Supervisor-Elect Gears Up
Since her victory by 23 votes was finally certified on November 26th, Alison Jolicoeur has been busy preparing to take over as the next Town Supervisor for Putnam Valley. She faces a unique challenge: Most supervisors get a two-year term to prove their mettle and had already served on the Town Board. Jolicoeur lacks that direct experience and gets a grand total of ten months, thanks to changes made to New York's local election cycle that will trigger another election in November.
To jump start her efforts, Jolicoeur has been holding meetings with members of the town's current leadership, including Supervisor Jacqueline Annabi and board members Sherry Howard and Christian Russo. (Russo just announced he will be running for a seat on Putnam County's Legislature next November.) She has also been meeting with staff from most of the town's departments, including the Supervisor's office, Highways, Building and Zoning, Assessor, the town engineer, as well as the Volunteer Fire Department. She will be meeting with Budget staff before the end of the year. She has tapped Howard to be her Deputy Supervisor and is reviewing applicants for a new town counsel, citing the need for "fresh eyes".
And that's all before Jolicoeur gets sworn in at 2pm on January 1st at Town Hall, a ceremony that is open to the public.
Jolicoeur made clear that she has no intention of cleaning house at Town Hall. "Me, being a new person, I need people who know what they're doing," she said, adding that she has found everyone to be very receptive. She hopes to instill an open, collaborative culture by encouraging more frequent interaction across the various departments and holding a series of open Town Hall meetings that would deepen residents' understanding of each department's work.
Since the Building Department was a frequent target of criticism during the campaign, Jolicoeur said she was pleased to learn that they are making progress digitizing the 600,000 pages of printed material held by that office. She added that she thinks the department has been understaffed and will explore whether she can find funds in the budget to offer that department more support.
Rather than instigate big changes in Town Hall personnel, she wants to redirect and potentially repopulate some of the adjacent committees and commissions that supplement that work. In the case of the Neighborhood Business Committee, for instance, she was surprised that they were asked to rethink zoning regulations that led to a proposal that was received poorly in a recent public hearing. She'd rather get them focused on doing more to support the businesses that are already in town and figuring out how to recruit new ones to properties where they can already set up shop.
On the environmental front, she wants to relaunch an initiative that lapsed after Sam Oliverio's reign to hold regular meetings with the various organizations that support the lake districts, so they can more consistently share information. She also wants to expand the responsibility of the Commission for the Conservation of the Environment (CCE) to include the Climate Smart task force that has been inactive for several years. She intends to appoint Allison Hague, who has been leading efforts to develop a food scrap recycling program, as the town's new Climate Smart Coordinator. Jolicoeur is also committed to helping the CCE make progress creating an Open Space Inventory, which could help guide future rezoning conversations.
The one area where Jolicoeur hasn't been able to make progress is in helping to ensure that the lawsuit she filed two years ago against the town over a legal issue involving access to her property gets resolved before she takes office. That has not happened and Jolicoeur says that she will recuse herself from any vote about a settlement that would require Town Board approval. (The funding of a settlement would be covered by the town's insurance.)
With the town facing another referendum on its leadership in just eleven months, 2026 promises to be very interesting.
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