Credit: Suzanne Ouellette
According to the incumbent Town Supervisor Brian Walsh, “Two years isn’t much time to accomplish anything, hoping for another two years, four years total, so I can make a mark.” When asked to elaborate, he adds “the biggest hurdle” right now is the budget, “due to the increased costs of everything and not wanting to raise taxes.” A municipality is strapped financially and the town can only do “a couple of projects here and there at a time.” For Walsh, the big project is to address some of the sidewalks in town, the repair for these is long overdue. Pine Plains is a walkable community and he emphasizes that the town needs to start by fixing the existing sidewalk problems and, when those are under control, look to expand to in areas where new sidewalks might be needed.
Walsh speaks of the new Town Hall as a “hot subject.” “To be 100% honest with you…it is going to take a little time.” He doesn’t want to rush into it for fear that something will be done wrong. He wants to build something that will last and be useful for employees and everyone in the town. “It needs to look good and fit it, but at the same time I don’t want to go wild.” He anticipates that it will be at least two years before ground is broken. When asked about its location, Walsh says the land in the center of town on N. Main Street was purchased for a Town Hall and should be used that way. It needs to be built to suit our current needs with room for growth if it is needed in the future.
When asked about a wastewater system for the center of town, Walsh responds that the Catholic Church is not ready to sell the property that would be needed and the proposed alternate site on Academy Street is not large enough, as he understands it. Also, he says there are rumors about another project, a small affordable housing project near Stewart’s, that might take on the wastewater issue for itself in a way that could be expanded to benefit others in the downtown district. He explains that there have been conversations but no proposal has come before the Zoning Board.
On the perceived problem of a lack of communication and a “we/they” divide in Pine Plains, Walsh said he doesn’t think this problem is just here. “It’s nationwide, all over, I don’t know what the answer is to it…it’s just the way people think.” He personally doesn’t believe in labels and party affiliations don’t matter to him. Nonetheless, he knows that in Pine Plains “a lot of people feel that what is at the town level is the same as the national level, but it is not. We cannot change what is going on at the national level, we can only do our part here in our town.” Although he is skeptical about finding a solution to the big problem that exists across our country, Walsh is secure in his goal “to do good things for the community…to give back to the community…that’s my big goal.”
Walsh is the Republican candidate for Town Supervisor and he is running unopposed. Asked what he would like to see reported about him at the end of the upcoming two-year term, he hopes a newspaper would present his accomplishments. He clarifies that he is only one person out of five town board members that make decisions, so what gets accomplished is the result of a group of people working together. We want “to watch the town grow but in the way Pine Plains was meant to be, I don’t want to change a huge amount of the character” that brought people here and kept people here.
His final comment on what he wants newspaper readers to know about him is that his door is always open, people can get hold of him, he is always available for an appointment. “I love the job. I am giving back to the community and that is what I want to do.”
The election is Tuesday, Nov. 7. Early voting is from Oct. 28 to Nov. 5. Information about early voting can be found here.