Official sees changes after 40 years in office
In 40 years of service to the municipality it was the last two that may made Diane McCord a community trailblazer by being the first town supervisor to conduct the position using email as a communications function.
The acknowledgment came Wednesday as McCord was honored during her final Town Board meeting. She previously spent 16 years as deputy town clerk, 20 years as clerk, and two years as a Town Board member before winning a two-year terms as supervisor.
“In the last 40 years things have changed,” she said. “There wasn’t even a computer. I did everything on ledgers. I wrote all the dog licenses were sold, all the marriage licenses were issued.”
While her immediate predecessor as supervisor was Kyle Barnett on an appointed basis, the position had been shaped by the late John Coutant, who shunned the use of technology when running the town.
“John didn’t have a computer,” McCord said. “He was old school, so he didn’t have to answer 100 emails a day.”
McCord said it became important to bring the position into the 21st century by communicating with electronic documents. This has become even more important as municipalities move into an era where shared services that require all parties to be literally on the same pages.
“We’d always shared service on a handshake,” she said. “Now it’s become a big deal where we have to sign papers with every town and get all kinds of coverage from our insurance companies just to be a good neighbor.”
Among the significant changes in conducting town business has been having municipal offices move from a poorly insulated former automobile dealership building on Broadway/U.S. Route 9W to an energy efficient Town Hall that gets its electric from a solar array. McCord said the officials that have come before her had the foresight to move toward long-term improvements in how the town approaches it budget.
“Now we have solar panels at our transfer station and we’re saving energy and saving the taxpayers’ dollars,” she said.
There has also been impressive changes in the appearance of the business district, where the town offices were part of a community hub that didn’t have nice street lights or a wide turn for large vehicles going onto Salem Street.
“I used to wait for the Callanan trucks to make the turn and several times they didn’t make it,” she said. “There were many accidents on that corner.”
McCord expects the things she will miss the most are people in the office and providing assistance for people who have needed help.
“I’m just going to miss the interaction with everybody,” she said. “People that come in and just come over to say “hello’ and ‘how are you doing?’ I’m going to miss that part of it.”