By Gretchen Webster
WESTPORT–Hundreds of Westporters give hours of their time each month to both public and private organizations, including town government. But, there are only a handful who have done so for more than two decades.
Currently, four Representative Town Meeting members have served for at least 20 years. Collectively, they have won more than 50 elections, including the election on Nov. 4.
They are Jack Klinge, Dick Lowenstein, Matthew Mandell and Jay Keenan.
Jack Klinge
Klinge, 87, is the most senior member of the RTM. He will start his 29th year on Monday. “I enjoy every moment of it,” he said in a recent interview. When he took a seat in the RTM in the late 1990s, he had just retired from his marketing position at General Foods in White Plains, “and had never gotten involved in the town,” except for Little League, he said.
There was an opening in District 7, so he got enough signatures on a petition to get on the ballot. “Luckily there were only four people running” for four spots, he said. Now, all these years later, the father of three and grandfather of eight, considers the RTM’s role in building new schools and keeping the quality of education in Westport “at the highest levels,” one of the RTM’s biggest accomplishments.
He also applauded the RTM oversight of the town’s finances during the past three decades. “We maintained our mill rate at the lowest level, getting plenty of bang for the buck,” he said. An important goal, he added, is to work to keep Westport “attractive to people of all income levels.”
Klinge said allowing Westport police officers to carry tasers and permitting dogs on Compo Beach were two of the most hotly debated issues facing the RTM during his tenure. Now, affordable housing is the biggest issue he sees the RTM facing and continues to confront annually, he said.
There are more women on the RTM now, “about 50/50, and some younger members in their 30s,” he said, “and more people elected who have a particular cause or issue that got them to run for the RTM,” noting changes in the town body over the years. “But it’s just as bi-partisan as always. We don’t care about your politics … We care about your intelligence and creativity,” he said.
During this term on the RTM, he expects to be dealing with the Hamlet project, which the Planning and Zoning Commission denied in July. “We have to find a solution. Common sense and negotiation will get us there,” he said. “And we have to do a better job with affordable housing.”
Richard Lowenstein
Dick Lowenstein has served on the RTM for 22 years. He first became interested because of his wife Ellie’s involvement in town government. She served four terms on the Planning and Zoning Commission, including 12 years as its chairwoman, he said. Then Carl Leaman, a second selectman during First Selectman Diane Farrell’s administration, said to him, “If you are going to complain, why don’t you run for the RTM?” So he did.
The Lowenstein family moved to Connecticut in 1983 with three children in middle and high school when he was re-assigned to Connecticut by IBM. He had volunteered on the Zoning Board of Appeals and a Planning Board in Westchester County previously, he said, and served on the Westport Library Board of Trustees for nine years before running for the RTM in District 5.
As chairman of the RTM’s Transit Committee, a lawsuit taken against the town by a private taxi company is one of the biggest issues he remembers. At the time, the town had its own transit system running Maxi Taxi vans. The lawsuit was won by the town, he said.
Now, Lowenstein views working with his constituents as one of the most important roles of an RTM member. “My biggest feeling of accomplishment is working with constituents – constituent support – making sure the people in my district get the service they need and get help solving problems.”
The biggest change Lowenstein has seen in the RTM over the years, he said, is “less fighting,” on major issues. “But the question is, do they agree too much?” he added. He wants to make sure that there is a balance between the first selectman’s budget proposals and the Board of Finance. He views the RTM as having an important role with oversight of the town’s finances.
In addition to the town positions he and his wife have held, their daughter-in-law, son and grandson have all worked as staffers in New York City for members of the New York General Assembly. “Politics and public service,” are important to him and to his family, Lowenstein said.
Matthew Mandell
Matthew Mandell
Matthew Mandell, now starting his 21st year on the RTM, has lived in Westport for more than 20 years. But the New York City native had been coming to Westport for much longer “with my girlfriend – now wife,” he said. When he and his family moved to Westport in 2005, he Mandell got involved in town politics.
Prior to running for a seat on the RTM, Mandell joined a group that was concerned about a pending development on a large chunk of land on Partrick Road and Newtown Turnpike. The Partrick Wetlands Preservation Fund, of which Mandell became a board member, was formed to offer advice on the development of the property that would better suit Westport.
According to Mandell, the Partrick Wetlands Preservation Fund “cut the development from 31 houses to 13 houses, and on 22 acres we prevented development.” Those 22 acres were donated to the Preservation Fund, and then to Earthplace. That accomplishment led to Mandell joining the board of Earthplace.
One of the accomplishments of the RTM during his tenure was to create the Slice of Saugatuck festival, which was run by Mandell as a member of the RTM for its first two years. The event was later handed over to the Westport Weston Chamber of Commerce, of which. Mandell is now the executive director.
He also listed creating an affordable housing fund as the biggest accomplishment of the RTM during his tenure. The fund now has over $1.5 million, he said. “It helps us to do what’s right … showing that the town of Westport has taken [the problem] on our shoulders.”
A change in an ordinance to allow restaurants to stay open later on Sunday over three-day weekends, was another accomplishment of the RTM he cited. Previously, restaurant patrons were going to Norwalk and elsewhere on holiday weekends because Westport required restaurants to stop liquor sales at 9 p.m. on every Sunday, he said.
Other big decisions facing the RTM in the last 20 years he said was a close vote on allowing the YMCA to use the property for Camp Mahackeno by not overturning a Conservation Commission decision. Also, Mandell spearheaded the RTM’s vote to overturn the denial of an 8-24 application by the P&Z to allow the Kemper Gunn House to move across Elm Street in a land swap with the town in 2017.
He praised the RTM committee structure which allows a smaller group of RTM representatives “to delve into the issues and then bring them forward to vote on,” and the lack of political divisiveness in the RTM. “The RTM being a nonpartisan body is refreshing in Westport …. I think the RTM works well.”
Jay Keenan
Jay Keenan is just starting his 11th term on the RTM, having served for 20 years.
He is an architect and it is his profession that moved him to run for the RTM the first time, he said. “I was on the Staples Building Committee and spent a lot of time in Town Hall – there weren’t a lot of people with building backgrounds,” he said. Since then, he has served on several building committees for the town’s schools and is currently on the Long Lots Elementary School Building Committee.
Although he’s from Massachusetts, north of Boston, he was living in New York City when he and his wife decided to move to Westport. “We looked everywhere,” he said. In the end it was the train time to New York, the school system, the town’s golf course, and the beach that attracted the family to Westport, he said.
Like Mandell, he also considered the RTM’s decision to uphold the decision for the YMCA’s establishment of Camp Mahackeno, as a big accomplishment of the RTM. “One of the things that was controversial, in the end came out as an accomplishment,” he said. He also listed the RTM securing the funding for Staples High School and Coleytown Middle School renovations as an important accomplishment during his tenure. And more recently, the RTM has funded the largest appropriation in history for the new Long Lots School, which will also be the town’s first sustainable building, he said.
The job of the current RTM will be to oversee the town’s ten-year capital forecast of over $400 million, he said, and to balance “spending and keeping taxes down.” Working with his fellow RTM representatives on that particular job now facing the RTM is what persuaded him “to go for one more term.”
The RTM hasn’t changed much in the years he’s been representing District 2, he added. “The nice thing about the RTM is its non-partisan aspect, especially now in the face of divisive national politics,” he said. “I hope that never trickles down to the RTM … Everybody’s heart [on the RTM] is in the right place, trying to do the right thing for the town.”
Gretchen Webster
Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, has reported for the daily Greenwich Time and Norwalk Hour, the weekly Westport News, Fairfield Citizen and Weston Forum. She was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman for ten years. She has won numerous journalism awards over the years, and taught journalism at New York University and Southern Connecticut State University.
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