Colchester supervisor Ted Fonda, who was elected to the post just six months ago, has resigned.
An employee at the Colchester town clerk's office told the Watershed Post that Fonda turned in a letter of resignation yesterday. The town board will be meeting tonight to accept his resignation.
Update, 6pm: If we'd done our homework this morning, we'd have realized the Walton Reporter beat us to this story. Fonda, who is 73, told the Reporter yesterday that he was resigning because of health issues:
Fonda listed "high blood pressure, loss of weight, lack of sleep" as reasons for his departure. "My doctor said I could quit, or quit having him for my doctor," he said.
We spoke to Fonda this afternoon. Fonda said that his brief tenure as town supervisor had been incredibly stressful, in part because he had fierce opposition from the Colchester town board.
"I've been battling the board for four months," he said. "I was the people's choice, but not their choice. And they fought me tooth and nail."
Fonda mentioned his efforts to get the town to join the Stream Corridor Management Program through the Delaware County Soil and Water Conservation District.
"They asked us to sign onto an agreement which gave us opportunity for aid, and definitely free engineering if we needed it," he said. "I was for it and the entire board was against it."
Fonda also said that he had been the target of personal attacks during the election, a close race in which Fonda narrowly won against incumbent Robert Homovich. Fonda, who retired from the New York City police force before serving for 21 years as Colchester's town justice, said that he was frustrated by a culture that pits longtime locals against newer residents.
"It's tragic. Any potential growth will be put on the side burner," he said. "There is another world out there, and we're competing with that world."
Middletown supervisor Marge Miller, another newly elected Delaware County supervisor whose town lies on the other end of the Pepacton Reservoir from Colchester, said that she was sorry to see Fonda go.
"We did our elected training together in Albany. My experience of him was that he was very gentlemanly and seemed to care deeply about Colchester," she said. "I'm sorry things didn't work out for him."
Correction: In an earlier draft, we wrote that Middletown and Colchester shared a border. Not so: The town of Andes lies squarely between them. Apologies for the error.
