Tony Scinto: in the Middle of Trumbull's Issues

This is the second of five profiles of District 7 candidates.

Tony Scinto is one of the two incumbent Republicans running to keep his seat on the Town Council representing District 7, which he has maintained since 2007. The other is Chadwick Ciocci, and this November Scinto and Ciocci will face Democratic challengers Tom Whitmoyer and Holly Sutton-Darr and Independent Charley Pitcher.

Scinto has worked at Verizon as a Senior Telecom technician since 1998, and lives just down the street from Democratic opponent Whitmoyer, on Lindberg Drive, with his wife Michelle, a personal assistant, and their two daughters Kayla, a freshman at , and Sara, a sixth-grade student at Hillcrest.

Scinto has taken on a number of leadership roles in town since moving to Trumbull 14 years ago. He has served as the chair of the Town Council’s Rules & Research Committee since 2009 and the District 7 Chairman for the Trumbull Republican Town Committee since 2006, and is a former chair of the Trumbull High School Building Committee.

“District 7 is unique compared to the others,” Scinto said. He explained that the master plan for the layout of the town was conceived in the 1980s to keep development on the outskirts of town, and it is District 7 that encompasses a lot of this development, running in a U-shape around the bottom of the town.

One of the major issues in this highly-developed district is sewer regionalization and reconstruction. Scinto said when he goes to campaign on Shelton Road this weekend, he intends to observe the area and talk to people in their homes to get a firsthand idea of the impact of the issues on residents.

“[Canvassing in the neighborhood] is so important because that’s when you find out what you what’s really going on,” he said.

Scinto said he tries and will continue to try to stay in touch with the concerns of the people in his district.  In his day-to-day work as a Town Council representative, he said, “Sometimes if I’m on one side of town, I’ll drive to another town district just to see what’s going on.”

Scinto explained that many of the issues First Selectman Tim Herbst has been working on this year are pertinent to District 7. He said that Herbst has had to make some difficult decisions this year, in part due to the recession and its attendant budget issues.

Scinto said that when one is in the majority party, this position is more of a leadership role. A lot of things have changed this year, he said, and “sometimes change is painful.”

As the Town Council’s current Finance Committee chairman, Scinto said he saw firsthand how tight the town budget is, and, in the process of interviewing each department head, he got insight into where all the money goes.

“Doing the budget this year and being on the finance committee was an eye opener,” Scinto said.

Scinto is not at liberty to comment on the issue of the cell tower, as he works for Verizon, but on the topic of the Fairchild Wheeler Multi Magnet School, he said that there is a lot of misinformation out there.

“We knew the school was going to go in. There really wasn’t much that could be done to stop this school,” Scinto said. “The state was even going to eminent domain the property if they had to.”

Scinto said he has been working with a construction consultant for the City of Bridgeport checking out the magnet school construction site in the wake of a number of legal challenges: pending environmental lawsuits filed by the town as well as a recent suit threatened by a neighbor to the site, complaining of excessive noise.

He and Ciocci also responded to neighbors' concerns with a meeting Saturday.