Six seek two seats on Wawarsing Town Board
WAWARSING, N.Y. >> There will be a crowded field on an election ballot that has six candidates for two Town Board seats.
Seeking the four-year terms are two Republican candidates, incumbent Cassie Spoor and first-time candidate Jeremy Hull, who will also be on the Conservative line. Also in the field are Democratic first-time candidates Joseph Stoeckeler III and John Frost, Working Families first-time candidate Adriana Magana and Conservative incumbent Paul Tuzzolino.
Spoor, 57, is a substitute teacher for the Rondout Valley school district. She has lived in the town for 23 years and with her husband, James, has two children.
Spoor was appointed to the Wawarsing Town Board in July 2020 and in November 2020 won the election to fill the seat for the remaining three years of the term. She previously ran unsuccessfully for the Ulster County Legislature in 2017 and for the school board in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
“We need to move forward with the expanding of the economic possibilities within the town of Wawarsing (by) bringing in new businesses,” she said. “We also need to address the housing shortage and hopefully pass a short-term rental law that will ease the amount of that kind of rental market because right now a lot of our old rentals are being turned into short-term rentals, which is squeezing out our hardworking citizens.”
Hull, 42, is co-owner of J.J. Snack Shack at the Rondout Valley Campground and a lifetime resident of the town.
“I would like to get more things into this community for the children and the elderly to do,” he said. “I would like to try to get the Boys and Girls Club down here for the kids and try to set up some kind of gatherings for the senior citizens to be able to get together.
“One other thing I’d like to get into this community is affordable housing for the working person,” Hull added. “I don’t know how I’d go about that. It’s something I’d have to look more into.”
Stoeckeler, 38, is the owner of Century 21 Stoeckeler Real Estate Service and has lived in the town for 27 years.
“We have a lot of exciting projects going on in the township that appear to be moving forward,” he said. “I believe those projects need our attention as a priority be- cause of the ripple effect that they have when approved because of local walkable jobs, the economic impact, the real estate impact, tourism. It’s a true high tide-raises-allboats scenario.”
Frost, 35, is global director for Percepta, a division of Ford Motor Company, and has lived in the town for two years.
“One priority is ensuring that all of the agendas and meeting minutes are available online within a reasonable timeframe,” he said. “The other is to hold their conversations where they are discussing decisions in front of the public versus prior to public sessions.”
Frost said Wawarsing should use Ellenville officials’ example of working with New Paltz to submit a Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant application.
“Decision makers love to fund communities that are willing to work together,” Frost said. “It’s such a shame that the town leadership was not able to recognize that a DRI grant would include areas like Ellenville, Napanoch, Kerhonkson, Craigsmor, Greenfield Park, which are all areas that have some form of a downtown that need revitalization.”
Magana, 55, is an ecological designer and co-owner of the Center for Bioregional Living. She has been a town resident for 15 years. She ran unsuccessfully for Ulster County Legislature in 2019
“There are a lot of issues right now that center around the lack of affordable housing space,” she said. “That’s really very dire. People are being evicted for no good cause. I know that’s something that’s quite difficult for the town to address, all those issues, but definitely addressing the overabundance of AirBnB’s is important.”
Magana added that the Town Board has “received a report on how to protect our aquifers and the Town Board had nothing positive to say about it. They actually said that there’s no way we can do business as usual and pay attention to this report. So
they just dismissed it and to me, that was one of the main reasons why I threw my hat into the ring.”
Tuzzolino, 67, is retired from technology sales with Hewlett-Packard and is a consultant for small businesses. He has lived in the town since 1995 and with his wife, Jeanette, has two children. He ran unsuccessfully for the board in 2018 and won in 2019.
“The biggest issues that the town has are job and housing,” he said. “Some of the things that we worked on in the town are very supportive of the
Nevele project … and bring (in) the Cresco project where the old Schrade knife factory use to be. With both of those, there’s a lot of better paying jobs with benefits.”
Uncontested candidates on the ballot will be incumbent Clerk Jackie Collier and incumbent Justice Charles Dechon, with both on the Republican and Conservative lines.