Kacandes’ appointment to agency board OK’d
The Ulster County Legislature has confirmed Thomas K ac an des’ appointment to the Resource Recovery Agency’ s board of directors.
Ulster County legislators on Tuesday, March 16, confirmed the appointment of Thomas Kacandes to the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency’s board of directors.
Kacandes, a New Paltz resident with a long history of involvement in solid waste management and recycling, will replace longtime board member and former chairman Fred Wadnola in the post.
The 16-7 vote to confirm Kacandes’ appointment was not without controversy, however. Minority Leader Ken Ronk said the appointment violated state law requiring that the chairman of the Legislature — who appoints all board members — appoint one member recommended by the Legislature’s minority party. Republicans are currently in the minority on the Legislature, although that can change every two years when all seats on the Legislature are up for election.
Ronk had recommended Wadnola for the post, but the Legislature’s Energy and Environment Committee decided to conduct in
terviews and opted to put up Kacandes for the appointment instead. Wadnola resigned from the board a week after the committee’s decision.
Wadnola, a former county legislator who also served as chairman of the Legislature, was in his third term on the agency board. His term expired on Dec. 31, 2020, though he continued to serve pending what was expected to be his reappointment.
“I don’t think there’s anybody in this body that doesn’t believe that new blood in the Resource Recovery Agency wouldn’t be a good thing, but this puts us in violation of New York state law,” said Ronk, RWallkill.
“This particular board, the makeup of this board, is written in state law,” Ronk said, adding that he believe the Legislature’s Energy and Environment Committee also overstepped its bounds by changing the appointment of Legislature Chairman David Donaldson, D-Kingston.
Legislator Al Bruno, a Republican who sits on the Energy and Environment Committee, said that, with the county facing a solid waste disposal crisis, the Legislature needs to be less concerned about partisan appointments and more concerned about getting expertise on the board.
“We have a lot of serious decisions to be made,” said Bruno, R-Saugerties. “Reading the resumes and doing the interviews, I believe that it’s probably, ultimately the right thing to do in this case, regardless of whether its a technicality of state law and that’s what I think this comes down to, a technicality.”
The Resource Recovery Authority is a semiautonomous authority charged with the management and disposal of all solid waste in Ulster County.
The county has struggled for decades to develop a disposal plan for the nearly 140,000 tons of garbage generated annually by county residents. That effort has taken on a sense of urgency with the expected closure in 2025 of the Seneca Meadows Landfill, located 250 miles away in Seneca County, where the county currently takes its garbage for disposal.