At the Herald’s first Meet the Candidates forum in Stanford, on Oct. 14, two different portraits of how to run Stanford came into focus in the race for Town Supervisor: one plan-driven, the other rooted in skepticism of the town’s Comprehensive Plan.
Julia Descoteaux, a Democratic Town Board member and digital-marketing consultant who moved to Stanford full-time during the pandemic, cast the Supervisor as chief fiscal officer and coalition builder. “The role of the Supervisor is fiscal responsibility,” she told the crowd. “A town is not unlike a team. We need to be high functioning, you need to communicate effectively, you need to lead with trust and honesty.”
Next to her at the table, Michael Roche, a Republican attorney and retired New York Police Department sergeant who settled here full-time three years ago but has owned a home since the late 1990s, said he’s running to offer “a different point of view.” He described a Town Hall that is too prescriptive. “I feel that the Town Board’s got to get out of the way,” he said. “Stop making these environmental laws that are hampering new businesses from coming in… We need to get out of the way, and let things happen.”
Both candidates offered personal origin stories that help explain their programs. Roche spoke first, recalling his first visit to Stanford in 1975 — “the fishing, swimming, ice skating, nature, I couldn’t get enough” — then a career that took him from uniformed and plainclothes NYPD assignments to law school and a family-law practice. Leadership, he said, is transferable: “I’ve led out the streets of New York, and I believe I can lead in Stanford.”
Descoteaux, elected to the board in 2023, pointed to the unglamorous work of budgeting and committees: liaising with the Conservation Advisory Committee as it finished the Natural Resources Inventory, heading up the Water Quality Committee, and helping to organize the Sparc Park playground rebuild. Corporate stops at Toyota, L’Oréal and Walmart, she said, taught her to manage “large teams and big budgets.”
Much of the evening turned on a single premise: whether Stanford’s planning framework, specifically its December, 2023 Comprehensive Plan, provides helpful guidance or fuels confusion.
According to the document, the plan “is a policy document that guides a municipality’s vision and goals for its economic health, natural resource protection and land development. The Plan presents a snapshot of the current state of the Town, and offers guidance for its future. The Plan illustrates a roadmap with directions a community may follow to meet its goals, and may provide options for how to get here, but it does not prescribe specific policies or regulations.”
Its vision statement reads: “The primary vision for the Town of Stanford rests in the desire for the Town to prosper economically while maintaining and enhancing its natural resources and rural agricultural heritage.”
Roche told voters, “the current Town Board does not listen very well to its community,” citing “unpopular laws, like the Comprehensive Plan.”
Asked to name a town environmental law he believes is curbing business, he answered that the Comprehensive Plan and related guidance become “restrictions” once applicants reach the town’s Planning and Zoning boards. “There’s engineering costs, there’s legal costs, and business doesn’t want to come in because of that.” Later he called the Comprehensive Plan “difficult to understand… I’m a lawyer and I’m looking at it and it doesn’t need to be that difficult.”
“So the Comprehensive Plan isn’t a law,” Descoteaux replied. “It’s a guiding document. It’s informing laws. It’s not a law.” The Zoning Board of Appeals and the Planning Board, she said, interpret the town code; environmental mandates flow from the county and state.
That philosophical divide surfaced again over the Natural Resources Inventory and the CAC. Roche said the work “has gone too far,” worrying that environmental data could be “used against property owners” around Upton Lake and elsewhere. Descoteaux called the information “really, really important… to keep our community sustainable.”
Mr. Roche was completely unprepared for both Meet-the Candidates-Nights. He obfuscated, deflected, and clearly didn’t understand the Comprehensive Plan for one thing. And the Town Board doesn’t listen? Really. The Comprehensive Plan was vetted thoroughly by the community via numerous open town hall meetings over the past several years precisely to get citizen input. So Mister Roche let me ask you: if you’re so concerned about what the Comprehensive Plan contains or represents, why didn’t you attend any of those meetings? I’ve been going to town hall meetings religiously for the 20 years that I’ve lived here and I have never see you at any of those until this past September. Furthermore, it was disconcerting last night that when asked about marijuana dispensaries coming to Stanfordville that you weren’t aware that a referendum was held three years ago—putting the vote to the public—and the town decided not to have them. Someone running for Town Supervisor, with your lack of awareness and preparedness, makes me leery that you’re up to the task. The rest of “your team” was similarly unprepared with their vague answers to important questions. You will not be getting my vote.
The most striking difference between the two candidates was their familiarity with the issues that were discussed. Ms. Descoteaux has been an active member of our community with two years of experience on the Town Board. She led the rebuild is Sparc Park with an enormous amount of time put into gathering consensus with Stanford residents. Mr Roach dropped onto the scene without ever participating in a Public Hearing or attending Town Board meetings ( except two after he decided to run for office) and his lack of understanding – of details, process and the history behind complex problems like EMS, was apparent.
Jeff Brouws comment seems to mirror Wendy Burton, no surprise there since they are married to each other. And why not also mention Wendy Burton was the architect of the Comprehensive plan as the town supervisor. It was clear when Mr. Roche brought said the plan increases density in our lake and hamlet areas it will be a strain on our natural resources and more housing units will bring more pollution when we have to be careful or leash our dogs and cats because of how they interact with wildlife or that if a public water system may be necessary it would cost Stanford millions and what was Ms. Descoteaux response? exactly…. nothing