There's nothing like wide choices to enliven an election, and, thankfully, the field of candidates for the upcoming New London municipal election keeps getting bigger.

With the standoff among Democrats for the party nomination for mayor, it has long been clear there would be a mayoral Democratic primary.    

And now two candidates who did not get the nod from the Democrats for a council nomination have submitted petitions so that they, too, can be included on the primary ballot.

Not only will all city Democrats have a voice in their party's choice for council candidates to run in the general election, but the choices also are expanding outside the principal parties.

In addition to the Democrats and Republicans who will be on the ballot in November, two independents have met the deadline for petitioning into the race.

So here's to more candidate choices in New London.

I especially was heartened to see the two city Democrats who aspire to be on the City Council challenge the institutional choices of the Democratic Town Committee.

One town committee choice voters would be wise to veto was the selection of Councilor/Officer Anthony Nolan, who last year earned a whopping $55,393 in overtime pay as a city police officer while also serving on the City Council.

The overtime made Nolan one of the biggest hitters on the city payroll, for a total of $122,361 in compensation for the year.

To make this conflict worse — a public official voting on budgets that enrich him, in this case police budgets that require a lot of overtime staffing — Nolan's Democratic cohorts on the council added a special perk.

The council agreed to a proposed budget for new police dogs that envisions importing a special dog from Europe for an officer who is allergic to regular police dogs.

And which officer is allergic to dogs and hoping to get into the high overtime-earning dog-handling business? That's right, the already well-compensated Officer/Councilor Nolan.

Nolan thankfully recused himself from the imported designer dog vote. But he votes on all the other budget and police matters that directly impact him as a city employee, including tight police budgets that more or less mandate more overtime because there are not enough police officers to cover routine shifts.

I certainly have no problem with Officer Nolan volunteering for long hours and being justly compensated for them. It is also a way officers turbocharge their pensions, since a lifetime of pension payments is based on the last three years of pay.

As Nolan noted in his response to what I wrote about it in May, he is only continuing a tradition of using overtime to increase overall pay that was created and used for years by white officers. Nolan is black.

The problem for Nolan is not his race, it's that he creates an unacceptable conflict by serving on the council while he also is on the city payroll.

I have no problem with Officer Nolan working the police compensation system as it is established. Indeed, good for him for volunteering when police officers are needed.

He is well liked in the community, praised for his work with city youth and a high vote-getter.

Still, he ought to confine his community service to his work as a city employee or volunteer and not try to set policy, voting on issues that directly impact city employees, as an elected official.

You also have to wonder how Nolan, who had to work an enormous number of hours to earn so much overtime, has the time to devote to the substantial extracurricular duties of a city councilor.

News stories recently exposed the problem of municipal workers serving in town politics, such as when an East Lyme selectman, also a town employee, was allowed to keep his job after it was found he drove a municipal vehicle while intoxicated.

That employee wisely stepped aside, choosing not to run for re-election.

It would have been nice had Officer/Councilor Nolan decided on his own not to run again for a seat on the council, especially given the wide interest among members of his party.

But, in any case, Democratic voters now will have a choice to weigh in on who from their party should make the ballot in November.

City voters also might want to pay attention to the incumbent councilors who signed on for an imported designer police dog in the interest of coddling their colleague.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com

Twitter: @DavidCollinsct