The Olive Meet-the-Candidates Forum at the Olive Town Meeting Hall, October 22, 2011. Photo by Julia Reischel.
About 40 Olive residents turned out on Saturday morning on October 22 to meet their candidates for various town offices at a candidates' forum sponsored by the Watershed Post and moderated by the League of Women Voters of the Mid-Hudson Valley.
All but one of the candidates running for office this year in the town of Olive were able to attend the forum. (Donald VanBuren, who is running for a seat on the Olive Town Council, was unable to make it because of a last-minute work emergency.)
Both candidates for town supervisor -- challenger Cindy Johansen and 22-year incumbent Berndt Leifeld -- were in attendance, as were town councilmen Peter Friedel and Henry Rank and their challenger for town council, Ternice Winne. Even town justice Ronald Wright was there, despite the fact that he is running unopposed for re-election.
During a cordial and sometimes jolly 90 minutes of taking questions from the audience, the most pointed exchanges were between Town Councilman Friedel, Supervisor Leifeld, and supervisor candidate Johansen over the town of Olive's response to the flooding and damage caused by Hurricane Irene in August.
Friedel and Leifeld discussed the town’s lack of preparedness regarding a federal training program known as the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the Incident Command System (ICS), which Friedel said that the town of Olive had not properly completed.
“We failed miserably on this because we didn’t have any of this in place,” Friedel said. “And it needs to be done. And we’re starting to work on it, but it was supposed to have taken place in 2006, and the town hasn’t done it. And it has put us in grave danger because of it. And I’m so glad we haven’t had any deaths in the town because we would be liable because of it.”
Leifeld responded to Friedel’s comments about NIMS and ICS by saying that the town is working on becoming compliant with those programs.
“Did we follow through with everything were were supposed to?” Leifeld said. “No.”
“We are setting up classes that will take place right after the elections,” he said. “One of the reasons that NIMS has gotten sort of a back seat, not just here but in other towns, is because it’s an eight-hour course, and more, it’s something that you have to keep up on. When people come and go, it just seems like a waste of time. But it’s an important thing, it’s been sold altogether differently than it was in the beginning because of the storm, and I’m all for it.”
“Torn the town apart”
One question from the audience asked all of the candidates to discuss what they learned from the hurricane.
The responses ranged. Leifeld commented that he thought the crisis had "brought the worst out in this town" and had "torn the town apart."
Winne said that the town's residents need to get more involved in improving the town's emergency response, along with the town officials and emergency responders.
Friedel commented that he agreed that the storm had torn the town apart, because some residents aren’t certain that their streams will be cleared of debris.
“It's an imminent danger,” Friedel said. “And, if I'm not mistaken, by law we have to stop imminent danger. The streams will be cleaned up. They have to be cleaned up … If we get another storm like we just had, with the gravel bars and the trees dams up off Watson Hollow, we could lose houses, we could lose lives, and we could lose our town hall, if the stream jumps the way it was going."
Town councilman Henry Rank said that Olive needs to have a plan for storms like Irene.
“We have to have a plan,” he said. “We have to coordinate things. The internet will help us get the word out.”
Rank added that Boiceville probably wouldn’t see another storm like Irene for “another 100 years.”
“I remember one when I was a young boy,” he said. “Same thing: Boiceville got flooded. We didn’t have a plan then.”
Cindy Johansen, Leifeld’s opponent for town supervisor, countered Leifeld’s statement that the storm had driven people apart with a critique of the Olive Town Board.
"I know that people in Boiceville came together,” she said. “I know people stopped off the street and helped me. What we learned from it, I hope, is that we do need a plan … there should have been a plan in place. That is the current [town] board's fault, in my mind."
Cutting the budget?
The budget was another hot-button issue for the candidates in the wake of an Oct. 13 public hearing on a resolution proposing that Olive exempt itself from the 2 percent property tax increase cap mandated by the state.
In response to a question about reducing the town’s budget, all the candidates had a lot to say.
“I would look at the unexpended balances that we carry over year to year,” town councilman Peter Friedel said. “We’ve got to look at that and stop those rollovers, because they keep getting taxed.”
Town councilman Henry Rank promised that there would be no layoffs of town personnel.
"Laying people off is something we will not do,” Rank said. “I will not vote for [it].This town runs pretty efficiently for the number of people we have. As prices go up, we’ve got to just find little holes where we can save some money.”
“I think the town did a great job keeping the budget low this year,” Johansen said. “[But] we could have kept it flat across. I don’t think there should have been any increases at all, in light of the economic conditions … I don’t care how small the increase is, it's too much.”
“I could give you a zero percent budget every year, but it ain’t going to work,” Leifeld responded. “I'd much rather have an unexpended balance than to have nothing.”
“There might be cuts,” said Winner, “but there are other avenues."
The candidates got a laugh from the crowd as they responded to a question about how to attract young people to town politics.
"Who the hell would want to get into this mess?" Leifeld quipped.
