Focus is on rivals for selectmen

Three candidates for two seats on Wellesley's Board of Selectmen will square off tonight during a forum set up by the local League of Women Voters.

The race in Tuesday's town election features an incumbent, Katherine L. Babson, and two first-time candidates for the board. The second seat on the ballot is held by Selectman David Himmelberger, who announced in December that he would not be running again this spring.

One of the new candidates in tonight's exchange, slated for 7 p.m. in Wellesley High School's cafeteria, is Barbara Searle, a native of Chicago who moved to Wellesley in 1981. She's a senior vice president in the commercial lending division of Boston Private Bank in Wellesley, and has spent years volunteering on various town boards. For three years, Searle served on the town's Advisory Committee, which she chaired last year. She's also served as pres ident of the Wellesley Historical Commission, as member of the town's Community Preservation Committee, and as member of the Town By-Law Study Committee.

Thomas Ulfelder was born and raised in Winchester and moved to Wellesley in 1998. Ulfelder spent 14 years in the healthcare field, some in hospital administration. He was then appointed an assistant Suffolk district attorney, and now serves as chief of the office's special prosecutions unit, which investigates economic crime.

"Gig" Babson is a lifelong resident of Wellesley who won her first term on the board in March 2005. She was first elected to Town Meeting in 1972, and has served as Town Meeting moderator and the Advisory Committee chairwoman, among other town positions. A trust and estate lawyer, Babson is a partner in Nixon Peabody, one of the 50 largest law firms in the country, and she serves on the advisory board of the Wellesley Scholarship Foundation.

All three are Town Meeting members, with Babson representing Precinct E, Searle representing Precinct A, and Ulfelder representing Precinct C.

Babson, wrapping up her first term as selectwoman, has prodded the board to do a better job at publicizing meeting agendas and to adhere more closely to state laws concerning closed-door executive sessions. She also pushed the town to seek special legislation from the state to allow exclusion of funding for retiree health benefits from the tax-increase limits set by Proposition 2 1/2, and advocated for the funding from Town Meeting. She has been heading up the town's committee to recommend whether to renovate or build a new high school, and helped create a panel to recommend a town policy concerning naming rights for town buildings and land.

She also took a lead role in trying to negotiate an agreement with a developer of a multifamily residence in the Hillside Road neighborhood of single-family homes, a deal that was narrowly rejected by Town Meeting last year. The developer has since received preliminary state approval for a waiver of town zoning under the Chapter 40B housing law.

Babson was also the board's lead negotiator in the town's efforts to buy three Seaver Street properties that could help accommodate the high school building project. The town agreed in October to pay $3.6 million for the homes, almost $800,000 above the appraised value.

The Seaver Street deal is one factor that helped prompt Ulfelder to run, he said.

"I opposed the Seaver Street property acquisition," Ulfelder said, "not because I was against acquiring the properties, but because the methodology and timing were wrong . . . The acquisition should have been made in connection with a decision about the high school, not before it."

Babson disagreed, saying it would have been "inadvisable" for the town to have spent thousands of dollars to draft a plan for the school without knowing that the Seaver properties were secured.

None of the candidates have talked about making budget cuts, but rather have focused on finding new ways to save money.

"If I knew someplace in the budget where there was some fat that was easy to cut out, I'd be first to say cut it," Searle said. "But I've never found those kinds of big dollars."