I chose FORGE AHEAD as my campaign theme because it invokes Cold Spring’s industrial history as a foundry town, and because it’s what we have to do—together—right now.
We Must Forge Ahead in Challenging Financial Times.
Thanks to the careful management of our Village Treasurer and the current Mayor and Board of Trustees, we are on solid financial ground. Still, our budget is tight, and we always need to make tough spending choices to ensure that we can deliver the essential services that Villagers expect.
Putnam County refuses to share sales taxes generated in the Village, so the tourism economy doesn’t work for residents. Worse, the Legislature has repeatedly cut supplemental funding for such important and challenging needs as garbage removal during our busiest season—that’s a public health concern for all of us.
Without our fair share of sales tax coming back, we need to identify new sources of revenue to offset expenses, and keep property taxes manageable for families.
Efficiency, revenue stream identification, and self-reliance must be our focus.
We Must Forge Ahead to Problem Solve Creatively and Cooperatively.
A board of five people never has all the answers. We achieve better results when multiple sets of fresh eyes look at issues. We’re lucky that Cold Spring is a community made of up talented people from many fields. I want to create ad hoc working groups—Village “think tanks” that pull together folks with content expertise—to look at particular challenges, consider options, and recommend solutions to the Trustees. Engaging residents in meaningful community projects will also help us build our local leadership capacity.
We’ve seen this model work very well in Philipstown with the Climate Smart Communities initiative—so much innovation and progress has been produced by asking folks who care about a topic to make actionable proposals. Together, we can tackle challenges ranging from optimizing our public spaces for Villagers’ enjoyment, to balancing tourism with our quality of life, to hardening our infrastructure for the inevitable impacts of climate change. We’ve got a lot of powerful brains in our community—let’s bring them together to problem solve.
We Must Forge Ahead with Challenging Community Conversations.
The Village has many important initiatives underway. We’re currently considering updates to the Village Code, including the critical zoning chapter that will help shape the way Cold Spring develops and preserves going forward. We need to adopt best practices policies for The Cold Spring Police Department, to give our officers the tools they need to perform gold standard community policing.
There is a backlog of deferred infrastructure maintenance we need to prioritize and address. We need to implement the new Short Term Rental Code and the recommendations of the Parking Committee. Not everyone agrees on approaches to these projects, so we have to talk about them, thoroughly and thoughtfully. Getting to the common good requires good listening. Learn more about my views on particular issues here.