Don is currently an elected Representative Town Meeting (RTM) member representing District 3. He serves on the RTM’s Finance, Public Works, and Employee Compensation committees.
Don was also twice elected to the Board of Education and served as its chairman for four years. As Chairman, Don led the BOE through the financial crisis of 2009-10 during which he established robust and transparent financial reporting and budgetary standards that are still followed today. These standards led to a strong working relationship not only with his BOE colleagues and the school administration but also with the Board of Finance.
In addition to his elected positions, Don was appointed Chairman of the Coleytown Middle School Building Committee. Under his leadership, CMS was successfully renovated, under budget, during the height of the COVID pandemic. Don carefully managed engineers, architects and dozens of tradespeople throughout the building process while ensuring Westport’s parents and residents were fully informed every step of the way.
Following his time on the CMS Building Committee, Don agreed to join the Long Lots School Building Committee, a position he still holds. In that position, Don established detailed cost benchmarking analyses that helped drive unanimous funding approval by the Board of Finance and the RTM.
Professionally, Don had a 40-year career in Banking and Financial Services. The last 35 years were with Citi where he was responsible for managing several operations, finance, risk and compliance teams including in his roles as Chief Financial Officer of Citi’s Home Equity business and a Chief Administrative Officer for Citi’s Mortgage business.
Don, his wife Toni, and their three sons – Donny, Tom, and Mike – moved to Westport in 1994. All three boys were fortunate to have gone through Westport’s great schools, and each were varsity sports captains at Staples. Don and Toni’s sons all worked at Longshore Sailing School during the summers where they taught sailing to many Westport residents. Toni has been a teacher at St. Paul’s preschool in town for 25 years.