Excerpts from interviews by Rokosz Most with ex-New York state senator Jen Metzger, Ulster County deputy executive Marc Rider and Ulster County comptroller March Gallagher. The Democratic nominee chosen by the Ulster County Democratic Committee on September 17 will probably be on the November 8 ballot.
Candidate pitch
Metzger
We face a lot of challenges right now. That can feel incredibly daunting. You know, we have to face a climate crisis. We face a major housing affordability crisis. We face mental-health and addiction crises — and you know, and these are just what you know. Too many people are without the economic opportunities that they need.
And yes, and many of these issues, many of these challenges, are interrelated. But many of the solutions to them have multiple benefits for our communities. And I’ve been working on those solutions for a long time at local, regional and state levels. I really firmly believe that, you know, our county has all the building blocks it needs to create a resilient, sustainable, thriving economy that leaves no one behind it — with the right vision and leadership.
Rider
The top three are housing affordability, expanding mental-health and addiction services, and combating climate change. We also keep seeing these attacks on fundamental rights, whether it is a right to housing, whether it’s a right to health care, whether it’s a right to women’s health care and abortion access, whether it’s a clean environment, the right to marry who you want to marry. We’re seeing attacks, and we have to have all elected officials, regardless of whether the county has a function in it or not, be willing to stand up and say enough is enough. And advocate.
Gallagher
I would focus on managing our large initiatives, including setting up our mental-health department, redeveloping TechCity, advocating for watershed issues like the downstream communities that are suffering with discharges from the reservoir, and also, you know, the economic impacts of hosting the New York City watershed.
So really managing our large initiatives. Our work in the comptroller’s office really has made me familiar with the finances and the operations of the county, and I can see places that county governments would work better.
And then a third area, it would really be preparing Ulster County for the future. We have a Green New Deal strategy already operating. And it’s doing things like a transportation resiliency study countywide right now, a natural-resource inventory going on right now. But we should be thinking about making sure that we are as energy-efficient as possible.
Housing Security
Rider
I think we probably need to add 10,000 or so [housing] units in the next ten to 15 years. “I think that’s aggressive. I think it’s going to be tough to get there. But I think it’s what’s needed. I believe that housing is a human right.
My way of going about it, in the meantime, is to at least get people shelter. There’s a company called Pallet or something similar, it’s one company that builds shelters. They do little cabins 64 square feet or 100 or so. They go up in a very short amount of time,
I think finding a location in Ulster County and building out a village, I would like to see something for about 20 to 30 people built out at a location. We just need to provide a place that people can get in out of the weather.
Metzger
“We have to address the affordable-housing crisis. Increasingly, I have seen the development of the short- term housing rental market, the Airbnb market, from the time since I was on the town board.
And it’s definitely having a huge impact on the availability of rental housing, Private equity is also getting into the real-estate housing market buying up housing and able to pay hundreds of thousands, easily more than any resident possibly could.
In my mind, houses are to be owned by people, not by an LLC, not by companies, not by private equity. And that’s something that we can address. I’ve already had conversations with senator [Michelle] Hinchey about this on her legislation, and can work with her because it also requires some legislation registering at the state level.
Gallagher
I wound up living in like 14 different homes, four states, three counties in the Hudson Valley, and two motels before graduating high school, and it’s made me really passionate about things like housing security. I’ve really come to the conclusion that desperate people don’t make good decisions.
And now we’re seeing like, it’s very hard to find employees. And it’s very hard to attract good paying jobs, and employers if you have nobody to work. And you can’t find anyone to work if nobody can afford to live here. So it really is all connected.
Transportation
Gallagher
You can’t get a job without a car, and you can’t get a car without a job. That’s Ulster County in a nutshell.
One thing I found so interesting is that when we started to consider fareless buses there were some initial objections like, well, you know, we get our state money based on fares. Well, no, it’s actually based on ridership. And lo and behold if we get rid of the fares and we increase the ridership, we could get more state money. So we could actually bring more revenue to get rid of the fares.
But here’s the thing. Running large buses to distant parts of the county and having one or two riders probably doesn’t make sense. We have to figure out how to get smaller, more compact and more responsive.
Rider
“We need to shift to more electric micro-transit. We drive around these buses that are half-full all day long. There’s no reason that we’re not doing electric micro-transit in the City of Kingston right now. Volkswagen’s making an electric version of their van again, that’s actually what this company was gonna use. Something that can fit eight to ten people. And so that’s one option.
Metzger
“I was a big advocate of this in the state senate, because I represented four rural counties. And one of them had no public transportation, zero, No municipal bus system. I have been pushing for, and will continue to advocate for and work with the state and the governor from the position of county executive to expand state funding for municipal transportation systems outside of cities.
I actually got a grant in the state senate to help the UCAT electrify. The grant went toward the charging facilities for the electric buses. Public transportation is an important climate issue. It is a critical piece to reaching the state’s climate goals, emissions reduction goals, if you don’t do it, we’re not going to meet our goals.
Mental Health
Rider
We’re in the process of buying a building in Midtown Kingston on Broadway. It’s going to be the behavioral health hub in our crisis stabilization center, you’re going to walk in. First floor will be the crisis stabilization center. Four floors.
Right now we already have access supports for living doing an urgent care. And Samadhi is in there. We’re gonna bring in are other providers that provide behavioral health support.
So that’s Family Services, that’s Astor, who does behavioral health for children. And so bring them all in and it’ll be like a one place to stop for all of your behavioral health needs: mental health and addiction, mental-health crisis. You can walk into the crisis stabilization center.
You can be seen for up to 24 hours, and it’s open 24/7. It’ll be like a one place to stop for all of your behavioral health needs.
Metzger
I want to expand mental-health support for youth. The pandemic has had taken a major toll on this generation of kids. We are in desperate need have expanded service, mental-health services for youth. Under Pat Ryan’s administration, he did something which I loved, I would have done it myself. It was so great to see it.
So they’ve created clinical positions, getting that assistance to the schools so that teachers don’t have to also be social workers and therapists and the like. They can just focus on teaching, and the kids can can’t learn to the fullest if they’re, if they’re grappling with these other issues that they’re not getting support for.
Landfill
Gallagher
I don’t think any municipality is going to want to be burdened with the countywide landfill. But I also don’t like the idea of shipping it out. And I know that other neighboring counties are going through a very similar struggle. We’re not only county that is going to be affected by the closure of Seneca Meadows. It is going to be all of us together. We need to be doing everything we can in our capabilities to reduce our waste stream. I’d like to more heavily push the zero-rate waste implementation plan that our county legislature has been working on, you know. Let’s reduce the waste flow as much as we possibly can.
Rider
I grew up in Spokane, Washington. Our house was literally right next to the county landfill. I could see the fence. Then in the late Eighties, early 90s, they closed and they built at that time. It was less desirable, because it wasn’t as environmentally friendly, but they built a waste-to-energy plant.
And I do think there are some solutions now. We’re looking at doing a reuse innovation center right now. We put out an RFP. If we take things out of the waste stream, everything that we can we compost, everything we can recycle, and if we we’re doing a pretty good job I would prefer to see us site something that was like a waste-to-energy plant rather than a landfill.
Experience
Metzger
Before state office, I served in local government for over eleven years in Rosendale, serving in a variety of roles. I chaired the town’s environmental commission for a long time. And I served as deputy town supervisor, and then was elected to two terms on the town board. I left partway through my second term on the town board to serve in the state senate. And at the same time I was in local office I co founded and served as the executive director of Citizens for Local Power. It was founded by 10 Women in Rosendale.
We got our start fighting the takeover of Central Hudson by Canadian based Fortis. Almost all the utilities in New York State are owned by foreign companies. The merger was too far along, we couldn’t prevent that [takeover]. But we did get concessions for organized labor, Central Hudson workers — line men and women — and for our communities.
Rider
I’ve worked for county government now since 2013. I was an assistant county attorney. Then former county executive Mike Hein asked me to be the director of purchasing, responsible for all procurement in Ulster County. I did that for about four years, helped modernize our procurement systems oversaw a lot of complex capital projects.
In 2018, Mike asked me to be deputy county executive. In 2019, when Hein left for Albany, I ran for county executive. After about two weeks, it became pretty evident at that point that having both Pat Ryan and [Pat] Courtney Strong just come off losing campaigns they had a machine that that was really going to be tough for me to catch up on. And so when I looked at the two choices, I decided I would throw my support behind Pat [Ryan].
There was never a promise that I would stay on long-term, but I did stay, you know, through his whole administration. For the first three years of his administration, I was number one on the line of succession. So if he was away, I was in charge of the office and filled in for him in a lot of things.
Gallagher
From the beginning of the county executive form of government, I began to get much more involved in making sure that we elected the right people to county government and helped to flip the county legislature to blue in 2005. I was appointed to serve on the IDA and became the chair of the IDA for a couple of years.
Hein when he became county executive invited me to carry out economic development work. Director of business services, which was their words for economic development. I worked for county executive Hein and having the economic development agencies as partners report back to the executive through me.
Environment
Gallagher
We should be thinking about things like a countywide water and wastewater authority. We have the failing water systems like Hudson Valley Water and the ones in Hurley and the Town of Saugerties. And we don’t really have a way for the county to step in and offer support for those.
Our infrastructure needs to be ready for the coming future, which is going to include possibly droughts possibly floods and now we’re seeing fire risk. What is the forest management strategy for the 30 percent of the acres in Ulster County that are managed by the state and DEP from New York City. Thirty percent of our acres and we have so much standing deadwood! It’s like a tinderbox out there.
And when we put out an RFP for architectural [help] for site-plan development services, we need to be stating our green requirements right up front.
Rider
I’m committing that by 2030 all of our facilities will be electrified by renewable resources, solar, geothermal. Then, all of the vehicles in our fleet that can be switched over off of fossil fuels. So right now there’s some highway trucks and other things that there’s not a renewable option for. But I think eventually we’ll get there. And so in the next ten years anything that can be switched over will be. I have been responsible for implementing a Green New Deal in Ulster County. I’m gonna continue that work as county executive.
To me, the Green New Deal is a jobs program, right? Bring in the companies here that manufacture environmental-friendly so we can be a headquarters of the environmental movement, and then make sure that we’re again training that workforce so they’re ready for these jobs
Metzger
Helping communities shift to a locally based clean-energy economy is really important. I want to do a county energy program that creates a strong locally based clean-energy economy. I think that there is an enormous potential for the county to leverage its power in the fight for fair and greener utility practices.
The county can become a party to proceedings. It’s a valuable thing to do, because you can win benefits. And, you know, I helped Kingston for instance in its negotiations with the utility to get it to convert its streetlight system to LEDs. I got utility tariffs on streetlights changed through my advocacy and various proceedings.
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