Candidate for
Mayor; Village of Croton-On-Hudson

Information is power. The more information we share, the better we are at solving the problems we face.

My entire professional life has been devoted to helping experts unlock their expertise so the rest of us can use it. That is what we need now, more than ever in local government. With the fiscal tsunami headed toward local governments in the next year, it is precisely the best time to rethink how best to innovate and collaborate.

Civility: Croton must and will return to fact-based governance. Numbers don't lie, people do. For too long, the current Mayor in Croton has run on opinion that he mistakes for fact. The incumbent was for more housing, now he is against more housing. The incumbent loses his cool when he meets resistance, but allows his allies to defame anyone who resists with innuendo and bald-faced lies. The incumbent ignored the parking lot flooding for years and, now suddenly he claims he has a solution, at millions more than it would have cost earlier. While the incumbent claims excellent fiscal record, his lack of awareness of opportunities to colloborate with other dot.govs and dot.orgs has cost the village tens of thousands of dollars in lost assistance opportunities this year alone.

Finance: All up and down the state, the smallest units of government, e.g. villages, are being caught in a heavy squeeze to provide escalating services with what is in many cases a `fixed' or very limited revenue basis. We need to control the costs we can, be creative about the revenue side and look for ways to share the investments that need to be made with partners who have aligned interests.

Energy: On the energy front, I have been active for some time in how residents and institutions can learn to curb future energy appetites and diversify sources of energy upon which we rely. There are no silver bullets, but many specific steps to take. Croton was once "the little village that could" in this regard as a leader--from undertaking energy audits to cooperating with the County on asset management to working toward sustainable development practices. But we have either dropped the ball on these initiatives or steered them into short term expediencies that look good for election day, but fall far short of sound long term policy.