As the race for the White House heats up, it's important not to lose sight of the local campaigns whose outcomes will affect us directly. The changeover to the charter-style of government for Ulster County is giving county-residents the chance to vote in the very first County Executive and County Comptroller, positions which bring new and different responsibilities and functions to the way our county is run.

The comptroller, according to the Ulster County Charter which was codified last year, will be "the chief accounting and auditing officer of the county," and will "examine, audit, and verify all books, records, and accounts kept by the various administrative units, offices and officials paid from County funds, institutions and other agencies of the county."

This year, voters in Ulster County will have to choose between Republican candidate James E. Quigley III, a Kingston resident who works in New York City as a partner and Chief Financial Administrative Officer of Rothschild Realty Managers, LLC, and Elliott Auerbach, an Ellenville native who currently holds the position of Village Manager.

James E. Quigley III
James Quigley is a lifelong resident of Kingston who traces his family's presence in Kingston back five generations, but he says he's dismayed both by the fact that he's the first in his family not to be in a family-owned business in the community, and that the kids he's raised in the county aren't planning on returning once they've finished college.

"I'm the first generation not to be in the family-owned business because of lack of economic conditions," he says, saying of the family-owned businesses, "it was a lot of different things: my father was a contractor, my grandfather was a grocer, they all did different things, but they all were business people in the community. "The community over the years provided support for the family to grow and prosper, and be members of the community, and we gave back. So, I was in business with my father for a while, but the economic conditions were not right, and I left. I went to New York City, after getting a Master's degree in accounting, to practice accounting."

Quigley says that the sense of community he's experienced in Kingston has been made clear to him after his 20 years working in the city as partner and Chief Financial Administrative Officer for Rothschild Realty Managers, LLC.

"This is really brought home for me by working in New York City, and the people I work with…the amazing lack of continuity of community that's present — I don't work with anybody that grew up in New York," he says. "They all came from someplace else. Their families are all someplace else.

"Kingston is unique, Ulster County is unique. So I'm at a position in my career where I've been very blessed, I can take a step back and say, 'What can I do? What can I give back after five generations that's going to mean something? What can I do that might change some college-aged student from making the decision and telling his parents he's not coming back?'"

Quigley believes that as comptroller, he would be able to put his skills to work to fix the problems county government is experiencing, which is subsequently leading to the exodus of residents and workers.

"Taxes and inefficiencies in our government are creating an environment that is driving opportunity out of here, and the children are leaving, and their parents are shortly following thereafter because of the lack of opportunity," he says, adding, "you see it in Ellenville in spades."

Despite the fact that he has never held or sought public office before now, Quigley believes his experience as a CPA, dealing with his company's finances, gives him the qualifications necessary to handle the task as the county's chief auditor, saying that every person that the comptroller would hire would have to have accounting experience, and as such, being a longtime accountant himself would make him uniquely qualified for that role. He also says that this experience in working with his company's $100 million budget each year gives him an edge over Elliott Auerbach, since the county's budget last year was $326 million. As village manager, Auerbach oversees a $4 million budget.

"He has nowhere near the management experience I have," says Quigley.

He also responds to Auerbach's months-earlier questioning of his qualifications due to his part-time residence in the city. Quigley admits that he has had an apartment in Manhattan for two years, and spends between three to four days there to be closer to his job. However, he also points out that he spends two to three hours a day dealing with issues in Kingston and in Ulster County, such as his fight to keep John A. Coleman Catholic High School in Hurley, NY — the school he attended, as well as his children's high school — open and independently operating as a high school. Since 2000, he worked to develop a business plan to keep the Arch Diocese of New York from closing the school, which was suffering financial hardships. Since then, the school has remained open.

He also says that should he be elected to the comptroller position, he has already worked with his company in securing a replacement so that he can devote himself to the position full-time.

Elliott Auerbach Elliott Auerbach grew up in Ellenville, and has held various positions, both public and private, within the village. He worked as Ellenville's mayor for three terms starting in 1989, after having served as deputy mayor under Ed Jacobs for two terms. He replaced Mike Mills in the Village Manager position in 2002, where he has since remained. Prior to that, Auerbach ran the family-owned Ace Hardware with his father, before selling it to its current owners in 1997, and at one point also worked with Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-22) to establish the Town of Wawarsing as part of the nation's few Rural Economic Area Partnership (REAP) zones. When asked about his constant changes in occupation, he says without it, "it would make life very boring."

Now he seeks the county comptroller position, a job he thinks he's best suited for because of his myriad experiences working in the private and public sectors. On his time working in Ellenville, he says, "My roots are deep here.

"I'm working in a community that I love with an understanding of the community that I grew up in, so everyday becomes a déjà vu for me. I'm working with people who I knew all my life. And I'm meeting new people moving into the community who have come here with the same wide-eyed optimism that I returned to," referring to his time spent working in administration at Hofstra University on Long Island after college.

When asked why he wants to pursue the comptroller position if he loves working in Ellenville, he says, "Let's expand my love to the county. I think I have the same love and care for the county."

"I used to say, with the exception of an ocean, Ulster County's probably the best place to live — it has everything." He cites the possibilities posed by the expansion and encouragement of energy technologies, such as the Solar Energy Consortium, as one of the things he's most excited to be a part of.

"It's going to mean jobs, it's going to mean prosperity, it's going to mean infrastructure improvements…it's really going to have an impact on the quality of life in Ulster county as we know it. What a great opportunity to be a part of that — and what a great opportunity to bring some of that back to Ellenville."

Speaking of Ellenville, his time spent as village manager was not without its concerns. This year, village government announced that it was experiencing a roughly one million dollar deficit due to unpaid taxes and predicted revenue from village-owned property sales that were included in the budget, but whose sales never materialized. When asked about the progress of situation, Auerbach says that the village's efforts to "close the paper gap" of the deficit are on track, and that his prediction of an 18-month process to pay it back is still going according to plan.

When asked to explain how the deficit occurred while he was manager, he cited difficulties with the area's shrinking tax-base — when Schrade and Hydro left, people lost jobs, subsequently moved away, and caused difficulties for businesses, a cascade effect which left the village with lower revenues than predicted. As to the inclusion of property sales in the predicted revenue of the budget, Auerbach says that he made the village board aware of excess properties they could have tried to sell, and the board voted to include them on the budget, a decision that was not under his power. But, he says, working with the treasurer and village board, who created an audit committee, has helped stem the problems the deficit could have caused, and the crisis is now working smoothly toward resolution.

Auerbach charges that his opponent, on the other hand, is from a financial world that is fiscally irresponsible, and that his experience in Manhattan's financial world may be more of a liability than an asset.

"I look at my opponent who comes from that culture, and it scares the heck out of me," says Auerbach. "He comes from sub-prime real estate and Wall Street bailouts. And there's no room for that in Ulster County. We are really going to have to be conscious of our Main Street as opposed to Wall Street."

Auerbach also responds to questions regarding some of his critics in the community. When asked to speak about her time spent working with Auerbach during her long stint as Village Clerk, Ann Bowler refused, saying she was the "last person you should speak to about that."

When asked about what seemed like animosity coming from Bowler, Auerbach says that 'animosity' is the wrong word.

"I would replace the word animosity with history. There's a lot of history between Ann and I." Auerbach explains, saying that he used to work as a busboy while Ann was a waitress at the Fallsview Resort, they worked together while he was mayor and later as manager, and her daughter even used to babysit his kids.

"I think Ann really shies away from a lot of public input. And I respect her about that. I think that comes from the years of working in the trenches that she has."

When asked about other vocal critics of Auerbach, such as Ellenville Journal columnist John Burns, former Village Trustee and frequent Journal contributor Steve Krulick, and village resident Maxine Chapin, he responds saying that they may not have liked the "tough decisions I had to make as manager," citing the different cases which may have led to their opposition to his work as manager. He points out that when the village cut the Summer Rec program, Burns lost his position as director; he says he and Krulick are "cut from a different cloth," and that he may have wanted the manager's position when he was appointed; and that he understood Chapin's concerns over the various environmental issues she has fought for, particularly the Ellenville Playground project's bid to locate on the lower portion of Berme Road Park, a location close to a former dump.

If elected to the comptroller position, Auerbach says he will stay in Ellenville and commute to Kingston every day so that he can drive through the Route 209 corridor and stay in touch with his roots in the area.

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