Town supervisor faces county legislator in bid for 4th term
MARBLETOWN, N.Y. » Town Supervisor Michael Warren’s effort to secure a fourth term in the Nov. 7 election is being challenged by Ulster County Legislator Richard Parete.
Warren, 66, of 35 Warren Way, High Falls, is a registered Democrat but will appear only on the Working Families line on the ballot.
Parete, 49, of 289 Cherry Hill Road, Accord, will be on the Democratic, Republican, and Conservative lines.
The winner will serve a two-year term starting in January.
Michael Warren
Warren, a lifelong town resident, won a Town Board seat in 2007, was elected supervisor in 2011, and was re-elected in 2013 and 2015. He and his wife, Deborah, own a horse farm and have two children.
“The most recent priority is getting the water line to the college,” he said. “It is extremely important that this project go through because ... it’s in-the-ground infrastructure that could possibly be used later and also taking the pressure off people who live around the college. When the college gets water, hopefully, the water will return to the wells that were affected in 1963 when the college went in.”
Warren pointed to antifracking and solar installation regulations as important land use regulations adopted during his administration.
“We are actually working on updating our zoning laws as per the comprehensive plan,” he said. “We’re about three-quarters of the way through the comprehensive plan to-do list. It does take time, but we’ve been very, very successful.”
Warren graduated from Rondout Valley High School in 1969 and received an associate’s degree in economics from Ulster County Community College in 1971 and a bachelor’s degree in economics from SUNY Stony Brook in 1974.
He is a member of Rondout Valley Growers, Rondout Valley Business Association, New York State Farm Bureau, and Ulster County Horse Council.
Richard Parete
Parete, a field technician with Verizon, is a lifelong town resident. He and his wife, Colleen, have one child.
Parete is completing his eighth two-year term as an Ulster County legislator.
“We have to bring water to Ulster County Community College,” he said. “We have to approve the agreement that the Ulster County Legislature approved in March 2016. It’s public safety issue.”
Parete said he would like to have the town develop better policy for working with people who submit planning and zoning applications.
“When applicants come before the planning and zoning boards, they need to have better guidance on what is to be expected when they apply for variances,” he said. “There’s no real set of guidelines for applicants right now. We have good laws ... but it is just confusion when people go to these boards.”
Parete also disagrees with the Town Board decision two years ago to end service from the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency at the town transfer station.
“The town pulled out of an agreement with the Resource Recovery Agency and signed an agreement with a company out of Pine Plains that charges more money to haul the trash ... than if we hired the Resource Recovery Agency to do it,” Parete said. “It’s resulted in higher costs. So ... the amount of days the transfer station is open has been reduced. I would like to go back to the RRA and have the transfer station open more for the community.”
A registered Democrat, Richard Parete was snubbed by his party in a 2015 primary for the Legislature District 18 seat, but, running as a Republican, easily defeated the Democratic party nominee, Douglas Adams, in the general election that year. Adams currently serves on the Town Board.
Parete graduated from Rondout Valley High School in 1986 and received a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Syracuse University in 1991.
He is a wrestling coach at Rondout Valley High School, a member of the Marbletown Sportsmen’s Club and is a member of the board of directors of the Catskill Watershed Corp.