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Kingston Times - Features | 10/29/2009 |
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Quigley vs. Woerner
Town of Ulster supervisor struggle pits experienced youth against neophyte maturity |
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| | Jim Quigley, left, and Nicky Woerner, right. | |
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by Dan Barton
This year's supervisor race in the Town of Ulster is a study in contrasts, but not a run-of-the-mill the study in contrasts.
The incumbent in the drama is played by Democrat Nicky Woerner. He's seeking his third term in office at the helm of the town which serves as Ulster County's economic engine, but as he's 25 years old, calling him "old guard" is something of a non sequitur. The challenger is 52-year-old Republican James Quigley III, whose outsider/reformist status is belied by some pretty solid "establishment" credentials. He lost last year by a razor-thin margin the race for county comptroller and has worked for years for a major investment firm in New York.
Woerner, who ran his first (unsuccessful) campaign for town supervisor when he was 19 and was elected two years later, is running on his record - he says his administration has managed town finances well, dramatically improved senior housing and recreation and worked the state government for about a million in grants for various projects. Recently, the town board, under his leadership, has taken on the task of turning TechCity, the former IBM-Kingston site and the premier local symbol for post-industrial malaise, into a green mecca for exalted renewable energy jobs and has started work on a senior citizens' center being built next to town hall.
However, it has not all been peaches and cream for Woerner. A town property tax hike of 18.3 percent which came with the 2009 budget has been the rallying cry for his opponents, along with accusations that Woerner's relationship with developer Steve Aaron has led to Aaron getting unfair tax breaks for his Chambers senior housing project. (Quigley himself unsuccessfully tried to get a court to overturn a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes the town struck with Aaron on the Chambers, claiming it violated state law, and GOP Councilman Eric Kitchen, who is in essence a one-man opposition to Woerner on the town board, accused Deputy Supervisor Craig Artist earlier this year of, at the least, poorly negotiating an assessment-reduction deal on the Chambers complex.) Various signs, blog postings, mailings and intimations have tried to connect in voter's minds a trinity of Aaron, Woerner - who used to work for Aaron and whose second cousin is Aaron's wife - and town attorney Andrew Zweben, alleging the three have combined to put the town in hock or some similar bad state. Woerner, who commands facts well and is nothing if not self-confident, has also rubbed some people the wrong way with his sometimes-curt dismissal of citizens criticizing him at town board meetings and widely alleged unwillingness to return people's phone calls.
So, it is in this context next week's election for the two-year, $45,000-a-year job takes place. While Woerner's opponents seek to portray a revolution brewing, a survey of lawn signs in residential towns (the closest thing this news organization gets to opinion polling) shows about equal support for both candidates. Though the campaign, thought to have the potential of becoming one of the most acrimonious in local history, has not become as nasty as it could have, Woerner and Quigley pulled few punches in recent interviews.
"As of right now, the opponents, all of the opponents, have not laid out one plan as to how they're going to change the Town of Ulster, other than that they claim that they're the 'Responsible Leadership Team.' Quite frankly, they're going around and having a whisper campaign," said Woerner, who is single and has no kids. "They're telling people what they want to hear. I have never told the people of the Town of Ulster what they wanted to hear; I have always told them the truth. Sometimes, they've wanted to hear and sometimes they didn't."
"I bring 30 years of real-world business experience," said Quigley, married with three children. "This is not my first job. ... I've been responsible to public governments for billions of dollars worth of assets. I believe I can be responsible to the Town of Ulster's citizens for a $13 million budget."
"They're telling people they're going to lower their taxes. Well, it's a great idea that they have that they can lower taxes. They have yet to prove to anyone that they can actually do it, and don't think for a second that we haven't attempted to lower taxes," Woerner said. "In fact in certain years, we did lower taxes. So the reason for me to remain the supervisor, for Councilman [Rocco] Secreto to remain on the town board and for Deputy Supervisor Artist to rejoin the town board is that we understand how the government of the Town of Ulster works. ... [The Republicans] haven't laid out one plan as to what they're going to do, other than they've criticized us for everything we've done. ... The reason the people should vote for us and not for them is because we understand the problems, because we live in this community, because we work in this community and we appreciate the difficulties that average people face."
"The issues in the town are many-fold," said Quigley. "The first and the foremost is financial responsibility on behalf of the town. Fiscal responsibility. When [former supervisor] Fred Wadnola left office on Dec. 31, 2005, he left with an unappropriated unreserved fund balance of $1,289,337. At the end of December 2008, the number was $14,000. ... That's the monies that represent the surplus of revenues over expenses in the general fund that are not appropriated or set aside specifically as reserves. It's kind of like the town's bank account for rainy days."
Quigley said had Woerner been more responsible with the fund balance, he would not have had to bond out for the tax certiorari settlement with Hudson Valley Mall owners PCK and for new highway equipment, both of which were in excess of $1 million. "The supervisor and the attorney for the town made an election to negotiate a settlement, a settlement that went against the Town of Ulster, causing the Town of Ulster to have to pay back approximately $950,000 in back taxes and reduced the assessment going forward," Quigley said. "Had the supervisor not spent that $1.2 million, he would not have had to borrow the $1.3 million he had to to make that settlement."
Woerner lists as his major accomplishments the role the town played in getting Chambers, an affordable senior housing project, off the ground and bringing recreation "from a nonexistent program to one of the finest in the region. We've put a real emphasis on law enforcement, making sure that the people and the businesses of the Town of Ulster are safe and protected," he said. "I can't just name one accomplishment of this administration, other to say that working together with Democrats, Republicans and Conservatives, in the best interest of the residents of the Town of Ulster, we've done our job. And I hope that on Nov. 3, the residents of the Town of Ulster ask us to continue doing that job. We are willing to serve, but in order to do so, we must have their support."
'Signs don't vote. People vote.'
Despite what Woerner calls a "whisper campaign" against him, the supervisor says he's not discouraged by his opponents' attacks. "I've been involved in political campaigns and around political campaigns since I was 5 years old," said Woerner. "Signs don't vote. People vote. Whisper campaigns don't vote. People vote. Postcards don't vote. People vote. And at the end of the day, I hope the people of the Town of Ulster judge me on what I have done for them, and look at the accomplishments of this administration, the bipartisan cooperation that we've had in this town for the past four years. No one can deny that. And I hope they consider all these things when they cast their vote and they put aside the rhetoric that they hear."
Woerner challenged the whisperers to put up or shut up. "My thought with that is if my opponent, or any person within the Town of Ulster, has any knowledge that I have committed a crime, or I am involved in some type of scheme to commit a crime, I would hope that the appropriate venue that they would seek would be the District Attorney's Office, rather than putting out a postcard to the residents of the Town of Ulster. Scare tactics don't win campaigns. It just shows that my opponents don't have a grasp of the issues."
"We need change in the Town of Ulster," said Quigley. "We look forward to change in the Town of Ulster on Jan. 1, 2010."
When asked why he was running, Quigley cited a desire to serve the community. If elected, this would be his first public office, but Quigley said he has done a lot of volunteer work and his skills will benefit the town. "It's time for me, after having a career, to ask what's next and to give back," said Quigley. "I have skills which I think can benefit the community. They certainly have benefited the community in my philanthropic and non-profit endeavors. I am particularly proud of the fact that I wrote the business plan and made the presentation to the Archdiocese of New York that resulted in the Archdiocese making the decision to keep Coleman Catholic High School open. I am particularly proud of the fact that I am on the board of directors of the Montrepose Cemetery Association and when I joined the board, the cemetery was on the brink of bankruptcy, and it's not on the brink of bankruptcy now."
Quigley also cited a desire to improve the town's jobs outlook. "My son, who's a senior in college, told me, 'Dad, I'm not coming home. There's no jobs in Kingston,'" said Quigley. "I gotta ask myself, do I take part in the process and try to make a difference, or do I go about my life, retire and go play golf somewhere? And I don't play golf well."
Let's talk about money some more
"In business, revenue dictates expenses," said Quigley. "If you're making money, you're able to add expenses, you're able to grow. In government, it's exactly the opposite - expenses dictate revenue. Revenue is generated by taxes. I want to go back and focus on the expense side of the government, to take the pressure off of raising the taxes. ... You start with the pennies, the nickels and the dimes, and they add up to dollars."
Woerner cites his administration's ability to get money from Albany as a highlight of his tenure. "We have been able to secure a million dollars from the Governor's Office for Small Cities in the last four years - $600,000 for the Glenerie water tank; $100,000 for the East Kingston laterals and home rehab project. $300,000 for the Russell F. Brott Senior Center," said Woerner. "Those are great accomplishments of an administration."
Quigley says his business expertise could save the town money. "I have 30 years of business experience. I'm a certified public accountant. Several months ago, the town board authorized Nicky Woerner to hire the services of Lisa Cutten, a certified public accountant, for assisting in the preparation of the books, for a sum not to exceed $20,000," Quigley said. "Year to date, we have paid the attorney for the town $90,000 to be present at every single meeting. I bring 30 years of business experience to the table. I will not have to be expending these types of monies on those types of professionals to the extent that the current administration has. That is a lot of money for our budget."
Woerner thinks that's a bad idea. "He was critical of me hiring a certified public accountant to go over the books of the town. I'm telling you right now, there's no bonding company in the world that's going to lend money to the town without an audited financial statement, and they're not going to want to see the chief fiscal officer of that community signing that statement as the auditor. And if that's how they run their business in New York City, that scares me. Because to me, that's Madoff-esque, in every sense of the word."
Woerner said Quigley is a one-dimensional candidate. "He's not talked about law enforcement, he's not talked about recreation, he's not talked about the highway department or any of those issues, he talks about the things that I guess make him crazy. This is similar to [former supervisor hopeful] Don Wise's campaign, similar to [former supervisor hopeful] Walt Maxwell's campaign - they get on two or three little things and that's there campaign, and it doesn't go anywhere."
Quigley, for his part, makes no bones about this election being about dollars and cents. "My primary issue is the spending and where [Woerner] has gone on his budgets," said Quigley. (According to Quigley, the town has overspent by $646,474 for the 2006 budget, $702,299 for the 2007 budget and $860,701 in the 2008 budget.) "Over the last three years, he has consistently outspent [the budgeted allotment]. ... This is an indication of things gone astray, of somebody not paying attention. ... If he's come up short the past three years, how can he guarantee he's not going to come up short this year?"
Having fun on the trail
In a more positive vein, both Woerner and Quigley said they have enjoyed getting out and meeting the voters. "The campaign is going well - we're out knocking on doors, getting our message out to the voters and getting a very good reception," said Woerner.
"I'm having an enjoyable time. I'm getting a wonderful reaction from the people we meet going door to door, and that is the focus of our campaign. It's called "Walk to Win," and it's our intention to knock on every single door in the Town of Ulster, to meet every single resident and give them an opportunity to express their opinions and be heard."
Where would the two like to see the town two years from now? Said Quigley: "I would like to see the town put the past behind it, cleaned up the problems we have, cleaned up the pettiness that exists in the community over decisions that have been made, decisions that have not been made, the perception that some people are getting special deals and that other people have been excluded from the process. ... I don't like going to board meetings when four people show up, OK? That's proof that citizens are not being heard and citizens are being turned off. ... I've heard people say, 'I don't want to go to the town board. [Woerner]'s not going to listen to me. He's going to demean me.' I want to bring an entirely different tone of respecting and encouraging communication from the citizens."
Said Woerner: "I'd like for us to be able to say that we've completed major expansion of jobs at TechCity. I'd like for us to say that we're undertaking and moving forward recreation programs and housing opportunities for everyone in our community. I'd like to say that I would continue to hope to be re-elected as the supervisor of the Town of Ulster, as long as people felt I was doing the job that they intended for me to do. I think that in two years, the Town of Ulster is going to continue to be the greatest community to live in Ulster County, while I'll continue to serve as its supervisor."
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