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Mayor’s Community Enhancement Awards

At the 2011 Chamber of Commerce Annual Banquet April 14, New London Mayor Gary Henke presented four special Community Enhancement Awards. He selected the following businesses and individuals from efforts he had seen through not only this last year, but also looked at the long-term effect these four recipients offered the community.

Northland Electrical Services

Northland Electrical Services is a locally owned company whose owners have over 75 years of combined experience in the industrial and commercial electrical fields, including design, build, project management, project supervision and all types of field installations. Northland Electrical Services’ priorities are driven by their customers’ need to have a quality-based, reliable and competitive electrical contractor.

The business is owned by Corey Defferding (President), Dean Burton, Tom Collar, Craig Loberger and Keith School.

They were founded in 2002 with five employees. The business operated from a rented building owned by the McFaul family on North St., in New London’s Fifth Ward. They have since grown to employ 46 full time employees.

Their reputation for excellence in their electrical services industry sparked immediate growth and by 2004 they had built a 4,300 square foot facility in the Northeast New London Business Center, located just off of Hwy. DD. In 2008 they expanded again and constructed a 5,800 square foot storage building on their 2-1/4 acre lot.

Northland is again investing in our community and their business by altering their existing facility and adding over 2,400 square feet, which will include additional office space and a training room bringing their total facility to just over 12,500 square feet.

In recognition of their continual growth and success in our community, Mayor Gary Henke awarded them with a Community Enhancement Award.

EJ Metals

Last fall New London was fortunate to have EJ Metals construct and move into a new 19,000 square foot facility in the North East New London Business Center. EJ Metals is a designer and custom manufacturer of fire trucks, brush trucks, all-terrain fire vehicles, rescues, specialty fire trucks, dump chutes and skid units, along with high pressure and traditional foam systems.

This company has pioneered a highly effective, high-pressure foam system that can be installed on new and existing units. It’s remarkably effective and uses very little water to extinguish a fire. In addition they have supplied a large number of Assault Force 70 Fire-Rescue Rough Terrain Vehicles to the U.S. Army in Afghanistan.

EJ Metals offers: progressive and innovative engineering, craftsmen with 100 years of combined manufacturing experience, premium materials and components, precision manufacturing techniques and processes, state of the art equipment, and high quality fire service graphics and installation.

Kevin Quinn, a 21-year veteran of the emergency vehicle manufacturing industry, founded the company in 1988. The company is exceptionally easy to work with, support their customers with spec information and configuration assistance and offer a fast turn-around of bids and proposal information. They also offer aftermarket support and warranty administration. EJ Metals will custom design and build a fire truck to customer specifications.

Henke said that he is very pleased to award a community enhancement award to Kevin Quinn, EJ Metals for bringing a new high quality manufacturing plant and good paying jobs to New London.

Mark Locy and Mark Locy Jr.

The New London Racing for Education program is headed by Tim Nitke and Brent Dusek, and is largely successful because of two volunteers, Mark Locy and his son Mark Locy Jr.

Racing for Education involves 42 sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students who need to be respectful, have their homework completed and show effort in the classroom to continue in the program.

Locy and his son have been involved in the Racing for Education program for the past four years. They volunteer countless hours to the program. They are well respected by the students and parents in the program and are excellent mentors to the youth. They are knowledgeable, helpful and a tremendous asset to the program.

They work on karts outside the normal meeting times to ensure that the karts are working properly and safely. They don’t want the students to miss one night of driving. They are always prompt and ready to work with the kids.

Mayor Henke was proud to present a Community Enhancement Award to the Locy’s on behalf of their outstanding volunteer efforts with the Racing for Education program.

Brooke Fitzgerald

Since 2008 the city of New London has had an Economic Development Committee headed by Councilman Dave Morack. It consists of members of city council and area business people. Among its purposes is to encourage business and industry to locate and prosper in New London and to help existing businesses better themselves.

Every new business goes through at least 20 steps in getting established, juggling items like formulating a business plan, securing financing and so forth. The Economic Development Committee wanted to identify how the City of New London could assist businesses in each of these steps by identifying, gathering and organizing the information into a reference document.

The committee asked the New London High School, specifically Missy Porath’s class, to help with this effort. Student Brooke Fitzgerald offered to assist and came up with the idea of a business guide, similar to the new resident guide.

Brook put in many hours of research and came up with a way to format the guide. The guide has since been updated and is now available for use by the public. The business guide contains many helpful hints and suggestions for getting assistance in starting and running a business.

In addition to her excellent job of putting together the business guide, Brooke was a member of New London’s State Champion Lady Bulldogs basketball team and plays a pretty mean game of softball, too.

A special mention went to Missy Porath of the School of Enterprise Marketing.

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