Lyme — With a project to renovate Town Hall and build a new library completed, the Board of Selectmen candidates said they will focus on fiscal management and a plan to close the town's landfill for their next term.

Once again, all the candidates on Lyme’s slate for the Nov. 3 municipal election are uncontested.

First Selectman Ralph F. Eno. Jr., who has served in office since 2007, as well as from 1991 to 2001, is running for re-election.  

Parker H. Lord, a Republican, and Steven E. Mattson, a Democrat, are also running for another term on the Board of Selectman.

But in addition to the landfill project and working on responsible budgets, the selectmen have another goal for this term: a succession plan now that Eno, the town’s long-term first selectman, has said this will be his last term.

Eno, a Republican who was cross-endorsed by Democrats, called Lyme “a very special place,” but said he felt it was time.

For his last term, Eno said he will focus on the completion of a project to close the town's landfill and turn it into a transfer station, as well as advocating on behalf of small towns in Hartford.

“In my mind, small and mid-sized towns are the backbone of the state,” he said in an interview.

Voicing his displeasure with the state legislature's budget process, Eno said he will work to repeal a 2.5 percent cap on towns' operating budgets.

"Given the General Assembly's on going dysfunctional budget development process and attendant deficits, it is hard to fathom how our state legislators can believe they have earned the right to insert themselves into the local budget picture essentially disenfranchising property taxpayers at the grassroots level," he wrote in The Day's voter guide.

Lord, who has served as a selectmen for 18 years, said a focus of the town should be the closure of the landfill.

“Other than that, we face the same issues most towns do — education, keeping the budget in line, maintaining our roads, and being fiscally responsible,” he wrote in the voter guide.

Mattson, who has been a selectman for the past decade, said in a phone interview that the selectmen will work on succession planning for a new first selectman.

He also said with the town center complex completed, the town is now back to its normal activities of maintaining finances, with the dump closure standing as the big project for the next term.

"Other than that, things go along smoothly in Lyme," he said.

k.drelich@theday.com

Twitter: @KimberlyDrelich