Town Council Vice President Henry Boezi, who is seeking his fourth term in office, has been involved in the municipal government for almost four decades. The last six as an elected official, and for 32 years prior to that he worked for the Public Works Department.

“I turned in my retirement papers just before the election,” he said about the first time he ran for a seat on the Council in 2004. “I didn’t want to stop serving the town.”

Ad he hasn’t. Boezi campaigned tirelessly for the $52 million school bond that passed in the last election, saying he and former Superintendent of Schools Charlie Meyers made dozens of appearances on behalf of the bond at schools, civic organizations and even neighborhood picnics. After that, he made the construction issues with the new turf field his top priority.

If reelected, he said it will be yet another school issue that will be atop his political agenda: the moisture problem at Meadowbrook School. He said it would be one of the bigger issues for the next group of elected officials.

“The teachers and staff there say they are having problems” because of the wet floors, he said. “I think our children and the teachers who spend a third of their day there, their quality of life should be given the highest priority.”

Boezi said he supports spending as much as $3 million to fix the Meadowbrook floor. He said the cost would be paid for out of the savings realized from the other school improvement projects that were paid for with the $52 million bond. It’s no coincidence that Boezi seems to focus his political energy on the local schools. He said the public schools are the town’s best asset. In fact, the schools are why he moved here.

His six children all went through the East Greenwich school system. They are all grown and far-flung now, but his house – the same one he helped to build himself in 1978 – is still a sort of photographic shrine to their childhoods. The walls are filled with pictures of their family vacations, graduations and weddings.

Boezi is also a teacher himself. After retiring from his job with the town, he went back to get his master’s degree in education from Roger Williams University and now substitutes in Coventry and North Kingstown. He doesn’t substitute here in East Greenwich because he wants to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.

Teaching isn’t the only thing new in Boezi’s life. A widower, he’s also got a new girlfriend, who he has been seeing for two years. Carolyn Montecalvo and he went to school together at Cranston East. They had a chance encounter after his wife died and decided to go to dinner together. Now they eat together most nights of the week.

Before becoming a teacher and a boyfriend, he was an assistant engineer for the town’s public works department. And public works projects are another issue that he is pushing for. He supports the $1 million road bond that will be on the local ballot Nov. 2, saying that it will likely be cheaper to fix the Frenchtown and Middle roads now, rather than wait until they need more expensive repairs in the future.

But after the floor at Meadowbrook and the roads west of Route 2 are both fixed, Boezi said the town needs to start looking for new and creative ways to save money.

“I think I know of places where we could reduce spending,” he said. “It could be cuts to programs or services. It could involve personnel. Maybe we’ll increase [employees’ health insurance] co-pay. It could be a cut in every [town] department.”

He declined to be specific, saying there was no need to make waves so soon before budget season. But he added, “I’ve got ideas.”