Lois Cuttitta Lapinski
“So many people have told me we need a change in this town,” stated Lois Cuttitta Lapinski, explaining her decision to run for town clerk on the United Shandaken Party line. “I love this town. My children are grown, and I have the time and opportunity to give 100 percent of myself to the job.”
Lapinski currently works as court clerk for the Town of Ulster. “I’d rather put my energy into my own town,” she noted, adding that the two positions have similarities. “I have to deal with the public face-to-face all the time and meet with a variety of people — prisoners, police officers, assistant district attorneys. Everyone has to be treated with respect and courtesy, and it’s important to respect people’s privacy. I’ve also had dealings with the town clerk’s office in Ulster, so I am familiar with some of the paperwork that goes along with the job.”
She attended business school and obtained a certificate in business administration from Ulster County Community College. She was the proprietor of How Sweet It Is, a gift basket business in Shandaken, and formerly ran Village Pizza in the Phoenicia Plaza.
Lapinski has lived in Shandaken for 27 years, raising three children. She has been co-president of the PTA and was one of the founders of the school district’s shared decision-making process. She received the Jenkins Award for volunteerism as a result of chairing the committee that built a playground at the Phoenicia Elementary School.
After the recent flood, she volunteered for two weeks at the Phoenicia fire house, cooking meals. “I learned so much about what happens and what’s needed during emergencies in this town,” she said. She feels there are roles the town clerk could take to relieve the workload for other town personnel in such situations. She would also generally keep the office open an additional two hours a day, twice a week.
As a non-enrolled voter, Lapinski sought nominations from the Republican, Democratic, and Conservative Parties, losing by 20 votes or less in the first two cases, and an unknown margin in the third. She will appear on the ballot on her own party line, the United Shandaken Party.
Highway superintendent
Keith Johnson
Keith Johnson was Shandaken’s highway superintendent in 2006-2007. He is challenging incumbent Eric Hofmeister because, he said, “I’d like to see control of the highway department come back to the elected official. In my opinion, he’s not actually running the highway department. It’s being run by the crew. A lot things are going on that shouldn’t be, as far as I’m concerned. The men, for the most part, are doing their eight hours and going home, and there’s not a lot of follow-up supervision.”
Describing his experience, Johnson explained, “I have an excavating business of my own, for over 40 years. I’m qualified on any machinery the town owns — I have owned something similar, or I’m qualified to run it or I’ve been running it.”
In past years, he has worked for the town, building approximately five miles of road in subdivisions, clearing intersections after snowstorms, and doing stream restoration and channel reconstruction after major floods. “I’ve also done a considerable amount of private work on bank stabilization and erosion prevention. I’m also a logger and have worked throughout most of the Catskills removing timber. I run machinery, maintain machinery, and I’m a Class 1 driver.”
In addition, Johnson has served on the ambulance squad and is a lifetime member of the Shandaken-Allaben Hose Company.
Johnson is running on the Conservative ticket and on his own line, the Advocate Party.
Eric Hofmeister
Eric Hofmeister
Eric Hofmeister, the town’s highway superintendent for the past four years and running on both the Democratic and Republican lines, scoffed at candidate Keith Johnson’s claim that his supervision of the department is inadequate. “Each time he runs, he has to make up something,” stated Hofmeister, speaking by phone from the highway garage. “In fact, I’m here all the time.”
During his tenure, he said, he has been successful in keeping costs down. He has obtained several grants for highway projects, such as a hazard mitigation grant of $130,000, which paid 100 percent of the building of a large retaining wall in Woodland Valley. “We also buy a lot of stuff through a federal surplus program,” he noted. “We’ve gotten three trucks, a compressor and a sweeper. We just paid $2700 for a truck that would have been over $100,000 if we bought it new.”
Hofmeister has run a hardware store in town for over 20 years and finds his business experience useful in the operation of the highway department. “It’s a big business, and it has to be run as a business. The prices of materials have gone up so much, and budgets don’t go up.”
He has undergone training in stream morphology, paid for the NYCDEP, learning how to deal with the streams when doing road repairs. As a result of his administration of the repairs to the devastation from the recent flooding, all town bridges are now open (not including the county bridge on Bridge Street), and all roads are accessible, with partial access around the gaping hole on the upper Oliverea Road.
Hofmeister has been endorsed by both the Democratic and Republican parties.++
