KNOX — The newest member  of the town planning board is not new to town government service. Travis O’Donnell has been a member of the town’s conservation advisory council for two years.

Now the town board, at its December meeting,  has unanimously appointed him to the unexpired term of Dan Driscoll, a long-time planning board member who died earlier this year. The appointment is for one year.

Speaking of the man whose term he will complete, Dan Driscoll, the newest planning board member said, “He was a total Knox legend, so filling those shoes will not be possible...He was an incredible fount of information and history, and a man of great decorum.

“His contribution to Knox,” O'Donnell concluded, “cannot be overstated.”

Town Supervisor Vasilios Lefkaditis told the board, “I was very impressed by O’Donnell’s interview and qualifications, and would like to appoint him to a full seven-year term.”  But the board felt otherwise and made the appointment for one year. If the board had appointed O’Donnell to a seven-year term,  it would still have had to find someone to fill the unexpired term. Betty Ketcham’s term is up at the end of the year; the planning board has seven members.

The town board had interviewed O’Donnell in executive session over the objections of Lefkaditis who had argued at an earlier board meeting that the process of interviewing and choosing a new  planning board member should be conducted publicly. The state’s  Open Meetings Law allows public bodies to go into executive session to consider an appointment.

O’Donnell, 36, is currently employed by the state’s  Department of Health AIDS Institute in its Division of Epidemiology, Evaluation and Partner Services where he works on statewide reporting of new cases of infection by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus.

Prior to this, he worked for six years at the AIDS Council of Northeastern New York, obtaining grants and improving service quality, and, before that, he worked in fundraising and development at the Albany Institute of Art.

O’Donnell says he has completed half the work required to obtain a master's degree in regional planning at the University at Albany.

Not long after he, his wife, Cheryl, and their children moved to Knox three years ago,  he found himself meeting people and making friends, and taking an active role in town affairs.

His experience on the conservation advisory council, he feels, was a good way to start his involvement.  “The council plays an advisory role,” he said, “so there’s no pressure to make decisions, but it’s a good way to start to learn and see things from a conservation perspective.”

O’Donnell describes his family as homesteaders. “We absolutely love it,” he says of the town and their homestead  on Township Road. “You can get a decent amount of land here for a decent price. That’s why we moved here, for the open land,” he said.

He says the family does some small-scale farming, “some sheep and chickens.”

O’Donnell says he has attended planning board meetings as an audience member and has been “very impressed” with how “smart and engaged” the board is.

Though he intends to spend his first six months on the board learning, he says he’s looking forward to “making even more connections in the community” and to encouraging broader participation.

More involvement

“I see opportunities to really engage people in town affairs,” he says. “There’s a general mistrust of government these days, but it doesn’t have to be that way on the local level. That’s the great thing about a small town: each individual’s voice is more important.”

He says he’d like to see a wider, ongoing interest in town affairs, “interest that transcends just one topic or some issue that people happen to be passionate about.”

“Conflict is healthy,” he said. “It’s one of the foundations of our way of government and moving an agenda forward.

“But there’s a fine line between good and bad conflict,”  he said, while also declaring he does not intend to “shy away from it.”

O’Donnell says  he wants “to get up to speed” on the big solar farm projects that have come before the town board this year. “I’m a big proponent of alternative energy,” he said, “but I have more questions than answers right now about the solar farm plans.”

The updating of the town’s comprehensive plan is another item on the planning board agenda he is looking forward to tackling, he says.