Mountains of papers covered the late Carl Tomchik’s desk when he served as the town’s finance director nearly a decade ago, and more documents were kept inside W.B. Mason boxes stacked high inside his office at Monroe Town Hall. In his 16-year tenure, Tomchik made his presence known.
Michael Manjos, former chairman of the Monroe Board of Finance, remembers sitting across from Tomchik, to discuss the town’s finances over hot cups of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.
“He was legendary for his piles of paper,” said Manjos. “At least a foot tall on his desk, including piles on the floor — and he knew where every piece of paper was.”
“I could not go into his office,” said Patricia Tomchik, his wife of 59 years. “I was so uncomfortable in his office. It was so claustrophobic in there. He was never allowed to be that way at home.”
She remembers a time when her husband’s assistant cleaned and organized Tomchik’s office, while they were on vacation. “Within a week it was back to W.B. Mason boxes,” Patricia said with a laugh, “that was how he operated.”
Carl Tomchik was a member of the Board of Finance when he was hired by First Selectwoman Karen Burnaska’s administration on Sept. 7, 1999. He went on to serve the town until June 1, 2015, when his failing health forced him to retire.
Tomchik succumbed to his illnesses on Feb. 6 of this year, but his presence is still felt by those who had worked with him over the years.
“He taught me everything there is to know about municipal finance,” Manjos said. “It was mostly just him. He was a super smart guy, and if he liked you, he was the most loyal guy you’d want to meet.”
Tomchik was well respected by others in the financial community, keeping communications open among his peers in surrounding towns and working well with bond rating agencies, according to Manjos.
“A lot of the groundwork that was laid for the finances of the town was really started by Carl,” Manjos said of Monroe’s reputation of being fiscally conservative. “He was really in the weeds.”
When Jeff Whone resigned as Monroe’s finance director, Burnaska said a search committee led by Chairman David Ward was formed. The committee included Human Resources Director Phyllis Kansky and another town employee, Burnaska said.
“We followed the regular hiring process. Carl was recommended by the search committee and I recommended him as our fiscal officer,” she said. “He was truly a man dedicated to his community. He lived here, his daughters went to school here and his wife was a teacher in the school system. He was really dedicated to Monroe.”
Burnaska, who is a Democrat, said Tomchik worked well with members of both political parties in the best interests of the town.
“Carl was well regarded,” she said. “He worked well with staff, elected and appointed officials and, being a resident of the town, he always thought about the impact on the townspeople.”
“His wife was very involved in the town as well,” said Manjos. “He was always laughing because his wife was involved with the Democratic Party as well, so it was a joke that we were such good friends. He was always a family man with the grandkids.”
Burnaska pointed out how Tomchik’s obituary suggests a donation be made to Project Warmth, a program providing assistance with utility bills for Monroe families in financial need. “He truly cared about the town,” she said.
Tomchik served under four first selectmen, including Democrats Burnaska, Andy Nunn and Thomas Buzi, and Republican, Steve Vavrek.
“It’s been a tough week in Monroe losing Kay Inderdohnen and Carl Tomchik,” Vavrek said recently, while also mentioning the passing of Monroe’s former town clerk. “They were old school in the way they did business, before the internet. Both were great people. I know they taught me.”
When Vavrek first took office in 2007, he said the town was still doing budgets “the old fashioned way” on Excel spreadsheets.
“It was really amazing to watch how he basically crafted the budget before automation kicked in,” Vavrek said of Tomchik. “You knew he was there. His light was always on late at night at budget time. His work ethic was flawless. He knew the town inside and out. I learned a lot about real budgeting from him.”
Egg sandwiches
Monroe Deputy Finance Director Heidi Meade was hired by Tomchik and First Selectman Andy Nunn in August of 2005.
Aside from working to keep Monroe’s finances in the black, Tomchik made sure his staff members didn’t start their day on an empty stomach.
“He made the best egg sandwiches for me,” Meade said of the food Tomchik prepared at home and brought with him to work. “He was a good cook. Even if I said, ‘no, I had breakfast,’ he brought something in and said, ‘try it. You’ll like it.'”
“He made us laugh,” she said. “We worked hard, but we had a lot of fun laughing at his jokes.”
Meade said Tomchik made some smart investments that still help the town to this day. He was involved with major capital projects like the Masuk High School and Monroe Police Department renovations and the Edith Wheeler Memorial Library project, she said.
When the town allowed Newtown to use the Chalk Hill building for Sandy Hook Elementary School students following the tragic mass shooting in 2012, Tomchik did a lot of the grunt work behind the scenes and joined other town officials in working with Newtown’s finance department and Board of Education, according to Manjos.
“He did tremendous things for this town,” Meade said. “He spent long hours here working on the budget audits project. He was my mentor. He taught me everything I know about municipal accounting, because I was corporate.”
Monroe was notorious for its annual budget battles. Meade remembers one year when a series of budget defeats led to six referendum votes before a proposal passed.
“For me, as a leader of the town, he got us through a lot of turbulent budgets,” Meade said of Tomchik. “He worked closely with the Board of Finance to get us through those turbulent times. That’s what I recall. Having to deal with Chalk Hill being handed back to the town, all these budget drivers, he got us through them.”
“He was a great leader,” she said. “He was a great boss, and most important of all he was a great man. He loved his family. His grandchildren were the world to him. Carl was a really intelligent guy. He really cared about the town and the finances of the town.”
Carl plays hooky
Though he grew up to be successful professionally and in his family life, Tomchik often got into trouble as a teenager. At Harding High School, he received the first of many detentions after getting into a fight on the first day of his freshman year, according to his wife Patricia.
“When he was a sophomore, he would see his buddy, Ray, whose mom went to work,” Patricia recalled. “They’d call Carl’s house and it disconnected both phones, so the school couldn’t reach a parent when they skipped school. They lost a third of the year before they were caught.”
Tomchik’s mother, Anna, immigrated from Austria-Hungary in the 1930s and his father, Michael, grew up in Wilks-Barre, Penn. The couple had four children.
Tomchik’s family had moved to a three-room, cold-water flat at the corner of Ogden and Hallett streets in Bridgeport, until the building burned down years later. Their apartment had no heat or hot water and the bathroom in the hallway only had a toilet.
The Tomchiks’ first refrigerator was an icebox and the ice was delivered. The unit was heated by a coal stove in the kitchen.
They lived on the second floor of the three-story building. Two businesses on the first floor were a bar and an egg store, which helped Tomchik develop his strong work ethic.
He started working for the egg store when he was in eighth grade. Though he was only 14-years-old, Tomchik drove a truck, while picking up eggs in Easton and Monroe and making deliveries to diners and stores in Bridgeport.
When he was 16, Tomchik worked for a store in the King Cole grocery store chain.
Tomchik graduated from high school in 1959 and took classes at the University of Bridgeport (UB) at night. He started working at the Nancy Lynn bakery, joined the Teamsters union, and loaded trucks to make money.
Tomchik spent summers doing touch up painting at the Danbury Fair with his uncle. “This was a very large fair, similar to the Big E,” Patricia said. “It was held annually on the grounds where the Danbury Mall is now located.”
Carl and Patricia Tomchik were dating at that time.
“I picked him up in a bar,” she said with a laugh. “I kind of had a blind date and the man I had the date with came with Carl for some reason. My blind date and I didn’t hit it off at all and I ended up with Carl.”
They first met at The Surf Side, a bar with a patio on the beach in Fairfield. It’s now the site of condos, according to Patricia.
Tomchik later worked as a bartender at a Slovak club near his home, while also shooting pool to make extra money.
“He finally got his first real job working for Rabinowitz, a company located in Brooklyn,” Patricia said. “They opened a small store on Railroad Avenue in Bridgeport. He was a one-man operation. He sold merchandise, took care of the books and unloaded the freight cars.”
The married man was off limits
Tomchik and his wife started taking classes at UB together. He earned a BA in accounting and Patricia earned a Master’s degree in counselor education.
“We stayed at the university for six years,” Patricia said. “We were counselors in residence. We were in our mid-20s. We were young. The University of Bridgeport had four-room-apartments, free room and board and a small stipend. It was a windfall for a young couple starting out.”
The Tomchik’s lived across from Seaside Park and could see the city’s fireworks from their rooftop.
“He had the unique experience of living in a girls dorm in Bridgeport,” Patricia said of her husband. “He was the only man in a dorm of 150 women. At that time, men didn’t come in and out of women’s dorms. Fathers could come in for a couple hours once a month on a Sunday.”
Patricia said she found it amusing when some of the girls hit on Tomchik, adding her husband learned how to handle himself and other female students moved in quickly to intercept them, because the married man was off limits.
When UB found out Patricia had another job interning at a school in Monroe, she said they had to move out of the dorm.
“It was a wonderful experience. It started us out,” Patricia recalled. “We saved up for a house we bought in Monroe in 1973.”
A family man
Patricia praised Tomchik as a doting father to their two daughters, Alyssa, who is known as Lisa, and Ashley.
“He was amazing,” she said. “The girls had a very unusual experience. Lisa was with us at UB, she was two, I was 24 and Carl was 26. She remained the only child until 19 years later, when I had my second daughter, so he was a hands-on father with Lisa, then with Ashley.”
Tomchik, who had frequently played basketball at the Boys Club in Bridgeport, encouraged Lisa’s love of the game, then became involved with Ashley’s passion for soccer.
Patricia said Tomchik was the same way with their grandchildren, attending Lisa’s youngest son’s soccer and lacrosse games.
“His oldest grandson loved cars, so they would go to shows together,” Patricia said. “We had an above ground pool … when our grandchildren came here, no matter what they wanted to do, he did.”
Tomchik also liked riding on his John Deere Gator with his grandkids, according to Patricia.
Years later, when Ashley’s twins played soccer, Tomchik would watch their games.
Patricia said her husband loved car shows, art and had a passion for UConn women’s basketball. “I think that started when his older daughter played basketball for Masuk,” she said of Lisa. “She was a tri-captain with Ann Odoy and Michelle Tinkler.”
Tomchik’s presence still felt
Patricia said Tomchik’s mind was like a computer, quickly coming up with the numbers people were looking for. It enabled him to help small startups and troubled companies, before he worked for the town of Monroe, she said.
Tomchik had worked for the Gould School in Spring Valley and did the finance and accounting for the high school, while working for the East Haven Board of Education, among his earlier positions.
“He was very intelligent,” Patricia said. “He liked to have a good time. He socialized well with people. I think, generally speaking, he got along well with the people he worked with. Everyone said he had a beautiful smile.”
She said Tomchik’s health issues forced him to retired from the job he loved. The town hired Ron Bunovsky Jr. as his replacement and he is now finance director of both the town and the Monroe Board of Education.
Bunovsky said he got to know Tomchik when he previously served on the Board of Finance for two years, then as the town’s treasurer for five years.
“He was old school. He came from my father’s era,” Bunovsky said. “He was a good guy. He was a tough guy. He was a fair guy and he worked hard for the town. Carl always had the town’s best interest in mind.”
“He came back in and visited us after he left,” Bunovsky continued. “Even after he left, he still cared about things and wanted to know everyone was doing well. He was tough, but he had a big heart.”
Town Clerk Vida Stone, who held a several positions at Town Hall over the years, also has fond memories of Tomchik.
“Carl had the best sense of humor and a great laugh. He was always there when I started new,” she said. “Any questions I had, he was my go-to-person. I always knew he would send me to the right person — and he always had the best recipes.”
“His name still rings in these hallways,” said Meade. “A lot of people knew him and will miss him.”
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Great article Bill, totally catches what Carl was about , town and family. Thanks for this !
Thanks Dee Dee, Carl was a Monroe legend!