Wayne Smith Jr. Wins Only Contested Election for Mansfield School Committee Spot

Wayne Smith Jr. won the only contested election on Tuesday against incumbent Jim Perry for a position on the Mansfield School Committee.

Smith won by 59 votes in the contest, with 7 percent more than Perry. Smith had 441 votes and Perry had 382.

Selectman George Dentino held his uncontested seat on the board with 519 votes. Robert Saquet won his uncontested race for Town Moderator with 590 votes.

Smith said he was shocked and surprised at the result, saying that he knows the experience Perry has had over the years on the School Committee.

“I was actually very surprised,” he said. “The last time Jim ran, he had the most votes that anybody had received in a long time in Mansfield. I thought would be a very hard road… Jim’s been around for a long time; he’s got a lot of roots in the school community. I kind of like Jim, I just felt like in the past three years that maybe he wasn’t as proactive as he could have been.”

Perry congratulated Smith after the results of the election were announced, wishing him luck in the new seat.

Smith said that he will be considering finances above all else in the coming year. With the budget a major source of contention this year, he seems to have his work cut out for him.

“Finances is the biggest thing that needs to be discussed,”  he said. “Even now, with what went on with the finances this year, no one really questioned any of the [items] that we spend. I mean, that’s a huge amount of money… I want to make sure that we’re spending our money wisely, and getting everything we can… It’s going to take a lot, our community is in a very tough financial situation.”

Smith said that transparency was a major issue for him, at least while he was sitting in School Committee meetings.

“People use the word transparency a lot,” he said. “I sit there a lot of times in the meetings and I have no idea what’s really going on… I think sometimes all you need is a little piece of paper with what’s going to be discussed. I mean the agenda is really [lacking].”

He cited an example where he had asked, before a meeting, to see the committee’s revolving accounts. A revolving account is one in which revenue imputed to the account is generated and used by one particular facet or line item of the budget (such as school bus pay and ride accounts). He was told at one particular meeting that the accounts did not reflect any kind of stable outlook in terms of school finance.

“If the citizen asks for it, it shouldn’t have been a question of whether you understand it,” he said. “They should’ve just given it [out]. People need to see what is going on.”

This is Smith’s second year running for a position on the committee. Last year, he ran against chair Michael Trowbridge, current member Kiera O’Neil and former member Frank Delvecchio.

The election had a total turnout of 840 voters, the lowest in Town Clerk Helen Christian’s recollection.