Towns have different needs in replacing Maloney as assessor
The towns of Ulster and Kingston both need to fill their assessor’s job following the death of James Maloney, but their needs are quite different.
Maloney, who died July 11 at age 61 after a battle with cancer, served as assessor for both towns. He also was an Ulster County legislator representing part of Ulster and all of the town of Kingston.
The tasks of filling the assessor positions might not be the same for the two towns, as the services they need differ greatly. Ulster is urban/suburban in nature and has a large commercial base. The town of Kingston, though next door, is rural and largely residential.
Maloney prepared the property tax rolls for the two towns for more than a decade.
“They are in a different spot than we are,” town of Ulster Supervisor James Quigley said of the town of Kingston. “They only have [889] people and probably 400 parcels. We’ve got 5,500 parcels split [in] half between commercial and residential.”
Quigley and his town of Kingston counterpart, Paul Landi, said they will reach out regionally to find someone with comparable experience to Maloney, but they aren’t sure how easy it will be to find such a person.
“I’m putting together the format now so I can get it out to both the county and statewide to see what qualified ... person” can be appointed, Quigley said.
“When you get into [TechCity], the [Hudson Valley] Mall and vacant land that could be built out to commercial, the big box stores, this is all very technical,” he said. “Jimmy had the background from his private assessing ... and he 22 or 23 years experience handling everything in the town of Ulster.”
Landi said he isn’t prepared to set a timeline for replacing Maloney, who submitted his resignation to the town of Kingston shortly before he died.
But the Kingston supervisor said his town needs a new assessor soon because assessment changes must be made as the town prepares its 2020 budget and tax bills.
Landi said the town of Ulster “needs somebody with a lot more credentials than we do. I’ve just been trying to give it a little bit more time to get working on it.”