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"Over the last two years, I've made a lot of changes to make the town more efficient," said Mr. Hamel, who has been involved with local politics for 14 years. He was the chairman of the Planning Commission for six years and was a selectman for six years before winning the top post two years ago.
Mr. Hamel has lived in Bethlehem for 28 years with his wife, Regina, and his two children, Joe and Meaghan. He has been a police officer in Waterbury for eight years. His community involvement includes being a member of the Republican Town Committee, a Bethlehem Fair volunteer and Little League baseball coach.
Mr. Hamel's running mate is lifelong Bethlehem resident Ed Roden.
"He has a lot of the same ideas as I do. He is a younger guy, a young family man. He is a military guy still in the reserves and he is a medical person. I think he is pretty well-rounded guy," said Mr. Hamel.
Mr. Hamel said one of the biggest challenges he has faced occurred immediately after the election two years ago, when the state Department of Environmental Protection cited the town for problems with its salt shed.
"We were cited ... six months prior to that, and the day after election to come in and drop a bomb on me with a cease-and-desist order was unfair," said Mr. Hamel. "To show what kind of leader I am, I just took it and fixed it."
Mr. Hamel immediately gained funding for building a new salt shed. The building is now ready to go. "We built it at a reasonable cost," said Mr. Hamel, who put together a budget of $250,000 for the project.
Mr. Hamel also implemented a public works initiative that involves plans for a new office and an effort to create a coordinated plan for address road maintenance and repair in the future.
The first selectman also has made it a priority to hold spending in check and not increase the tax rate. That fiscal conservatism, combined with an active pursuit of grant money, is a combination that benefits the town, according to Mr. Hamel.
Recently, Bethlehem received a state grant of $150,000 to repair Munger Lane. "I have been after a lot of different grants and money for a lot of different projects here in town," said Mr. Hamel.
Other projects included having sidewalks that connected Memorial Hall and town hall, along with an East Street sidewalk project.
Additionally, Mr. Hamel said, he has made changes in the town's public safety department, adding computers to the resident state trooper's office and also in cruisers. "The way we run the police now is in the 21st century," said Mr. Hamel.
The town is currently in the process of analyzing municipal buildings with the goal of moving towards sustainable energy systems. "I'd like us to be more efficient. I'd like us to be more of a green energy community, [and] I'd like us to maintain that rural characteristic," said Mr. Hamel.
On the land-use front, Mr. Hamel has implemented moratoriums for various situations while in office, and he created an ad-hoc committee to look at the land-use ordinances and consider whether it's time to consider adopting zoning.
"One of the biggest reasons zoning never passed in this town because people don't have faith in [a small group of individuals on a commission] to judge for the whole community," said Mr. Hamel. "The ad hoc committee did come out with some very good findings, but to make all those results happen, it's not something that can happen overnight."
According to Mr. Hamel, one of the first moratoriums concerned mining, because he felt the ordinance on such activity needed a review.
In discussing the communication between the local boards and the Region 14 school district, which serves Bethlehem and Woodbury, Mr. Hamel said the town has a good relationship that it didn't have previously.
However, on the most controversial schools issue in recent years, the first selectman declared, "Let it be known that I was against reconfiguration from the beginning and I haven't changed.
Reconfiguration was a plan implemented by Superintendent Dr. Robert Cronin in October 2006. Now, children in kindergarten through second grade attend Bethlehem Elementary School and children in grades three through five attend Mitchell Elementary School in Woodbury. This plan was implemented without a region-wide vote from its two member towns, and that fact has led to an ongoing court battle about what critics consider a fundamental change to the operating structure of Region 14 that needed approval before being implemented.
"Bethlehem voted 2-to-1 against reconfiguration," said Mr. Hamel in a statement indicating how the two neighboring towns are often divided on issues connected to the public schools.
