Bill Barrett
Bill Barrett. (Photo by Lauren Thomas)
Although Bill Barrett admits that the 2011 Gardiner Town Supervisor contest is his “maiden voyage” as a potential public official, he characterizes himself as “a normal guy” who can bring “leadership and commonsense solutions to Town Hall.” He is running on the Republican line, and has also received endorsements from the Conservative and Independence Parties. A Troy native educated in private Catholic and military schools, Barrett is not a college graduate; “I attended a number of Albany-area colleges, enough to earn a degree several times over, but never all at one school,” he writes in his bio.
Barrett is a jack-of-all trades who prides himself on having held a variety of jobs, both blue- and white-collar, “from when I could first pick up a shovel or rake,” and believes that this breadth of experience has equipped him well to guide the running of a local government. These days he’s an electrician, but when he first laid eyes on the Shawangunks viewshed 20 years ago, he was working as a consultant in a business that did hydraulic rebuilds, and Gardiner was in the southern part of his sales territory.
Barrett’s Significant Other — business outsourcing consultant Pam O’Dell, well-known in Gardiner as a spokesperson for the Tea Party and property rights issues through her organization Gardinersright.org — was doing a grueling daily roundtrip commute between Albany and New York City. The couple decided to move their household to a point midway between their two job sites, and found their first Gardiner rental property in the classifieds of the New Paltz Times: a place on McKinstry Road. “I liked the rural aspect, the quiet. People [in Gardiner] will pretty much leave you alone if you leave them alone,” Barrett recalls. “The view was breathtaking. Our window faced the mountain.”
Some Gardinerites who associate Barrett with the sometimes-confrontational public style of O’Dell might be surprised to hear that the candidate cares about tree-huggerish things like viewsheds, but he is careful to steer those who wish to know more about him toward the videos that he has posted on YouTube rather than to O’Dell’s blog. Citing for comparison the divergent views of the famous pundit couple James Carville and Mary Matalin, he says, “My opponent is trying to paint us as one person, and it’s not working well for him.”
Though there are clues to be found in his use of catchphrases like “government overreach,” some voters may find it difficult to place the calm, soft-spoken Barrett on the political spectrum, considering his lack of past visibility in public service or attendance at public meetings. “My civic background is mostly limited to my time as a Scout,” says his bio; much more recently, he was a part of a volunteer crew of electricians who worked on a free house reconstruction for a needy family in the Town of Crawford for the television series Extreme Makeover. “It was the most insane construction site I’ve ever been on,” he recalls, but a rewarding experience nonetheless.
Barrett says that his top priority as supervisor, if elected, would be to monitor the town budget closely and exercise fiscal restraint, limiting spending to issues of top priority. “I keep my ear close to the ground, and by studying the [board meeting] minutes and talking to people, I’m keenly aware of what the government is doing (or not) in Gardiner, and especially in terms of town finances,” he writes.
Although he has not declared an intent to try to overturn the 2008 Zoning Law — which he calls “Carl’s Law,” despite the fact that Zatz was no longer in office when it was adopted — Barrett clearly has some problems with its provisions. “It’s about as user-unfriendly as it could possibly be,” he contends. “Carl had to go and hire a lawyer to get through his own law. Nobody understands this law. It’s opaque.”
Asked to cite particular areas of the Zoning Law that he finds most objectionable, Barrett focuses on the five-acre minimum zoning provision in areas outside the Gardiner hamlet and other designated nodes of greater density. “Think about third, fourth or fifth generations of local families” who in the past would have been able to subdivide and build homes on their forebears’ properties, he says. “They can’t even afford to buy the dirt to build on, because they have to buy five acres. New generations of locals are essentially being forced to leave Gardiner.”
Barrett sees the new zoning provisions as being biased in favor of the town center. “We’re all going to have to pay for sidewalks to be put in for…what, six businesses? The hamlet has its own lighting and sewer districts. The majority of the population doesn’t live in the hamlet. Why should the rest of us pay for these improvements for these business owners? They can do it themselves.”
Still, says the candidate, he’s not ready to throw out the baby with the bathwater without public review of recommendations from Gardiner’s Zoning Improvement Commission (ZIC), which is tasked with evaluating the success of the new law. “Rules are static; circumstances are dynamic,” he says, which seems to be a favorite maxim. “Unintended consequences sometimes arise. I’d like to hear what the ZIC has to say. That’s a bipartisan entity. I assume that there are going to be open public hearings, and there’s going to be some debate.”
Barrett comes down firmly on the side of the new cell tower proposal. “We have a lot of dead zones” where people can’t get a signal to call for help in the event of a fire or accident, he notes. “It’s a health and safety issue: Someone is going to die for lack of cell phone service. This has dragged on a long time — multiple years.” As to the proposed siting, he points out that putting the towers on town-owned land would generate rental income: “It’s a significant revenue stream that has not been tapped yet.” He calls the Town Hall site “not much of a viewshed,” and predicts, “The Highway Barn site would give better coverage. It’s not a big issue from an aesthetic standpoint. In 120 days, people aren’t going to see that tower anymore.”
Like Zatz, Barrett is at pains to de-emphasize the polarization and negative tenor of past controversies in the Town of Gardiner, and hopes to see more civil dialogue during the next supervisor’s term. “I don’t know how to overcome that ‘Damn them, they’re the Other’ mentality,” he says. “But neither of the [pro- and anti-development] groups has a majority; each needs to sway enough of the middle group. It’s a small town, and you have to get along with others. Consensus-building is important. I’m trying to set an example, but we’ll see how well the lessons are taken by others.” ++
