Mike Buscetto: Citizen of the Year honors for man who’s had an ‘impact’

When the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut casts about for a Citizen of the Year, it’s not interested in someone who’s just burst on the scene.

“We don’t select a flash in the pan,” Tony Sheridan, the chamber’s president and chief executive officer, said. “We look for longevity, consistency. ... It has to be a person who truly makes an impact and has done so for a number of years.”

Mike Buscetto filled the chamber’s bill this year. Truth be told, he’s filled it for many years.

Considered brash and outspoken when he served two terms on the New London City Council and then ran for mayor in 2011, Buscetto’s kept a lower public profile since moving to Waterford, where he owns Filomena’s, a popular Boston Post Road restaurant known for hosting well-attended functions. All the while, the 53-year-old Buscetto, a developer and landlord as well as a restaurateur, has sought to further the public good, serving on the boards of several nonprofit agencies and boosting philanthropic initiatives.

“He’s literally helped dozens and dozens of people,” Sheridan said. “It’s in his heart.”

Despite being a poster boy for a citizen of the year honor, Buscetto said he was genuinely taken aback when Sheridan and other members of a chamber committee visited Filomena’s one recent afternoon to tell him he’d been selected.

“It’s very hard to surprise Mike Buscetto,” Sheridan said. “But it definitely got his attention.”

As of last week, some 300 tickets had been sold to the chamber’s Citizen of the Year dinner May 23 at Mohegan Sun, at which Buscetto will be feted.

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Buscetto, a basketball standout, started collecting awards at least as far back as 2008, when his high school, St. Bernard, named him to its Athletic Hall of Fame. In 2009, the Elks Club named him Citizen of the Year, and the next year Quinnipiac University inducted him into its Athletic Hall of Fame. A steady stream of honors has followed.

In an interview at Filomena’s, where he’s “the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave at night,” Buscetto said the chamber award is especially meaningful to him.

“To be honored by an organization that represents a thousand businesses is really something,” he said. “I think it’s because of what I’ve given, not what I’ve opened or developed. ... It feels way better than picking up rent checks.”

After Quinnipiac, Buscetto started working for the family business, Michael’s Dairy, which the family sold to Mitchell College in 2006. As a developer, he built the Utopia Centre shopping center where Filomena’s is located, and Easy Street, a 10-house subdivision off Montauk Avenue in New London that remains the city’s only assisted-living community for those 55 and older.

He now owns and manages 15 residential properties in East Lyme, New London, Waterford and Charleston, S.C., where a daughter and his two grandchildren live. He and his wife Heather also have another daughter and a son.

Buscetto began to garner headlines as a Democratic City Councilor in New London in 2007, when he won more votes than any candidate in that year’s election. When he won a second term two years later, he was the sixth-highest vote-getter among council candidates. Between elections, he courted controversy, applying for the city manager’s job and getting in the middle of a search for a new police chief.

In 2011, when New London returned to a strong mayor form of government, Buscetto lost both a Democratic primary and a write-in campaign for the office to Daryl Justin Finizio. Within a year, Buscetto had moved to Waterford.

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“I never had aspirations to be a politician,” Buscetto said. “People in government recruited me. The city was struggling with finances and a lack of vision. They wanted a strong presence, someone with a business point of view. Some thought my vision was too strong.”

“In politics, you have to rub backs and feet, and that’s not me,” he said. “I wasn’t going to change who I am just to get votes.”

In Waterford, Buscetto has continued to serve New London residents as well as others throughout the region through his involvement with nonprofits like the Center for Safe Futures, which helps victims of domestic violence; the Cactus Jack Foundation, which provides financial support for those in need; and Heavy Hitters USA, which provides after-school and summer mentoring for youth through the Whaling City Athletic Club.

Katherine Verano, Safe Futures’ chief executive officer, said Buscetto has served as honorary chairman of the organization’s fundraising walk in recent years and has long presented himself as “a man who takes a stand against domestic violence.”

“In 2017, I went to him and asked how to get kids involved,” Verano said. “That year, we had 500 kids walking. ... When COVID broke out, he reached out to us, sent us homemade meals and had milk delivered to families who couldn’t get out. He was the front runner for that sort of thing, and it’s never stopped.”

When the pandemic prevented Safe Futures from hosting a two-day conference at Connecticut College, Buscetto didn’t hesitate to make Filomena’s available.

He always says, ‘I gotcha, buddy,’ ” Verano said.

Since 2020, Buscetto has chaired the Town of Waterford’s Youth and Family Services Advisory Board Committee, which oversees a community food bank.

“We have been very fortunate to have him,” said Dani Gorman, Waterford’s human services administrator.

During the pandemic, she said, Buscetto introduced fresh vegetables and other perishables to the food bank, which previously had only provided non-perishable items. Suddenly, residents had access to foods they liked, and could shop as if they were visiting a grocery store.

Gorman said Buscetto also sponsors a veterans’ coffeehouse program that’s grown into the biggest of its kind in eastern Connecticut, with Filomena’s providing free breakfast for veterans on the second Tuesday of every month.

“It’s always a packed house,” Gorman said.

For tickets to the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut’s 73rd Annual Citizen of the Year Celebration honoring Buscetto, call the chamber at (860) 701-9113 or Filomena’s at (860) 437-1010 or email the chamber. Joshua’s Worldwide limousine service is providing bus transportation between Filomena’s and Mohegan Sun for the event.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com