Malta Democratic Committee endorses three candidates
MALTA, N.Y. >> The Town of Malta Democratic Committee recently endorsed three candidates in the upcoming general election on Nov. 7.
It selected Cynthia Young for Malta town supervisor; Barbara Conner for Malta Town Board member; and incumbent Roger Crandall for Highway Superintendent.
Young is a longtime resident of Malta. For more than 30 years she has given public service to the community. She served on the Malta Town Board from 2018 until 2022, and has served on the Zoning Board of Appeals, the Board of Assessment Review, and the Malta Youth Commission. She was also a member of Malta’s Master Plan Update Committee.
She currently serves on the Saratoga County Planning Board, is treasurer of the Malta Sunrise Rotary, and an active volunteer with the Malta Veterans Appreciation Program.
“I will promise that our town will be governed in an open and transparent fashion. The current Town Board makes major decisions, like the purchase of lakefront property for almost $2 million, with little or no public input. We will encourage a sustainable economy that supports locally owned businesses, protects our open spaces, and keeps Malta a family town,” Young stated.
Conner is a retired public school teacher. She has lived in Malta for 17 years. She is married to Bob Conner and has three grown children and six grandchildren. She has served on the Town of Malta Open Space, Agriculture, and Trails Committee for 10 years and served as chair of the committee.
“Preserving farmland in Malta, as well as protecting the woods, parks and waterways of the town are a priority for me. That is why I am running. I think that the Town Board has shown an unwillingness to listen to town residents on these crucial issues,” Conner stated.
She is an active member of the Malta Sunrise Rotary Club, currently serving as their Foundation chair. She is also a proud Army mom. She was a founding member of the North Country Blue Star Mothers, an organization that supports families while their children are on active duty abroad.
She is an experienced public official having previously served in Glens Falls as a member of the Board of Education, the Crandall Library Board of Trustees, the Zoning Board of Appeals, and as the first woman member of the Board of Public Safety.
The Malta Democratic Committee has put the longtime Malta Highway Superintendent Crandall, a Republican, on the Democratic line this November. A former contractor, he was elected in 2009 and has been highway superintendent in Malta for the past 13 years.
Crandall’s number one priority is improving and maintaining the safety of Malta’s highways. He has been instrumental in upgrading Malta’s highway safety standards.
“I changed them because the roads were falling apart and because of our growth they were getting more traffic,” he said. “Thirty years ago, Malta was a rural area and now we have all this infrastructure — sewer, water, stormwater capture, sidewalks, and we needed to change and evolve,” Crandall
stated.
According to Rick Handley, Malta Democratic Committee Chair, the Malta Democratic Party takes its role of endorsing and running candidates very seriously.
“We don’t run candidates for public office just because we are Democrats and they are Republicans.” Handley says that in the past the Democrats have not run Democratic candidates for Town Clerk or Highway Superintendent because those Republicans are doing a good job,” Handley stated.
The Town Board is another story.
“The current Town Board, all Republicans, needs to be changed. You cannot sit in Town Hall and make major decisions without informing the town residents about what is going on and having an opportunity to respond. The current Town Board does not reach out to citizens for their opinions, instead it is, ‘come to the meetings or look at the website’. Our goal is to have a more open and responsive town government that actively reaches out to the community,” Handley added.