Town Board Candidates

After nearly two years of presidential campaigning, it may be easy to lose sight of local elections, but in the past week Jason Leifer's campaign signs have been popping up around town. I've had the pleasure of working with Jason on the Town Board this year. He's been an active member of the finance, technology, block grant, community center and personnel committees, as well as liaison to the Recreation Commission.

On the technology committee, Jason helped write the successful grant application for state funding for wireless broadband access. He's now working to update the the Time-Warner franchise agreement as well as keeping town hall technology up to date.

The community center committee has implemented grant program to help fund long needed repairs and improvements in the Ellis Hollow, Varna and Etna community centers as well as helping the new Cafe in the Village of Dryden.

Jason has successfully promoted a program to use long dormant block grant funding to help residents pay for weatherization home improvements. The block grant committee has also forged partnerships with Tompkins County Area Development to promote economic development in Dryden and with Alternatives Federal Credit Union for small business development.

I'm happy to support Jason in his campaign to continue on the Town Board.

This morning I found the new webpage for the Republican candidate for Town Board. Interesting to get a glimpse of a photo of the candidate. I've never met him. To the best of my knowledge, he's never been to a Town Board meeting. I had regularly attended Town Board meetings, including budget hearings for more than a year before running for office and I still found the learning curve pretty steep.