Three newcomers and an incumbent are running for two town-board seats in the June 27 primary in Woodstock. Anula Courtis is running with incumbent Laura Ricci on a ticket with town supervisor Bill McKenna. Linda Lover and Michael Veitch are aligned with supervisor candidate Bennet Ratcliff.
Anula Courtis
Anula Courtis is a first-generation American daughter of Greek and Polish parents.
She founded a healthcare technology company with a focus on providing access to medication for vulnerable populations. Courtis co-founded the Woodstock Women’s March, chaired the Woodstock human rights commission and served on the police reform and reinvention committee.
Born in Albany, she grew up in Schenectady and then moved with her family to New Jersey. She moved to Woodstock in 2015.
To stop the rancor and encourage more cooperation, obstructionist egos need to be put aside, she said. “My team, your team. That doesn’t work for us,” Courtis said. “Many times, things like affordable housing are being proposed. And while we might disagree, there are literally people who don’t have a roof over their heads. And so we have to bring that mentality to the table 100 percent of the time, That’s how I feel that the next town board is going to work effectively. And we’re not going to agree, but we will agree on some stuff, move the ball forward, evaluate, reevaluate and move it forward again. That’s how we get the job done for people.”
Courtis said the town needs to have a plan on disaster preparedness in place.
“Generally speaking, we need to organize our police, fire and first responders ASAP. We need some type of an organized plan that spreads out to our community. I would engage our volunteer organizations immediately to help people get the word out on social media so we know what to do,” Courtis said. “The communication strategy includes the volunteer organizations, but as well, we need a strategy where we are in touch with our county officials and our state officials.”
Courtis said it was important it identify the most vulnerable in the community and get them and their pets into a safe space like the community center.
Courtis supports the zoning changes suggested for housing.
“The housing committee has been working for more than five years on this, and I like a lot of their suggestions,” Courtis said. “They’re going to make recommendations to have not just zoning changes, but to adopt policy to help support those zoning changes. That’s really important, and we’re going to have to listen to them very closely, because they’ve put that time and effort in for so many years.”
Courtis supports creation of a task force to suggest improvements, a practice that has been established for many years.
“Many people here are so experienced,” Courtis explained. “When I was knocking on doors, I met geologists and different types of folks who actually want to participate more in how we could build affordable housing, how we could maybe improve our trails, and how our elders could actually help youth learn how to maintain certain things here, so that we’re not just spending money. We’re actually empowering people having people be vested here in our community, and we come together around these projects,”
Linda Lover
Linda Lover is a retired teacher who was born in Newburgh and graduated from Newburgh Free Academy and SUNY New Paltz with a bachelor’s degree in art education. She operated a licensed day care and pre-school for 14 years before moving to Saugerties in 1993. She moved to Woodstock with her husband Terry in 2015.
Lover is vice-chair of the Woodstock Democratic Committee, a Woodstock Library board trustee and a member of the short-term rental committee. She is also a former member of the complete streets committee and Woodstock Immigrant Support.
Lover said it was important to have patience to overcome rancor and foster more cooperation. “I’m a peaceful person. I’m not looking for a fight. I’m a lover, not a fighter,” she said. “I was a preschool teacher for several years. I look at everybody like they’re middle-school students these days, because that’s the way I see things happening.”
Lover said everyone just wants to be heard, “We can have difference of opinion. But I am not going to not talk to you. I am not going to look the other way when I’m trying to work with you. I will not do that,” she said.
Lover thinks the public-be-heard portion of meetings of the town board needs to be for more than two minutes per person. “We need a lot more town halls, maybe,” she said, something that Courtis had proposed. “We’re a small town and people have opinions and we have to listen. We really do.”
Lover praised the town’s actions after the February 2022 ice storm, but noted it was spur-of-the-moment. “I think we need a more stable emergency plan so that when this happens again, and I’m sure it’s going to, we know exactly what we’re going to do,’ she said.
Lover noted the new library on Dixon Avenue will have a generator and could be used as an emergency shelter.
Lover is in favor of more options for housing. “I loved the presentation from the housing committee, and there was a lot of great information,” she said. “I have to say I personally thought that it was going to be 100 percent of affordable housing that they were going to provide. I since then have realized that it’s a private enterprise,”.
The proposed zoning amendments are designed to promote and facilitate the development of more long-term housing. “Great what you’re doing, housing committee, great home-share stuff, lots of hard work. They’re not against you at all. But let’s open it up for some more public options so we can make 100 percent affordable housing and not just a portion of the housing that you want to do.”
To fund improvements in town, Lover is in favor of hiring a grantswriter. “It’s about time,” she said. “We’ve been asking for it for a long time, I’m on the STR task force and one of the ways we were going to raise some money for affordable housing is we’re trying to raise the fees, We’re trying to raise the fees and possibly put that money into a into a fund to be able to help people that are having problems in their apartments that can’t afford to pay their bills or any other kind of problem that they may have.”
Increased fees could also be used to create a fund to help with affordable housing, she noted.
Laura Ricci
Laura Ricci has 33 years experience as a project manager and is running for a third term on the town board. Prior to that, she was deputy supervisor and served on the town planning board.
Ricci touts leading the review of the new telecommunications law that restricts placement of 5G cell equipment, a wellhead protection law nearly a decade in the making, her work on the zoning revision committee and most recently the town’s opposition to the Terramor glamping resort in Saugerties.
She also shepherded through a $100,000 state grant for community geothermal energy and was involved in the upcoming state Tinker Street revitalization through her work with the complete streets committee.
On combating rancor and fostering more cooperation, Ricci said it was important to bring respect to the table. “Hopefully you should have people sitting at the table who have decorum and do have respect. And hopefully the people that you do elect to the town board are people who have been demonstrating respect,” she said. “A lot of people are heard and a lot of actions do happen. And a lot has been accomplished to solve different problems.”
Ricci said the town had some experience with disaster response in the aftermath of the February 2022 ice storm. The state DOT Tinker Street project keeps the anticipation of flooding in mind.
“Supervisor McKenna did take the lead in making sure we had the community center open, so many people lost power for days on end,” she said. “It was February, very cold. It was six degrees out at night. So people could come here to get warm. It was a warming center. It worked out very well for that.”
Ricci, a member of the housing oversight task force, is in favor of zoning changes to foster development of more housing. “We’re really in a listening mode right now for that housing oversight task force proposed law, and we’re looking for everybody to give their input,” she said..
Ricci said the town has a recent history of obtaining grants without a grantswriter. One grant was to pay for part of the comprehensive plan, another for a professional planner to help with the zoning revisions and yet another for a community geothermal study. She said using surplus funds was a good way to fund improvements.
“We now have, I think, $200,000, so that we can proceed with the youth center,” Ricci said. “Are we going to renovate our way and replace it? We don’t know yet. But we do know because the fund balance has been appropriated, we can really do some good stuff over at the youth center.”
Michael Veitch
Michael Veitch is an associate real-estate broker, a singer-songwriter, and chair of the town tree committee, alternate on the commission for civic design, member of Friends of Comeau, and former Woodstock environmental commission member. He is a longtime Woodstock resident and parent.
Veitch supports allowing people more time to speak at town meetings.“When someone comes to a town board meeting, leaves their home, their warm house in the winter or their air conditioning in the summer, leaves their dinner waiting and comes to a town board meeting, you know, by God, they should be allowed to speak,” he said. “I’ve seen this situation building up and building up and building up over many years. People are very frustrated. They’ve got something to say they want to say if they’re not being heard by this current town board, and that is the reality.”
Veitch said the town needs to tap into the wealth of knowledge available through experts on disaster planning. “We don’t live in a vacuum here,” Veitch said. “One thing you’ll get to know about me is that I have this thing about not reinventing the wheel. And rather than sit here and spout off a bunch of stuff off the top of my head about what I think we should do, I would rather bring in the experts to address the town, whether it’s a town meeting or at a town board meeting on an annual basis to update and communicate the latest on what’s happening.”
He cited the looming mass extinction of the white pine as an example. “There are people at the state level that are truly freaking out about this. How are we going to deal with that? How are we going to plan for that? The way we’re going to deal with it and plan for it is bring in experts to help us and not expect to handle this thing by ourselves,” he said.
Veitch supports more public resources to handle the housing crisis. “Woodstock is not blessed with a lot of old factory buildings that can be converted,” he said.. “ We have a few. What we do have here? Well, first of all, let me say, the existing footprint should be completely analyzed, we should determine which of these apartment houses that are currently renting near Woodstock could be purchased, or taken by whatever means.”
He said this conversion should be managed by the town, not private enterprise.
He supports looking into a program that provides life tenancy for seniors who want to donate their property once they’ve passed on.
Veitch supports a full-time grantswriter to pay for town improvements. He said a grantswriter would pay for themselves in terms of grants money coming into the town.
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