By Melanie Lekocevic
Capital Region Independent Media
COEYMANS — Four candidates will be on the ballot Nov. 8 vying for two open seats on the Coeymans Town Council.
Both seats are being filled due to vacancies that opened up earlier this year following resignations by former town council members Zachary Collins, who was elected to the Albany County Legislature, and Daniel Baker, who was appointed highway superintendent after former highway chief Scott Searles retired.
The race is not an at-large election where the top two vote getters are victorious. Rather, candidates are running for a specific seat on the board, with incumbent Republican Stephen Schmitt running against Democrat Cindy Rowzee, and Republican incumbent Marisa Tutay competing against Democrat Ronald Hotaling.
Candidate profiles are presented in alphabetical order.
RONALD HOTALING
Democratic candidate Ronald Hotaling is a lifelong resident of the area, and has lived in Ravena and Coeymans Hollow.
“I work for the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision as a senior parole officer. I also own my own polygraph business, performing polygraphs mostly on sex offenders for probation departments,” Hotaling said. “I am seeking the opportunity to serve my community a little bit more. My kids have grown up and I volunteer with a lot of different organizations in the community through sports, my church and other organizations, and now that they are grown, I felt it was time to put my time elsewhere, and this seems to be the way to go.”
Among the top challenges Hotaling would like to address in the town is getting residents more engaged with town government.
“I feel that the community doesn’t feel like an active participant in town government,” he said. “I feel a lot of times at town board meetings that when there is a chance for public comment, that the community is not allowed to speak and express certain opinions. It’s already got a predetermined agenda. It’s really important for the community to be involved and to see their town government at work.”
When voters head to the polls Nov. 8, they will vote on a public referendum on construction of a $7 million town hall. Hotaling said the current building is inadequate, but he questions the details of the proposal.
“That building has definitely seen better days and has probably seen its life expectancy, so I support a new town hall, but what I don’t see is the dollar amount that is attached to it, especially when we have asked how they came up with that dollar amount,” he said. “I love this town and I would be honored to serve this town, but let’s build a town hall that is meant for this town — a useful, functional town hall that is not well above our means.”
A second referendum on the ballot will be whether to extend the town supervisor’s term from two years to four. Hotaling does not support that move under the board’s current configuration.
“The board members have basically given over all the control of day-to-day decisions to one person,” Hotaling said. “I can only reference going back several years when every board member had liaison duties — they met with department heads and they took on a more active role in decisions and departments, they took more active roles in the budgets of those departments and there were more checks and balances between board members.”
CINDY ROWZEE
Democrat Cindy Rowzee, the former Coeymans town clerk, ran unsuccessfully for town supervisor in 2021, and is now seeking a seat on the town board.
“I have been working for local municipalities for about the past eight years or so,” Rowzee said. “I have worked for both the village of Ravena and the town of Coeymans. I am currently working up at the state in the Department of Tax and Finance. I ran for office before, spent four years as town clerk and in doing that, I had a lot of training about what the different offices in the town do,” Rowzee said. “I want to use that knowledge that I have gained from that training to be on the town board and help with the running of the town and to make sure it’s done in a way that we can work together with the village and have all the departments in the town work together as well.”
Finding a balance between industry, small business and residential areas has been a longstanding challenge for the community, Rowzee said.
“I think that is something that Ravena and Coeymans have struggled with over the years,” she said. “I think it is about trying to get people to come into town hall in trying to find that balance and getting the different areas of the town maybe not to see eye to eye — because obviously you have picked a different place to live versus how you want to live — but maybe to come to an understanding of the people in the different parts of town.”
On the town hall project, Rowzee said she wants to see more financial details before she would be willing to support the project.
“I’m a numbers person — I want to see where the numbers are coming from and the town board is not showing that,” she said. “They are not showing the numbers for this town hall, they are not showing the numbers for some of the other possible projects that they have looked into to replace the town hall. All they are giving us is ideas that they have thrown around and you can’t tell if this is the best option for the town without having those numbers to show us.”
Rowzee also does not support expanding the town supervisor’s term at this time.
“To me it’s an issue of how things are currently being run, where we need every two years for the people to have a say and to become the checks and balances for the board as we are currently not seeing it at the town board level,” she said. “A town supervisor is not supposed to have any more say or vote than a town board member does, but for the past almost three years it hasn’t been like that.”
STEPHEN SCHMITT
Incumbent Republican Town Councilman Stephen Schmitt was appointed to the board earlier this year.
“I have been a paralegal for 22 years and I had served for the last 12 years — actually eight years on the zoning board of appeals and then when the current administration came into place, they joined the boards, so I have been on that board for three additional years, so it has been 11 years in total,” Schmitt said. “And I was the chairman for nine of those 11 years of both the planning board and then the join boards once they were joined.”
Schmitt considers the town’s finances and high prices among its biggest challenges.
“Right now with it being budget season, the top challenges that I see are the inflation rates and the rising energy costs,” Schmitt said. “Inflation is the highest it has been in many, many years. It was 8.2% for the 12 months that ended September 2022. That, compounded with the energy costs — electric, gas, diesel fuel — a lot of what we do to maintain the town and the roads and everything else runs on fuel. So when you have inflation and rising energy costs and you are trying to deal with the budget and figure out how you can make it work for everyone.”
He also wants to expand programming for children year-round, and encourage teenagers to get involved with town government.
Schmitt is in favor of building a new town hall under the proposal currently on the table.
“The town hall that we currently have is aged, it’s outdated and it’s totally inadequate,” he said. “It’s not ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant, it’s not OCA (Office of Court Administration) compliant. It has mold issues. Given all of those factors, it just makes sense to build a new town hall, a town hall that will be state of the art and that will be legally compliant in all respects and will satisfy the needs of our residents today and for decades to come.”
Schmitt is also in favor of the referendum that would extend the town supervisor’s term.
“Most, if not all, of the elected positions are four-year terms in Albany County,” he said. “To me, there’s no reason why the town supervisor shouldn’t be a four-year term.”
MARISA TUTAY
Incumbent Town Councilwoman Marisa Tutay, a Republican, was appointed to the board earlier this year to fill a vacancy.
“I am currently a math interventionist/curriculum content specialist at A.W. Becker Elementary School. This is my 33rd year teaching,” Tutay said. “I served on the planning board/zoning board of appeals. George [McHugh] approached me and asked me if I would be interested in being an alternate and that quickly became a full-time position. And then when there was a vacancy on the town board when Zach Collins was [elected] to the county Legislature, they asked me if I would be willing to take on a role on the board and I wholeheartedly agreed and I am glad to be here.”
Tutay also sees inflation and high costs as among the biggest challenges for the town.
“We want to keep taxes down as low as we can because inflation is killing all of us,” she said. “The gas prices, the increase in the costs to run and maintain all of the different departments within the town government — that is our biggest challenge at this point, but I feel that working together with the community and with the other members of the board, that we can overcome that and create something that is going to work for everyone.”
She is also looking to build on programming for the youth.
On the proposed town hall project, Tutay said she does support the referendum.
“Initially I wondered if this was something we need right now, but in looking at all of those issues — the mold, not being in compliance with the ADA,” she said, adding that a woman who uses a wheelchair recently had to leave the building use a restroom at a local store because her chair would not fit through the restroom doors. “All those things combined say to me we definitely do need a new town hall and to put forth a project that will meet the needs now and in the future.”
Tutay supports the proposed extension of the town supervisor’s term.
“I think that when you are trying to do the work of the people and you are trying to create programs and work with your town board to continue growth and prosper, when you have to stop that, or you are torn in two different directions — you are trying to maintain programs and build on them, and then you have to go for re-election, I think it stunts what you are trying to do and it interrupts it.”
Watch the full video interviews with candidates from both parties at TheUpstater.com.
Election Day will be Nov. 8.