While he has plenty of experience acting as a ‘man of God’, Gregg Wood would like to try his hand at acting as a man of the people. Currently running as a Democratic candidate for a seat on Wawarsing’s Town Council, Wood moved to the area in 1995 when he presided over Ellenville’s St. John’s Episcopal Church. He retired after six years of service.

As the current treasurer of the local Democratic Committee, and having worked with the Ellenville-Wawarsing Chamber of Commerce to create a promotional brochure for the community ten years ago, Wood decided to throw his hat into the political ring due to his dissatisfaction with the current board.

“I’ve been involved in politics as long as I’ve lived here, mostly in a supportive capacity,” says Wood. “In recent years I’ve been kind of unhappy with the town council. This summer, the actions they took didn’t seem to be very wise. Also, they weren’t conducting themselves very well at meetings, and I just had the feeling that we could do better than this. I felt that the town deserves better — I deserve better — and I thought, ‘hey maybe I should run.’ And some other people in the Democratic Party encouraged me, so that’s how I made the decision.” Wood believes his experience in conflict-resolution as a clergyman will help the Town Council, “sort out bad situations.”

“I think that any change in the faces will have some impact, there’ll be at least one new person on the board no matter what happens on election day,” says Wood. “But I think as a clergy-person — and I’m not speaking only about myself, I’m speaking about clergy in general —we’ve all had experience with groups that have difficult people in them or who kind of get tied up in knots, and I think we’ve had the experience of trying to sort out that situation and help the group function more productively. And I think I have some of those skills and can bring them to bear, if needed, within the town council.”

Wood has some plans for the future of the town should he get elected, such as trying to push the effort forward to try and attract large businesses back to the area to replace Hydro and Schrade.

“I realize that puts us in the same place as many other communities in upstate New York,” says Wood, “and it’s not something that’s an easy problem to solve, but I think we can do more about it than we are now. I’m looking forward to working with the private sector like with the chamber of commerce and trying to really accentuate the strengths of the Town of Wawarsing. For example, one of our liabilities is that we don’t have a major interstate highway nearby. That’s true, and there’s nothing we can do about that. On the other hand, one of our strengths is that we do have an airport. I think we’ve got to somehow position ourselves so that we’re emphasizing the strong points of our community and finding out just what industries that can be important to and appeal to those industries to relocate here.”

Wood also wants to focus on trying to fix many of the area’s flooding problems, particularly those of the Carlo Drive neighborhood.

“We’ve had some major flooding in recent years. I’ve been flooded myself. And I think we can do more to mitigate floods,” asserts Wood. “The main cause of flooding is the overflowing of the Rondout Creek… They say, ‘What can you do about that?’ Fortunately there is something you can do about that because the flow into the Rondout Creek is under the control of New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection. So there is a political aspect to flood control, but it’s probably going to take a lot of talking and meeting with people, and getting people to read from the same page.”

In fact, during his campaign for the town board seat, Wood actually sent out a letter to residents of Carlo Drive looking for feedback on his ideas. “It’s a major project, one that I’m highly motivated in… I’m just looking forward to finding a solution with that.”

Wood believes that in addition to his being retired, and therefore having a greater ability to devote his time to the position, his wealth of experience in areas other than Wawarsing gives him a bit of an edge over the competition.

“I think you’re blessed this year with a lot of good candidates… but I think that one of the unique things that I have to offer is that I have had a lot of experience living outside of this area. I’ve lived here for about twelve years now, but I’ve lived a lot of other places as well. And so I bring a breadth of experience that not all the candidates do. I think it’s good to have a lot of candidates who are really very locally based people, but it’s good to have a few around that have a broader experience as well.”

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