Development is key issue in supervisor race
The town will have a new supervisor in 2020, and the candidates for the job differ sharply over how development should proceed in the busiest sections of the community.
The upcoming election pits Republican Jeff Paladino against Democrat Fred Pizzuto. The winner, who will serve a two-year term starting Jan. 1, 2020, will succeed Supervisor Paul Hansut, a four-term incumbent who announced in early 2019 that he would not seek re-election.
Paladino, of 326 Perkinsville Road, Highland, will be on the Republican, Independence and Highland United lines on the ballot. Fred Pizzuto, of 49 Brescia Blvd., Highland, on the Democratic and Conservative lines.
Jeffrey Paladino
Paladino, 49, is the owner of Milton Hardware and Building Supply, a lifelong resident of the town, and is married with two children. He was on the Town Board from 2010 to 2017.
“We need to continue to build out our Route 9W and 299 corridors that we have available to us for commercial purposes so that we can continue to redistribute our tax base and get the burden off the homeowner and attract and encourage and support more commercial business in those business corridors,” Paladino said.
Paladino said having the Walkway Over the Hudson and a rail trail that can bring people from the walkway to the town business district should be beneficial to the local economy.
“Hopefully, [we] develop that out so we have a continuity between the Walkway and the downtown area,” he said.
Paladino acknowledged there is division in Lloyd about how to approach development.
“We have a segment of our [Town] Board that is contemplating a moratorium on development, on building in our town,” he said. “I wouldn’t necessarily be in favor of that. I think a moratorium is just often delaying progress. Unless there’s a real just cause and/or a plan of action for moratorium, it can create a backlog and actually dis-encourage developers potentially from coming into your community to invest.”
Paladino also believes the current board is creating a difficult work environment for town employees.
Paladino graduated from Highland High School in 1988 and earned a bachelor’s degree in business from Johnson and Wales University in Providence, R.I., in 1992.
Fred Pizzuto
Pizzuto, 73, is a retired mortgage banker and financial planner who has lived in Lloyd for 60 years and has one son.
He currently serves as chairman of the Lloyd Planning Board, was on the Town Board from 1978 to 1981 and was an Ulster County legislator in 1982. He ran unsuccessfully for Lloyd supervisor in 2017.
While living in Dutchess County, he was a county legislator from 1991 to 1994 and ran unsuccessfully for county comptroller in 2004.
Of development proposals in Lloyd, Pizzuto said: “This year we are inundated ... [with] six projects in the last few months. Four of them are major projects. If you want to look at it from the number of beds, there’s 800 to 1,000 beds between one-family houses, two-family apartments and a hotel.
“The town [population] grows about 1 percent a year,” he said. “... This would constitute, in a yearand-a-half, if everything were approved at once, a 10 percent growth.”
Pizzuto said the number of proposed projects requires careful thought.
“I’m on the [town] Planning Board, and we’re working with the Town Board trying to figure out how we assimilate all this into the town,” he said. “The biggest issue is traffic because this all sits on the 9W corridor ... and the state right now considers the traffic there as an F already, almost a double-F.”
Pizzuto, like Paladino, considers the Walkway Over the Hudson, which just had its 10th anniversary, as a unique opportunity to boost the local economy.
“There’s upward of a million people a year visit the walkway,” he said. “The town of Lloyd has the parking,
not the city of Poughkeepsie, so we get the bulk of visitors, along with the buses. Now that we’ve got the people, how do we ... take advantage of them coming into our area?”
Pizzuto graduated from Highland High School in
1963 and Dutchess Commu- nity College in 1968, and he completed the Marist College certified financial planning program in 1998.
He served in the U.S. Army Reserves from 1966 to 1970 and is a member of American Legion Post 193.