BETHLEHEM — It’s a three-way race for town Highway Superintendent this November, after Brent Meredith declined to run for re-election and an insurgent Democrat legally maneuvered to exclude the party’s endorsed candidate from its own ballot line, leaving him to run on just the Working Families Party line.
Current Town Board member and Dem-endorsed candidate Giles Wagoner will appear on the Working Families Party ballot line on Nov. 7; Highway Department employee Dan Morin will appear on the Democratic line; and John “Tiger” Anastasi, a registered Independent, will appear on the Republican, Conservative, Independence and Reform lines.
Each of the candidates agreed to respond to a few questions from Spotlight News regarding their priorities for the Highway Department and town residents.
Giles Wagoner
Wagoner is a life-long Bethlehem resident. The RCS High School graduate holds a degree in environmental science and forestry from Syracuse University. The former Army and New York National Guard officer and Delta Air Lines pilot has been a member of the Selkirk Volunteer Fire Company since 1970 and served as its commissioner from 2005 to 2010.
Wagoner has also run his own commercial and residential construction business since he graduated from college, and has extensive experience in commercial and residential construction, as well as the design and construction of septic and stormwater collection systems.
He and his wife, Edith, have been married for 45 years; the couple has three children and four grandchildren. Since he retired, he’s been raising beef cattle on his farm in Selkirk and has been active in the community, previously serving on several town committees and boards, before being elected to the Town Board in 2016.
“I was inspired to run for office because I care about keeping the great quality of life we enjoy as residents of Bethlehem,” he said. “I want our town to always be a great place to live, work and raise a family. As town councilman, I have been involved with many of the issues that concern residents and dealt with important problems. As Highway Superintendent, I would use my leadership skills and construction business experience to maintain a quality workforce and ensure vital town services.”
Q: What do you see as the biggest challenge currently facing the highway department? How would you go about addressing it?
A: “I believe the biggest challenge facing the department is being able to maintain a realistic budget while continuing to provide the same level of excellent services the community deserves. I would use the budgetary and management experience I gained when I was Fire Commissioner. I managed three separate firehouses within the district, with a combined annual budget of over $900,000 and was responsible for budgeting, resource management, equipment acquisition and maintenance, and personnel issues. As superintendent, I would ensure sound fiscal practices are used so that we maintain the department’s strong work force and vital equipment.”
Q: What do you see as Bethlehem’s greatest strengths? How would you use your position at the highway department to help expand or capitalize on those strengths?
A: “One of the greatest strengths is the town’s sound fiscal management. Because of this, Bethlehem is proud to have earned an A++ bond rating from Standard & Poor’s. Town government and the Police Department are very responsive and well managed. Bethlehem also has one of the best Highway Departments in the Capital District. The department maintains 175 miles of town roads and 40 miles of sidewalks. I know of other towns that schedule leaf-pickup just twice during the fall, while our department picks up every Saturday beginning late October and continuing through the end of November. Every year they collect about 20,000 cubic yards of just loose leaves — not counting other yard debris. Snow plowing is professional, highly responsive and ensures the safety of our drivers and pedestrians.”
Q: Please rank your top five priorities at the highway department, feel free to explain why and/or how you would approach them.
A: “The highest priorities for the highway department are keeping our well-trained and highly professional workforce, managing the road and maintenance equipment, and ensuring fiscal soundness. To keep the workforce strong and improve morale, we must hire new people as our older workers retire. One issue I would immediately address as superintendent is repaving. I believe we should overlay the road network onto the soils map for the town to give us a view of the areas that are well-drained versus hard clay soils. This would show areas where the repaving schedules could be extended, thus saving money for the town. Increased development has taxed the stormwater system and now drainage needs to be done in some areas to prevent erosion. We should continue the sidewalk improvement work in the town to ensure safe pedestrian travel.”
Q: What is your biggest take-away from the conversations you’ve had with residents while campaigning over the last several weeks?
A: “The residents of Bethlehem have become accustomed to the great services the Highway Department provides. Most people I speak with express concerns with leaf and brush pick-up and winter snow removal. First, leaf pick-up is very dependent on the weather. Warm weather like we are currently experiencing keeps the leaves on the trees longer and if you couple that with rainy weekends it can delay residents putting leaves by the curb and therefore delay removal. That’s one reason the town’s schedule goes through November. As for snow removal, there are 21 snow routes and more than 20 plows and each route can take several hours. So, people at one end of the route may see an earlier plow than residents at the other end of a route. The bottom line is the crews work very long and hard hours, and I try to help residents understand how complex the operation is.”
Dan Morin
Morin is also a lifelong town resident, growing up on McCombe Drive in Delmar and attending Bethlehem schools. After graduation, he became a union carpenter and managed the Glenmont Radio Shack, where he doubled sales, before going to work for the town’s Highway Department 13 years ago. During this time, he said that he has performed almost all of its assigned jobs.
“I have witnessed excellent leadership under Gregg Sagendorph, Sr., terrible leadership under Joanne Cunningham’s husband, Brent Meredith, and have thought of ways we could improve service and eliminate the Clarkson/Meredith ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ of the department by managing the department better and in person,” Morin said. “I was inspired to run because my fellow employees and I were demoralized under poor, self-serving Working-Families-Party leadership.
Q: What do you see as the biggest challenge currently facing the highway department? How would you go about addressing it?
A: “We need a hands-on manager. If you’re not observing and monitoring what is going on in the department, you’re not managing. I will address the challenge by coming to work and overseeing job sites. These actions will have a cascading effect on improving efficiency and service: Eliminating unnecessary overtime, equitably sharing overtime opportunities for workers so workers know there are no ‘favorites,’ improving employee morale, organizing work crews properly by taking into account employee strengths and weaknesses, effecting proper time management on projects, allocating department resources where they are needed, improving public and worker safety and making observations that will make me think of other ideas that would help us achieve department goals, e.g. cross-training employees, implementing an electronic card-key system, rotating employees overtime schedule , etc. Bethlehem’s citizens will see improved leaf pickup and snow removal as a result.
“If our new town supervisor and elected town council will cooperate, perhaps we could reduce to comparable salaries in the labor market [to] the $30,000 to $40,000-dollar pay raises provided to Clarkson’s-favored department heads over the last several years as sales tax revenue remitted to the town increased, and hire more laborers. When I started working at the highway department 13 years ago, we had 61 laborers/drivers; today, we have 46. We have more roads and sidewalks to repair and plow and from which to remove leaves.”
Q: What do you see as Bethlehem’s greatest strengths? How would you use your position at the highway department to help expand or capitalize on those strengths?
A: “Bethlehem’s citizens — and their intelligence and knowledge, knowledge of which we in the department can take advantage [of] to our benefit. I have committed to citizens that, unlike the previous four years, they will have a highway superintendent, if I’m elected, who will respond to their letters, emails and phone calls!
“We could easily set up and promote a separate email for citizens so that I can see that our department responds to citizen concerns and does so quickly. I think listening to citizens would improve our ability in the department to fill potholes and cut down overgrown brush blocking visibility at intersections. We can’t fix the problem if we don’t know about it.”
Q: Please rank your top five priorities at the highway department; feel free to explain why and/or how you would approach them.
A: 1) “We should train employees in the operations of all equipment to improve the efficiency of jobsites. We’ve had employees go on vacation and have the remaining employees on a jobsite not able to operate the equipment. Employees could train each other in our downtime during the winter.
2) We should start paving in May instead of July and save the town the cost of hiring eight to ten Glenmont Job Corps employees at $10 – $12/hr. at the end of the paving season to finish the season’s scheduled work.
3) We should eliminate unnecessary overtime by using the lowest-payrate- but-qualified employee to do a job. We should allow lower-level employees to perform solitary tasks without a foreman having to open the building and garage. To address management’s security concerns, we could install a card-key system. Such systems typically cost $1,500 to $3,500 per door, or $2,500-$3,500 for two doors. Monthly maintenance typically costs $10- $100 per month. These costs are a fraction of what would be saved by eliminating foreman supervision over employees performing solitary tasks.
4) We should install plows on all of our pickups so that foremen in a pickup can plow an area missed by our dump trucks instead of calling the dump truck back to the unplowed area.
5) Like the best organizations in the world, I want to set up an incentive plan for our employees, so that ideas that save the town money will be recognized and rewarded with bonuses.”
Q: What is your biggest take-away from the conversations you’ve had with residents during the course of campaigning over the last several weeks?
A: “Waiting a month or over the winter for a leaf pickup is no longer viewed as acceptable, if it ever was. Voters, correctly, will not tolerate the Working-Families-Party deception that town government is being fiscally responsible with property tax increases just under the tax cap while user fees are imposed (e.g. EMS), dedicated Public Access TV funds under federal law are misappropriated and ordinary municipal services are gutted in order to pay for little-show jobs for those at the top of the political machine, and poorly designed, wish-list building projects. For example, the bulge-out curbs as part of the Delaware Avenue reconstruction project, in addition to taking away parking from businesses like 333 and Joe’s Barbershop that do not have parking other than street parking, make it difficult to plow. “
John “Tiger” Anastasi
John “Tiger” Anastasi was born in Bethlehem. His father was a custom homebuilder who developed land in the town and decided he wanted to raise his family here. Anastasi graduated from Bethlehem schools and has lived in town his whole life.
Now the owner of his own contracting business, Anastasi has 40 years of experience in construction work. He and his wife Michelle Kavanaugh have two children that they have also chosen to raise in Bethlehem.
Q: What do you see as the biggest challenge currently facing the highway department? How would you go about addressing it?
A: “The biggest challenge I see currently facing the highway department is the division within the department staff. I feel the best way to address this problem is to have someone in the superintendent’s position that can be a leader — someone who leads by example. They should not only have presence in the office but out on the street as well. The employees need to know I understand the level of work they have to do that I am there to fall back on for guidance and support.
“It is my belief that if the employees have confidence in the boss and the boss has confidence in his employees you can work through any issue, big or small. Where there is unity there is strength and with division there is weakness.
“The promise I have make to my ‘hopefully future’ employees at the highway department is that someday soon you will be proud of the department you work in and you’ll enjoy getting up and going to work again.”
Q: What do you see as Bethlehem’s greatest strengths? How would you use your position at the highway department to help expand or capitalize on those strengths?
A: “Bethlehem is a special place to live and raise a family. Being a lifelong resident, I have enjoyed all that this town has to offer. The small-town feel, neighborhood parks, good property values, beautiful open spaces, great schools, restaurants and businesses. Like anything good in this world, you need to maintain… . Maintain town’s infrastructure, maintain parks and open spaces and maintain relationships with the employees you supervise and the residents you serve.”
Q: Please rank your top five priorities at the highway department; feel free to explain why and/or how you would approach them.
A: “Once elected I will:
• Ensure a scheduled leaf pick-up in a timely manner.
• Ensure effective paving and maintenance of our roadways that ensure safe and convenient travel.
• Provide more accountability and responsiveness to resident issues.
• Re-evaluate town roadways and sidewalk conditions to maximize pedestrian safety.
• Limit taxpayer expenses by utilizing current highway employees for town projects.
• Ensure our highway employees are well trained and cross trained so jobs don’t go undone.”
Q: What is your biggest take-away from the conversations you’ve had with residents during the course of campaigning over the last several weeks?
A: “Residents are tired of the division in the town, which are politically motived. They want quality of life services like leaf pickup, clean and well maintained parks, sidewalks, well maintained streets but most importantly they want a highway department that is responsive to the residents and not a political party.
Even though I am endorsed by Republican, Conservative, Independence and Reform parties, I am proud to say I’m a independent who puts people and the job that I am hired to do before anything else.”
