Job description: supervisor
In Moran’s experience, the position of town supervisor combines the day-to-day responsibilities of managing the town’s government in a “quasi executive” position, while the supervisor’s role as a Town Board member introduces a legislative component. A typical day involves interacting with residents by phone, mail, or e-mail. Some constituents express gratitude for a job well done by a town official or department (not necessarily the supervisor), or complain about a problem that the supervisor may or may not be able to solve. Others offer suggestions that may find their way to consideration by the Town Board.
The supervisor also chairs the twice-monthly meetings of the Town Board, for which the best training, in Moran’s view, would be “ringmaster in a circus.” His efforts to raise the level of civility and collegiality among board members made “good progress” in his first term and “excellent progress” in his second, he said.
What skills or qualities are essential for the job? “You have to enjoy people,” said the departing supervisor, who chose not to seek a third term in the recent election. “You should understand numbers, be able to read plans and blueprints for facilities, and be able to read a spreadsheet. You have to be willing to be a public speaker, unafraid to stand up in front of an audience. People are usually receptive in that setting, but if they’re hostile you can’t take it personally.”
Moran continued: “Town supervisor in Woodstock is a full-time job. After taking office I tried to keep my private full-time job afloat” — Moran is a partner in a software development company, Electric Prism, to which he will return upon leaving office — “but I couldn’t. There might be a way to do this job part-time, but it wouldn’t be the way I would want to do the job.”
In Moran’s view, Woodstock’s general aversion to change contributes to the demands on the town supervisor. “I think that Woodstock is a highly reactionary town,” he said. “People who describe themselves as progressive Democrats can be as reactionary as people at the opposite end of the political spectrum. Woodstock is not Colonial Williamsburg or Woodstock, Vermont. It’s unique. We don’t let change happen easily, which can be a double-edged quality. The downside of that is that we don’t implement positive change quickly. But we all have that reactionary element, and as far as I’m concerned, there is no other place to live. For me, four years is about what I felt I could give to the town, which in turn has compensated me and provided me with benefits.”
To ensure a prosperous future with a stable population, said Moran, Woodstock must support its schools, so that families with children will continue to settle here, and its businesses, particularly light-industrial enterprises, for which the town has historically been an incubator. While second-home owners, who are estimated to account for half of the town’s population, provide a tax base that supports municipal services, they rarely serve as volunteers, whose work is crucial to the town’s well-being. Increased availability of affordable rental housing will serve not only to promote economic diversity and full-time residency in the community, but may also spur local landlords to upgrade rental properties that are currently substandard.
Life after government
Awaiting Moran when he resumes private life are software projects with Electric Prism that are related to a pair of manuscripts that he expects to publish. One of the manuscripts involves Moran’s design of the periodic table of chemical elements in the form of a spiral, which he hopes to refine in a form that is “intuitive and pedagogically useful.” The other manuscript, he explains, deals with “the nature of time and history as we experience them — a merging of those concepts with the immutable cycle of birth, growth, decay, and death, which can be parsed into a dozen stages.” The two-term supervisor has no plans to run again for elective office, but does not rule out that option.
He expects Woodstock, his home for the last 20 years, to remain just that. “No place has everything, but it’s hard to imagine a better place to live, with Woodstock’s combination of relative affordability, services, safety, natural beauty, cultural values, interesting people, intellectual stimulation, and accessibility to the outdoors. I think that Woodstock will continue to be Woodstock, guarding itself carefully against untrammeled growth and unexamined change.” ++
