summer vacations, etc., we have extending voting for the finalists as long as possible. Voting will now close on Monday, August 24, at 11:59 p.m. Please join in on the fun and cast your vote today by going to the voting link.

Once the voting has closed, our contracted, third-party outside vendor will share the results only with Tom Filomeno (CPA and principal at Filomeno & Company P.C.) so no one will know who the winners are until the BOWH event on Thursday, Sept. 10.

That said, we hope to see you along with all of us at West Hartford Magazine, We-Ha.com, and WHMedia along with our special emcees for the evening – Brad Drazen of NBC Connecticut and Mayor Scott Slifka – at the inaugural Best of West Hartford event at Town Hall. A portion of the proceeds will benefit programs at Conard and Hall high schools.

If you haven’t already, go to the ticket link to purchase your tickets. There are a limited number of tickets available, so don’t wait until the last minute.

Spread the word, vote, and buy your tickets, and when you do, use our hashtag  #bestofweha on social media posts.

See you on Sept. 10!