Incoming Supervisor Anula Courtis is ready to tackle the challenges of a new administration and new year, having announced her deputy supervisor and confidential secretary.
Daniel Gallant, who has led Courtis’ transition team, will become deputy supervisor, and Yvonne Rojas-Cowan will be Courtis’ confidential secretary.
Gallant, a marketing communications and development strategist for public, private and corporate entities for more than 20 years, got to know Courtis through the Woodstock Democratic Committee, which he’s been a part of for four years.
“When Anula announced her campaign for town supervisor, several friends and I volunteered and helped her with that campaign, and we’re very excited to slide in and see her success through the primaries and the general election,” Gallant said.
“Since that time, I’ve been enthusiastic about volunteering in a transitional capacity to help Anula work through all of the logistics and communications,” he said.
“I’ve always been very interested in organizational change and systems of leadership, and how moments of organizational change can lead to really exciting and sometimes also very challenging developments. So I’m glad to be bringing whatever skills I have to bear on Anula’s behalf to help the incoming administration.”
In addition to leading the transition, Gallant is also heading communication between Supervisor Bill McKenna and the new administration and getting access to the technology necessary to run the town’s day-to-day operations.
“Also, a big part of that work has been trying to identify information and knowledge gaps—areas in which there either isn’t documentation or there needs to be a lot more communication and transmission of materials and institutional knowledge to help the new incoming administration get up to speed,” he said.
Rojas-Cowan, the newest member of the team, just joined a matter of days ago. She is Woodstock Artists Association & Museum’s (WAAM) exhibitions director and former Saugerties Arts Commission chair. She will step down from her WAAM role and become a board member of that organization when she becomes Courtis’ secretary. She also has extensive financial experience, both with AIG and Zurich. Rojas-Cowan has already hit the ground running in her short time with the team, coming up with ideas for short-term and long-term plans.
“I’m a complex problem solver by nature and historically. So I’m eager to dive in and tackle some of the many, many challenges that are in the role,” she said.
“I have been working in Woodstock for the last two years. I know the community very, very well,” Rojas added.
“When I met Anula, we just hit it off right away, and I think we’re going to make a fantastic team.”
Challenges Lie Ahead
After the dust has settled and the new team works around recent challenges like the lack of logins and passwords for critical systems, it’s time to get to work.
“Here’s how I’m looking at the town. It’s like a three-lane highway, and the first one is to clean up a lot of stuff that needs to be cleaned up. And the second lane is basically how we can improve our operations. And the third one is what new things can we reasonably do that have a significant impact on our town, people living in our town,” Courtis said.
“There are a lot of projects that are going to happen. So we’re talking about complete streets. We need improved sidewalks. So how do we move the ball forward to get to the point where we are in fact building these sidewalks in a way that respects the environment but also respects people who can’t walk on those.”
A big issue is PFOS and other forever chemicals in the town water supply and the inability to discover the cause or ways to eliminate them, she said.
Courtis said she’ll make good on a campaign promise to make water test results available in an online dashboard with a history available to the public.
A fiscal audit is likely coming soon to examine the fiscal health of the town.
“Underlying all of that is going to be an administration that is going to communicate with people, that’s going to listen to people. We’re going to be transparent. We’re going to try to make people’s lives easier,” she said.
The current way of obtaining information from the town is through a freedom of information request and waiting for a determination whether it can be released. A lot of that can be streamlined by simply releasing information that is appropriate for public consumption, she noted.
A goal in the first 60 days is to reach out to the town’s business owners to hear their concerns.
“It’s a two-way street. We get sales tax from them. That helps us run this town efficiently. And they probably have some ideas on how the town could support them some more,” Courtis said.
“And then take action on the ideas, not just put it on a book on a shelf somewhere. Actually put it into action.”
Shady Dump Will Not Be an Easy Task
“I think the whole town really wants it cleaned up,” Courtis said.
“One of the things that I said I would do when running, and I intend to do this, is to find the right attorney, the right law firm to consult with so that we know what our legal pathway is moving forward,” she said.
“I have not seen a lick of information, not one sentence from any attorney regarding this whole matter. And so we have a plan that was approved and signed off on. We have a sign-off that the plan was executed correctly. And these things are legal documents. So to upend them and undo them requires legal advice.”
Courtis said it is unfortunate the town is in the situation of having contaminated material all these years later so close to a water supply, but it is difficult to unravel a plan signed off by the town to conduct a full cleanup.
“Anything that we would do would require a town attorney or a special attorney to go to court. We do not have a town attorney right now equipped to take that to court and win. We need somebody who has the legal expertise to advise us on what that looks like, what it could possibly cost, what our chances of winning are, and then to go to court and say, I’m filing this,” Courtis said.
“That property owner made an agreement with the town. The town said this is sufficient whether we agree or not—and I don’t agree with it—but it happened. So in fairness to that property owner, the town said okay. So you can’t just go barging in on people’s properties and do what exactly?”
Positivity Is Key
“Someone recently told me with every problem, you really kind of look at what’s the gift in it. And at first I was like, yeah, the gift is more work. But it was true, sitting with that and thinking about it. Because every single problem is an opportunity,” Courtis said.
“And there are so many opportunities. And some of them are easy. They’re not big deals. So I feel confident that we’ll make some change,” she added.
“I’m confident some people will complain. That’s going to happen. That’s part of it. But I think we’re in a good place right now. I think the town is in a better place also.”
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