Tim Rogers defeats Jason West for mayor
Village residents have given Tim Rogers a convincing win for mayor over the incumbent, a sitting Village Board trustee, and a community activist.
In unofficial results Tuesday, Rogers had 353 votes to finish ahead of Mayor Jason West with 204 votes, village Trustee Sally Rhoads with 177 votes, and candidate Amy Cohen with 137 votes.
“I had a good team supporting me, I think I have a good track record of doing good work in the community, and I think the voters were appreciative of the work that I’ve done,” Rogers said.
Rogers is self-employed, working with two startup businesses. He is a New Paltz school board trustee who has served two years of his first three-year term. He had been on the town Planning Board since 2012 until Town Board members declined to reappoint him over a dispute involving the siting of a proposed waste water treatment plant and questions about his comments on the proposed Park Point housing project for SUNY New Paltz students.
Also winning four-year terms on the Village Board were Dennis Young with 448 votes and Donald Kerr with 369 votes. Out of the running were former Mayor Terry Dungan with 287 votes and Jack “John” Murphy with 239 votes.
Among immediate issues Rogers said he expects to address is the need for a backup water supply when the New York City Department of Environmental Protection has two 10-week shutdowns in the next three years. He acknowledged that there would be benefits in looking at a proposal by Kerr to setting up a filtering system on the village water plant so that the Wallkill River could be used as a water source.
“I think that would be a fantastic outcome if we could figure out a way to use the water from the Wallkill,” Rogers said.
The win for Kerr represented a political comeback after stepping down from the New Paltz school board in 2011 following an arrest on marijuana possession charges that were ultimately dropped in April 2012.
“We have a lot of issues in front of us and I have complete confidence in [Rogers’] ability to work with the Village Board,” Kerr said.
Kerr said moving forward with a plan for drawing water from the Wallkill River will be important because he expects residents will defeat a proposal to drill wells on Plains Road.
“Right now Plains Road as Plan A is problematic,” he said. “So as long as we, as members of the board, are open to some contingency plan, I think that using the Wallkill as a Plan B would be responsible.”