If elected, what are your top three priorities?
To date, I have knocked on over 500 doors in both the town and village of New Paltz. I have spoken to SUNY New Paltz students, residents of Woodland Pond and everyone in between. The first question I ask people as I stand at their door is what thoughts or concerns they have about our community. The things I hear the most about are taxes, the protection of our environment and the loss of faith in local government.
My top three priorities have been very much informed by talking to the people who make up our community.
I want to help keep New Paltz affordable by looking at outside-the-box measures to reduce our taxes and bringing in environmental and labor friendly businesses to increase our tax base. I want to become an example of sustainability for communities — not just in New York, but in our country — and I want us to save money while we do it.
I also want to try to remove the feeling that our local governments are dysfunctional and cannot work together or with the public. I know that these are all bold ideas but if we don’t aim high, then nothing great can be achieved.
Jeff Logan
Why did you decide to run for office?
For the past five years I have been honored to serve my community as a councilman and be part of the good work that has kept this town strong and vital. I want to bring that experience to another term as councilman and continue to work with all New Paltz residents to improve our community.
New Paltz is a wonderful, diverse community that is one of the most beautiful and best places to live in New York. We value our open space, active civic life, abundance of recreation, active farms, vibrant business community and great schools. We’ve worked hard to build a solid financial base for our community through careful consideration and restructuring of our departments that serve us all and through constant monitoring of all town expenditures.
Should Park Point get a payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) — yes or no? Also, how should New Paltz be developed in the future? Should it be kept more rural, or should it be more built out? What kind of businesses would you work to attract to town?
The Park Point project should not get a payment in lieu of taxes. New York State developed IDAs to improve economic conditions in their respective areas. IDAs attempt to attract, retain and expand businesses within their jurisdictions through the provision of financial incentives to private entities.
This project cannot be built elsewhere, it will not retain or create significant new jobs (except police officers, paid rescue personnel and people to maintain public infrastructure for which the community we need to pay for). It will not grow our job base in any significant manner after the construction phase — all the while using our public infrastructure. They must pay like the rest of all taxpaying New Yorkers.
Should they choose to build infrastructure or other improvements that we need to maintain in perpetuity — then that is the gift that keeps on taking, no thank you.
Do you believe consolidation has failed? Should a town-village merger still be pursued?
Consolidation is not a pass/fail conversation at this point and it was not the conversation that the community applied for in the government efficiency grant.
The process of the study has failed and left the community with nothing but incorrect data (financial committee report proven incorrect), mistrust of public officials (studies showing saving or reductions in areas outside scope of study) and has caused public fatigue of the process by using our communities greatest asset — our people — with no clear outcome and confusion over the process.
An example of finding the efficiency we need is the current Town Board and its department heads, which have been doing a lot of the work to ensure we are running and expending public funds as efficient as possible. A good example is the combining of our public works/infrastructure departments to provide the needed services while using less man hours — or our highway supervisor Chris Marx reaching out to other communities to share equipment and manpower so we all win.
The board is also looking at every expense, the supervisor being required by the board to sign each expense voucher prior to issuing and discussing the real need with the department head to ensure it is needed.
These are the efficiencies we need to drive and continue to drive to protect our taxpayers, the question of consolidation is one of delivery of services. The question is: Are you happy with the cost and delivery of services you receive and would you be willing to pay more, if you are a town resident, to receive the same services?
What are your ideas for long-term infrastructure repairs to water and sewer?
The course we are now on is to apply for grants to repair and stabilize our current water and sewer. We need to create a local water source for the whole community and look at creating a joint master plan to decide where we want growth and how do we develop it.
Under the direction of the Town Board, Kevin Barry and I met with grants writers and now have a grants writer, helping us apply for over $5 million dollars in federal and state funds all for water and sewer upgrades and repair.
The need for water for our community is critical with the eventual temporary shutdown of the aqueduct for repairs. The supervisor was able to bring together the stakeholders for water into one room over the last two months, not an easy task, and just last week the city agreed to pay to search out areas of water, drill test bores, test the Wallkill River and present the options to our community to then decide where we want to go and all this with the community paying nothing — that’s government efficiency.
How do you feel about a shift of town police costs to the village? Are you for or against that? Why?
The costs of police need to stay on the A side of budget. As a town, we decided long ago to fund the police — and the village is part of the town so the costs are allocated correctly.
The choice is how we fund the police. We need to study who uses the services and then understand how we fund them as a community. Do we look at special districts? Do we look to the local university to assist in funding? Do we ask the county or state for assistance? Are we assessing the assets of our core business district correctly?
These are the conversations we need to have to understand how we fund the single largest line item in our community’s budget.
What are the top three challenges facing the Town of New Paltz right now?
1) The continued monitoring and constant evaluation of costs and expenses in our community and creating the efficiency to provide the services we need at a cost we can afford.
The New York State Comptroller’s Office just reported more counties, towns, cities identified in fiscal stress and they found one-quarter of counties struggling financially. We need to ensure we are fiscally sound and able to fund our services while not taxing ourselves out of this community.
2) Protection of our environment. We need to continue to protect our citizens and lands and develop plans to ensure we keep the asset that brings us here and the hundreds of thousands of visitors to our community — the environment. We need to protect our viewsheds, water, wetlands and open spaces for our community now and in the future.
3) Infrastructure, public safety and how we develop them and fund them.
If elected, what are your top three priorities?
The top priorities for our community — and our nation — are the economy and jobs. I will continue to work to provide the services we need as a community and grow the tax base and job opportunities and not at the expense of our current residents or business’s tax bills.
There is not much attractive or appealing about fiscal oversight and monitoring, but that is what good government does. The managing of resources in the most cost-effective and efficient manner is what I will and we need to continue to do.
The creation of a joint master plan is important to all our community. We need to have a road map to follow and decide how and where we want to grow and develop our community. We can no longer afford to have developers come into our community and tell us where and how they are going to build. We need to help and encourage development by developing economic zones and infrastructure plans.
