West Wareham resident Jean Connaughton is running for a five-year seat on the Housing Authority.

Connaughton has a long history of working for town boards, and was a member of Wareham’s Community and Economic Development Authority (CEDA) beginning in 1997. She received a certificate recognizing her 13 years of service on the board, 12 of those years as the chairman.

In 2017, Connaughton resigned from her CEDA position and has since been appointed to the Wareham Housing Authority.

“If elected, I will continue to work with the authority board to seek opportunities to create additional housing for local residents who have lived in the community for many years,” said Connaughton.

Connaughton’s career was in construction. She joined Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) in Massachusetts in 1973, and continued working there for over 30 years. As a manager, she was involved with budgeting, developing, implementing, and marketing training programs for ABC employees.

“When I retired we had 1200 apprentices statewide, and another 3000 construction people working towards safety certification, supervisory training, and management training, so it was a big broad program," said Connaughton.

After her retirement, Connaughton worked as an executive director for ABC in Connecticut.

If re-elected, Connaughton wants to continue focusing on fiscal oversight, providing appropriate housing for Wareham residents, and the day-to-day management of the authority. She also wants to address the lack of housing for the elderly community.

“We have only about 104 units for the elderly and we really need more than that,” said Connaughton. “We have 219 people in the community of Wareham that are waiting for units. And then we have another 666 that the state requires us to take applications from. People can wait years to get on the waiting list because there are only 104 units, and we need to figure it out.”

Connaughton believes the first step towards expanding the number of units for seniors is getting the funds, which is no easy feat.

“Now the state will renovate units that had already been built in the communities, but it will not build the new ones, so we have to go out and we have to find funding to both renovate and built the new houses,” said Connaughton.