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Letter: Herrmann Brings Easton Business Expertise

EASTON, Conn. – The following letter was written by the Easton Republican Town Committee's campaign for Thomas Herrmann.

Thomas Herrmann is a native son who grew up in Fairfield County and has spent most of his life living and working here. Raised in Stamford, he attended the city's K-12 public schools and at the age of 16 started his first business, an automotive repair shop. He later used the income from Tom's Tune-Up and Repair to partially cover the cost of college.

Herrmann graduated early from the University of Massachusetts, summa cum laude, with a degree in accounting. He earned an MBA at? Harvard Business School.

Herrmann has more than 30 years' experience in business saving and creating jobs, developing market strategies, controlling costs and managing budgets. His early business responsibilities included conducting audits for Price Waterhouse; creating strategic and financial planning procedures for PepsiCo; and developing new domestic and international markets for AMF Inc. In 1986, as president/CEO of Locke Manufacturing in Bridgeport, Herrmann successfully engineered the financial turnaround of a failing company by boosting sales and improving productivity by 42 percent. From 1990 to 2003, Herrmann guided Bryce Office Systems LLC from a start-up to the world's leading manufacturer of address printers, with an 80 percent global market share. In 2004, Herrmann became managing director of a private equity investment firm, Stanwich Partners LLC, where he continues to use his skills to revitalize businesses, cut costs and deliver profits.Herrmann currently serves as first selectman of Easton, where his private sector expertise has yielded outstanding results in the public sector. Taking a bipartisan, practical approach, Herrmann has successfully negotiated salary freezes with union and non-union town employees, reduced municipal operating expenses and kept tax?increases to an average of 1.6 percent per year (the lowest in Fairfield County) and reduced town-side spending in each of the past three years. After one term in office, he was overwhelmingly reelected with 72 percent of the vote.An Easton resident for almost 30 years, Herrmann has been an active and dedicated public servant, volunteering on the Zoning Board of Appeals, the Senior Tax Relief committee, the Board of Finance, and the Board of Education financial oversight committee. He and his wife, Hove, maintain a small farm where they raise sheep and chickens. Their older son graduated from Cornell and is now a grad student at Georgia Tech. Their younger son is a senior at Cornell.Herrmann has the strong work ethic, proven business skills, and the outsider perspective needed to run the Town of Easton efficiently and has done just that over the past four years.

Send letters to the editor and political endorsements to Samantha Henry at shenry@thedailyeaston.com.

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