John B. Toomey, Jr.

Diversity Commission (2021–)
Temporary Public Building Commission (2022–)

John, a Bolton native and graduate of Bolton High School, has a long history of involvement in the local community, beginning as a member of the BHS Student Council. He was the first Student Council representative to the Bolton Board of Education.

After serving on the Board of Finance from 2009 to 2013, John was elected to the Zoning Board of Appeals in 2013. In 2016 the Bolton Board of Selectmen appointed him to be a Justice of the Peace.

The Board of Selectmen appointed him to the Bolton Charter Study Commission in 2018. In late 2019 he was appointed to the Bolton Charter Revision Commission, which submitted its final report to the Board of Selectmen in July 2021.

John began dabbling in Bolton politics began when he joined the Bolton Democratic Town Committee in 1972. In 1973 he rain for Board of Education. He served as chair of the DTC in 1975–1976 and then from 2008 to 2016 and was vice chair from 2006 to 2008. In 1974–1975 and again from 1982 to 1988, he was party secretary. From 1999 until 2005, he was a member of the Wethersfield Democratic Town Committee and was the 7th District Captain. In 2022, John came out of retirement to again serve as DTC chair.

Over the last nearly fifty years, John has been a Bolton or Wethersfield Democratic delegate to every level of Democratic Party convention. In 2004 he was appointed commissioner of the Wethersfield Human Rights and Relations Commission. He resigned from the commission in late 2005 when he returned home to Bolton.

From 2011 until 2015 John was president and chairman of the board of the Connecticut Labor Department Federal Credit Union, serving before that as vice president.

John worked more than thirty-three years for the State of Connecticut at the Department of Labor, most recently in their Office of Research. He chaired the DOL’s Central Safety and Health Committee. From 1985 to 1987 he served as president of the Connecticut chapter of the International Association of Personnel in Employment Security before retiring.

In the summer of 2011, he was appointed by the Connecticut Speaker of the House to serve on the Connecticut Department of Labor’s Employment Security Advisory Board and was reappointed in 2015. In May 2013, Governor Dannel Malloy appointed John to the DOL’s Board of Mediation and Arbitration, where he still serves as an Alternate Labor Member working as an arbitrator.

One of John’s passions is local history. A charter member of the Bolton Historical Society, he has served as president since 2003 and before that as vice president. From 2007 to 2018, he was a member of the Preservation Connecticut board of trustees. Since 2018, he has served on their advisory board. From 2001 to 2004 he served on the Wethersfield Historic District Commission as a commissioner alternate. In 2019, John took on a new role: Bolton Town Historian.

John is also president of the Bolton Alumni Association, an organization he helped found and has led since 2001. In 2001 John designed the Bolton Veterans Monument and Honor Roll, located on the Bolton Town Green. In 2003, John was inducted into the Bolton Public Schools’ “Alumni Wall of Fame.”

Since 1999, John has been an active member of the Bolton Scholarship Fund, serving as Vice President since 2016.

John is a charter member of the Bolton Land Trust and was an active member of the Bolton Cemetery Association, Inc., before the nonprofit was dissolved in 2012.

In his spare time John collects and sells American union-made glassware from the twentieth century at specialty antique shows with his spouse of nearly thirty-four years, Jim Dwire. Jim, who owns the Bolton antique glass business Two J’s, is also the Bolton Democratic Registrar of Voters.

John earned his A.A. from Manchester Community College, later completing a B.A. in political science at Central Connecticut State University. In 2018, John was honored by MCC for his decades-long civic and philanthropic efforts and service to the MCC Alumni Association and received the 2018 MCC Alumni of the Year award.

More

• Watch John introduce himself during the Bolton Democrats’ October 3, 2021, Candidate Q&A.