Select Board candidate Charlie Patsios met with residents at a “Chocolate with Charlie” event on Monday, allowing residents the chance to hear his platform and ask questions.

Patsios  is running in the only contested Select Board race in the April local election, facing Ted Dooley, Wayne Godfrey and Wayne Spritz. Jackson and Nancy Schultz hosted the event.

“When I decided to run for Select Board, I realized that there were a lot of competing purposes that people have in town. Some thought, as I did, it was questionable tactics that were being used in the past and people aligned themselves in cliques,” Patsios said. “I always felt, as a town, that we had so much that we had, raw ingredients, but that we didn’t put it together in such a way that people felt inclusive and the people felt that their voices were heard. I always marveled at the way some things got handled, so I started to involve myself in town politics.”

Patsios moved to Swampscott in 1990 and has had two children graduate from Swampscott High School. He previously worked as a compliance officer for Stanley Black and Decker as well as a real estate investor and developer.

He serves as chair of the Housing Authority, as well as a member of the Board of Assessors and on the Water and Sewer Advisory Committee. He also created the 501c3 Swampscott Housing Development Corporation. Patsios has been a Town Meeting member “consecutively for decades.” 

“My commitment to the town doesn’t just stop at showing up at Town Meeting. I read my warrant articles. I investigate them. I really find out what’s happening,” Patsios said. “There’s so many different topics in town that are important. They’re not important to all equally. I can see why I have a favorite project or why you might have a favorite project, but as a Select Board member it has to be for the greater good. It has to be, without question, no special interest. It has to be for the greater good of the community, and many times we’ve missed that opportunity.”

Patsios told his audience that “we can do much better,” ensuring that the residents of Swampscott have the “whole truth and nothing but the truth” on every project to have transparency and better understanding throughout the town.

“I was an advocate for the Rail Trail, but I voted against it,” Patsios said. “You might say, ‘Why would you do something like that?’ I needed to know what our costs were. I needed to know what easements were required. I needed to know who was going to lose land. I needed to know what an easement was going to cost the town. I needed to see a complete picture.”

Patsios said, however, that once the vote was taken in favor of the Rail Trail, “I went from being an opponent to a supporter because that’s what we do in a community that wants to succeed.”

“We take a position. We have a debate. There’s an election. There’s a result,” Patsios said. “If we can get behind the greater good by majority. We’ll find we’ll succeed much, much more than we have been.”

One way to succeed, Patsios said, is by expanding the town’s Master Plan beyond just ten years. By having 50-year and 20-year outlooks, there will be representation of “long term objectives” rather than just cramming everything into a shorter period of time.

“That’s how we are able to budget,” Patsios said. “I may not see it in my lifetime, but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize it as an item that should be on our attention list.”

Patsios said it’s time to start looking for “another avenue of funding,” as the town has “cut as much as we can.” But that “doesn’t mean raising taxes,” as an assessor’s role, Patsios said, is to bring property values in line with the market while lowering the tax rate. Even if someone could “buy more houses in Swampscott” compared to a neighboring town like Marblehead, the total ownership and outside expenses is what creates a true “affordable” town, Patsios said. Rising costs – such as utilities, municipal properties, education, and staff turnover – drive the town’s need for revenue, resulting in higher taxes for residents.

He offered an option for the Hawthorne-by-the-Sea property to help add to revenue for the town, which he noted would need to be determined by Town Meeting. 

“What I see as missing in determining what the right thing to do with the Hawthorne is that we’ve not been told the total cost of ownership, we’ve not been told ultimately what these different plans or ideas could do for us in the community,” Patsios said. “If we, for example, go back to a restaurant, a function facility and some coordination and cooperation with the Hadley Hotel, there’s some housing within it – not condominiums but hotel in coordination – roughly, from the assessments that I have done, we will see somewhere between $650,000 to $800,000 a year coming in from that site, which is new growth, or majority new growth because we still have $140,000 that we were collecting previously.”

That half of a million dollars in new growth could then “fund a portion of the school increases that we see every year,” Patsios said, including the need for the renovations at the middle school. It could also fund some work at the Fish House and within the waterfronts, or potentially “help us with our water and sewer infrastructure.”

“I’ve invested lots and lots of time looking at different positions and looking at different problems in town,” Patsios said, “from the position that it has to be good for the entire community, whatever we do collectively. It has to impact the entire community as a whole in a positive way. We can’t have winners and losers anymore.”

Swampscott’s local election will be held Tuesday, April 28.Residents will elect candidates to a variety of positions, from the Select Board and School Committee to Town Moderator and Town Meeting Members.