Southington Town Council Hopes For New Era Of Cooperation

Standing, left to right: Councilors Dave Zoni, Chris Palmieri, Kristen Guida, Tony Morrison, Joshua Serafino, Jim Morelli; Town Clerk Kathy Larkin, Town Manager Alex Ricciardone, Town Attorney Lou Martocchio, Jr., Asst. Attorney Lou Martocchio III; seated: Councilors Jennifer Clock, Paul Chaplinsky, Jr., and Mike DelSanto PETER PROHASKA PHOTOS

Transparency and collaboration were the key words of the first meeting of the newly-elected Southington Town Council. While these ideals were not fully realized, the group did take several important preliminary steps toward accomplishing the tasks they were elected to execute.

Meeting officially for the first time on the evening of November 24, the Council took a collective oath of office administered by Town Clerk Kathy Larkin and then joined in prayer, seeking divine aid in putting the interests of the town before any partisan concerns.

Following the swearing-in, Paul Chaplinsky, Jr. was re-elected unanimously to his former role as Chairman. Chaplinsky’s opening remarks invoked “collaboration and transparency and continuing to move the needle forward for the town.”

A motion by Dave Zoni to nominate fellow Democrat Chris Palmieri, the Council’s top vote-getter, as Vice-Chair was not successful, despite a call for cross-party collaboration. Instead Republican Jennifer Clock was elected to serve in that role, saying, “Those who have worked with me know I absolutely am collaborative, and work towards transparency and the good of the town.”

After that, the Council unanimously voted to appoint Lou Martocchio, Jr. as Town Attorney and his son, Lou Martocchio III, as Assistant Town Attorney.

The meeting broke down along party lines when new procedural rules were introduced for approval by the majority leader.

These proposed changes included the elimination of the Self-Insurance Committee; a clearer procedure for nominating a Minority Leader; a notice period for absences; a new restriction on the use of official Town letterhead that would limit it to the Council as a whole; and new protocols for Council member communications with the Town Attorney designed to limit legal expenses incurred by the Town.

Palmieri and Zoni objected to the proposed changes, saying that their caucus had received notice of the proposals only late that afternoon, and that they had not been properly vetted by the Town Attorney.

Council member Tony Morrison argued that the Self-Insurance Committee was essentially redundant, since its reports already must go to the Board of Finance for study and approval. Getting enough members for a regular quorum was difficult as well, Morrison suggested, and thus the body was not optimally efficient.

After discussion, a new set of changes was put forward that included the elimination of the Self-Insurance Committee, the establishment of a procedure for nominating a Minority Leader, and a notice period for absences, but with the letterhead and Town Attorney provisions left out. This proposal passed on a 6-3, party-line vote.

With that framework in place, Palmieri was named Minority Leader by a unanimous vote.

When Clock brought forth a possible nomination for an empty seat on the Police Commission, Palmieri objected, saying that Democrats had previously agreed to vote on an empty seat on the Board of Fire Commissioners as the search for a new Fire Chief gets underway. He objected that any additional nominations had not been previously agreed to, and did not appear on the original agenda.

“It’s not really a collaborative effort when we agreed to something different,” Palmieri said.

Chaplinsky countered that before the Council is officially sworn in, the agenda is made by the Town Clerk and Town Manager, but it can be amended according to Robert’s Rules of Order once the Council is official.

Despite those procedural concerns, the Republicans voted to add the nomination to the Police Commission and three people to the Library Board to the agenda. All of the nominations, including the one for the Fire Commission, passed.

Chaplinsky thanked the Council for their willingness to work together on appointments, since the Council meeting had been delayed due to the recount.

During the public comment section of the agenda, Milldale resident Dr. Laura Triano spoke before the Council, making a case for additional sidewalks and crosswalks on Clark Street. She pointed to the dangers of an increased volume of traffic, including expected trips to the Stonebridge Crossing shopping area just over the border in Cheshire, as well as more bicycle users on the Farmington Canal Linear Trail. Currently, only one stretch of sidewalk exists on Clark, in front of Southington Fire Station No. 3.

As the work involves a state road, any such improvements would likely have to be done with the cooperation of the Connecticut Department of Transportation. Triano also reported that Representative Chris Poulos had expressed willingness to work with the Town on improving safety in the area.

The next meeting of the Town Council is scheduled for December 8.

Returning Council Member Dave Zoni receives his official Town of Southington pin from Town Manager Ricciardone as Joshua Serafino looks on.

Missing No More: Remains Of Southington WWII Airman Recovered

The WWII Memorial on Southington's Green PHILIP THIBODEAU PHOTO

On the night of March 22, 1945, six weeks before Nazi Germany surrendered, a fleet of B-17G ‘Flying Fortress’ bombers belonging to the 429^th Bombardment Squadron, 2^nd Bombardment Group, took off from an airfield in Italy to begin a long, hazardous journey northward.

On board one of those B-17s was Technical Sergeant Donald Arthur Dorman. Dorman, who was born in Meriden and grew up in Southington, had enlisted in the U. S. Army Air Forces in 1942. An upper turret gunner, he was tasked with defending his plane from enemy fighters using a mounted pair of .50 caliber machine guns. He was 21 years old, and about to embark on his final flight.

The squadron’s mission that night was to bomb an oil refinery in the southeast corner of Germany, not far from the border with Poland. As it approached its target, Dorman’s plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire. The crew steered the plane east, hoping to make an emergency landing on Russian-controlled territory in Poland. The plane was then struck again by fire from German fighter planes. Some crew members managed to parachute out before the crash. Two who made it safely to the ground before being taken prisoner were the sole surviving witnesses to the ordeal.

The other eight crew members were officially listed as MIA because their bodies were never found. And that is where Dorman’s story stood – until this past September.

A Boeing B-17G 'Flying Fortress': Dorman operated the gun turret behind the pilots' cabin. PHOTO FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

The Recovery

In the decades after WWII, the task of recovering the remains of U.S. military personnel who were designated MIA belonged to the American Graves Registration Command. As the Cold War intensified, cooperation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union ground to a halt, which hampered efforts by the Command to look for the remains of the missing in Soviet-controlled Poland. By the time the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, the possibility of finding identifiable remains seemed very remote indeed.

But in the late 1990’s, advances in genetic testing made it possible to reconstruct an individual’s genetic profile from microscopic fragments of organic material. With the arrival of this new technology, hopes of identifying remains rose again. The search for remains was renewed in 2008. The first order of business was to find the crash site. Four years later, investigators determined that a B-17 had crashed near the Polish village of Glinica in 1945.

In 2019, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency contracted with Alta Archaeological Consulting of Santa Rosa, California, to excavate at the site of the crash. This past summer, a 20-person team of volunteers and paid staff performed the back-breaking work of shoveling clay into buckets and sifting it to look for fragments of the plane and signs of the crew. This article from the Arizona Daily Star offers an illustrated account of their efforts.

The archaeologists found what they were looking for: not just pieces of the bomber, but the remains of multiple individuals. The remains were sent to the Agency’s laboratory for analysis. Fortunately, they contained enough DNA to yield full genetic sequences. The next step was to sample DNA from the relatives of the eight missing crew members so that the sequences could be compared and family connections established.

Of the matches that were made, one involved a cousin of Dorman, who still lives in Southington. On September 19 of this year, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced that the remains of Technical Sergeant Donald A. Dorman had been identified. Dorman is MIA no longer.

Dorman's name on the Town's WWII memorial PHILIP THIBODEAU PHOTO 

The Return

News of the identification first reached Rachel Wache, the chair of Southington’s Veterans Committee, while she was at the Apple Harvest Festival. There an old acquaintance came up to her and said, “Rachel, I have something very interesting that you might want to see.” Pulling out her phone, she showed the official announcement to Wache. The woman with the phone was Sergeant Dorman’s cousin.

Wache had the honor of announcing this discovery to the Veterans Committee at their monthly meeting at the Calendar House. She is working now to coordinate the return of the remains and the burial ceremony. A local funeral home and the American Legion have been contacted, as well as the Southington Historical Society and Southington's school system, in the hope that their archives may contain more information about Dorman.

Wache says that she has been informed by the Department of Defense that they will not be taking any further actions in the case until sometime next year. When the remains are released, a military funeral will be held with full honors. Donald’s mother was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery, so the tentative plan is to bury him there.

The Southington Outsider will update this story further as it develops.

Board of Finance Weighs Funding For Fire & Other Key Services

Southington Fire Department's Engine Company No. 5 PETER PROHASKA PHOTOS

Family members were in attendance at Southington Town Hall on November 19 to witness the official beginning of a new term, leading Chairman John Leary to joke that the room was about as crowded as Board of Finance meetings ever get.

Yet even if it receives less attention than other elected bodies, the Board has serious responsibilities. Its members are responsible for approving various forms of spending and overseeing the management of Southington’s finances, including investments, audits, past due sewer bills and tax refunds. As Thursday’s meeting showed, it also has to consider matters of public safety and civic society. With state and federal funding in flux, proper management of Southington’s fiscal health remains an ongoing challenge.

The meeting commenced with an unusual procedural move. This month’s elections gave the Board three Republican members and three Democrats. Leary, a Republican and long-time member of the Board, proposed splitting the officers evenly over the term. For the first year, the three Republicans will serve as Chair, Vice-Chair (Joseph Labieniec) and Secretary (Ed Pocock, Jr.). Those roles will switch to duly-nominated Democrats half way through the two-year term of office.

Even though this was the first meeting of the term, the Board’s agenda was a busy one. Leary took time to explain many of the key functions of the Board for colleagues such as Democrats Stephen Salerno and Katie Wade, who are starting their first terms, and for members of the public, who can watch video of the meeting or view its minutes via the Town of Southington website.

Newly-elected Board member Steve Salerno receives a pin, welcoming him to his term.

Following that introduction, Republican Registrar of Voters Tammy Thompson came before the Board to describe issues that strained the resources of her office during the past election season. She said she had personally worked over 90 hours one week, despite receiving a yearly salary of just $23,000. She attributed much of this overtime work to mandates from Hartford around early voting, as well as the recount and state-required audits.

In response to her concerns, Leary scheduled a series of workshops to figure out how best to fund and support the staffers who make elections possible.

A second presentation, from Southington’s Interim Fire Chief Scott Lee, highlighted the difficulties of providing adequate emergency services coverage in a town that is growing in infrastructure and population. One major problem, Lee said, is that there hasn’t been an equal growth in the number of individuals willing to serve as volunteer firefighters, even with financial incentives put in place by the Town.

Like many Connecticut communities, Southington Fire Department relies on local volunteers to provide support for its professional, full-time staff. Lee, drawing on a 2025 report from Connecticut State Comptroller Sean Scanlon as well as his own data, showed that Southington’s volunteer pool has significantly diminished in recent years, jut as it has in many towns across the state. Lee described a 23 percent decline in volunteers around the nation and an even sharper 75 percent decline in Southington. Scanlon’s report calls the firefighting situation a “statewide crisis.”

Lee explained that the National Fire Protection Association develops staffing standards that are not always required by law but can serve as best practices for fire prevention. To meet those minimum coverage standards, and those recommended by the Town’s outside consultant, the Chief requested the Board of Finance support funding for several professional positions over the next two fiscal years. For FY 2026, Lee is hoping to hire and train three additional firefighters. For the next year, he also asked for an Inspector Firefighter, who can help with duties that include retention and recruitment. Lee is also seeking a Mechanic position for FY 2027, making the case that having an in-house mechanic would provide significant cost savings for needed equipment maintenance.

Lee mentioned that while attracting entry-level firefighters is feasible, as they gain in experience they are often lost to towns that are able to pay higher salaries or offer more enticing benefits.

One source of funding for staff is federal SAFER (Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response) grants. These grants, which are administered by FEMA, have not gone to a Connecticut community since 2023, according to FEMA’s website. Southington received a SAFER grant of just over $1 million for hiring purposes back in FY 2020. But Southington did not receive requested funds this cycle, as Ed Costello, of Southington’s Board of Fire Commissioners, reported.

Speaking against increasing the firefighting budget was Southington resident Al Urso, who said he had been a volunteer himself. He came forward with criticisms of the Fire Department’s current deployment. In particular, he said a common shift structure — the so-called 24-72 shift, in which one is on call for 24 hours and then receives three days off — produces excess overtime and unnecessary coverage.

Urso contrasted Southington’s service needs with those of larger communities such as New Haven, Bridgeport and Waterbury, while noting that Newington, for one, made do with a smaller force.

“It’s ridiculous for a town this size to have a (24-72) shift,” said Urso. He encouraged the Board to take a look at station locations, types of calls, and shift structure before funding the positions.

Making the case for additional firefighters was volunteer fireman Andrew Rennie, who serves as Lieutenant for Engine Company One. He said he joined the Fire Department shortly after moving to Southington from Massachusetts and has embraced the work. However, he stressed, the risks of the calling are real; adequate staffing levels provide safety for the public and Department members alike.

“When we show up on the scene,” Rennie said, “Chief Lee wants us to be able to turn around and go back to our families.”

Those interested in serving the community are encouraged to contact the Fire Department.

The Board of Finance is scheduled to meet again on December 10.