Newport This Week

Town Council Incumbents, Challengers Make Their Case


By Christopher Allen

Nine of the 17 candidates for the Middletown Town Council convened for an hour-long Zoom forum on Aug. 28 to stake their claim for one of the seven council seats that will be decided in November. The forum moderator was Heather Hole Strout, executive director of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center.

The conversation was long on political catchphrases, but short on policy specifics, and centered mostly on public education, commercial and residential development and affordable housing, the three major issues that have dominated Middletown politics in recent years.

The forum included council President Robert Sylvia and councilors Terri Flynn and Dennis Turano. They were joined by former council president and current member of the Middletown Planning Board, Art Weber; former Planning Board member and current member of the Zoning Board, Thomas Heaney; and four other challengers representing a cross section of public and private sector experience.

Among the challengers is Tom Welch, a retired Newport firefighter and small business owner who expressed a willingness to seek out experts in business, education and finance to identify best practices that, in his view, would result in the movement from municipal stalemates. He said he would like to bring more community members into the policy-making fold.

“I don’t think Middletown residents are being represented by the actions of the current council majority,” he said. (Read More)

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