To the Editor:

I live in Westerlo and I am active in our local town government. I am the chair of the Westerlo Zoning Board of Appeals, and a member of both the Broadband Research Committee and the newly formed Comprehensive Plan Committee. I also regularly attend all of our town board meetings and workshops. I see a lot of what our elected and appointed town officials do, and don’t do, and how it affects the town and its residents.

In early March of this year, the Westerlo town supervisor for more than 45 years resigned/retired. This was right after the code enforcement officer, town attorney, and zoning board chair, all of whom had been part of the town government for the last 20-plus years, left at the end of 2018. 

With a lot of the town procedures and information undocumented, because the same people had done them for so long, there was clearly a large opportunity for things to go wrong. My personal hope for the town, best case, was that someone could get us through the rest of the year successfully without anything breaking. Then, having figured out the basics, the new supervisor could start to make progress and change things as we moved forward in 2020.

Bill Bichteman became the acting supervisor in March, and what he has done to not only keep everything running smoothly but to also make many improvements already is amazing. I don’t know of anyone else in Westerlo who could have done this.

I attribute Bill’s success to three factors. The first is the deep existing knowledge he has of the local area and its history, of the workings of town government and its rules and regulations, and of finance and business in general.

The second factor is his attention to detail and his talking to people and researching all the options. Then he lays out a very clear case with the pros and cons for the town board to decide or approve his recommendation.

The third factor is that he is willing to dedicate a ton of his personal time to trying to improve things for Westerlo. A 40-hour week in Town Hall, for what is meant to be a part-time job, would be an easy week for Bill compared to his current schedule.

At Town Hall, Bill has revamped the phone and IT [information technology] system, critical infrastructure in dire need of improvement, to make them much more usable.

He has also streamlined many things, such as the way the town pays bills. For example, instead of handwriting 23 checks to Central Hudson every month, the accounting system now generates one check each month.

A broader external impact that Bill has made, looking to the future, is the rigor that he personally instilled in the development of the Comprehensive Plan Committee mission and the recruiting and selection of a diverse committee and a consultant. Bill is also helping to investigate grants to pay for it.

Bill’s biggest achievement in the last seven months was the development of the 2020 budget. This year’s budget process was like night and day from previous years. In previous years, the town board and members of the public would spend every meeting asking for explanations of what the cryptic numbers meant and included.

This year, Bill gave a presentation on the overall budget process upfront, and then walked through each item with a detailed written breakdown of what was included in it. When he presented the budget at the last town board meeting, it was the first Westerlo budget meeting I had ever attended where I had no questions or concerns.

The town board and the public had a few minor questions on the budget, but the budget is basically done weeks ahead of time and ready to be approved. Funds are in categories where they should be, and it is clear what is included and what is not (to stay under the tax cap).

As the acting supervisor, Bill has frequently reached out to get input and advice from members of the community who were knowledgeable in things he was researching. At town board meetings and workshops, he has always let the public speak, even if they sometimes interrupt with things that are not part of the current discussion.

I believe that Bill, if he is elected as our supervisor, will continue to work closely with the members of the community and do what is best for the town in each situation. I am very encouraged with all that Bill Bichteman has been able to do, and set us on the path to do, in the last seven months.

I hope that the town will elect him as our supervisor and allow him to continue moving us forward to make Westerlo the community we want it to be.

John Sefcik

Westerlo

Editor’s note: John Sefcik chairs the Westerlo Zoning Board of Appeals and is a member of the town’s Comprehensive Plan Committee.