The Overlook is conducting a series of interviews with candidates running in the Nov. 3 election, offering readers an opportunity to hear directly from those seeking to shape their communities. In this installment, editor Noah Eckstein interviewed Robert Drake, the Democratic nominee for Ulster County Legislature District 22, which includes Denning, Hardenburgh, Olive, and Shandaken.

Drake, 39, has lived in Phoenicia since 2017 and has served on the Shandaken Town Board since January 2022. He works as assistant director for technology operations for the Nassau Library System, primarily remotely.

Born in Bremerton, Washington, Drake moved frequently while growing up because his father served in the Navy. He attended high school in Goshen and the University of Advancing Technology in Arizona before spending about a decade in New Paltz. He moved to Phoenicia after finding a house he could afford as home prices in New Paltz outpaced his salary. Outside work, he enjoys hiking and bird-watching.

Drake will appear on the Democratic and Working Families party lines. He faces Republican Peter Friedel.

The following has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

What is the most pressing issue facing District 22, and what would you do to address it?

Drake: So the most acute issue across District 22, in my opinion, is flooding.

Supporting the replacement of the Bridge Street Bridge in Phoenicia, which is a county owned bridge, with a more flood resilient bridge. That’s a specific example of the larger case, which is supporting infrastructure improvements across District 22 to make the region more flood resilient.

The second bit is, of course, supporting emergency services, which again, is fairly expansive in scope. But when you get more specific, that’s making sure that emergency services is trained and prepared specifically for things like floods. And I might also add in things like forest fires, making sure that they have the tools, which is generally going to be communications equipment.

Where is the county government falling short for the district, and what would you change?

Drake: Failures are opportunities, right? And I don’t necessarily blame any part of the county government for having not found every solution there is.

These towns do not have town engineers. They don’t have professional planners. They don’t necessarily have a full time staff lawyer. They don’t necessarily have full time staff like flood expertise. And so I see an opportunity for the county to provide some of those services. And how that actually shakes out is going to be determined by the legislature and, of course, the executive.

We have larger hotels, we have developers who come in and that’s not a bad thing, but we don’t necessarily have the expertise on staff of the respective towns to meaningfully interrogate those projects and find the best path forward that protects neighbors, protects rights, protects land use, protects the environment. And I think that expertise is something where the county representing a larger area would be immensely useful.

What could you do at the county level to make housing more affordable, given that many land-use decisions rest with towns?

Drake: There is a proposal to offer a tax break to full time residents off of their county tax. So this would be a partial tax exemption. And I support that. That’s something that the county executive has discussed. And if and when that comes before the legislature, I would absolutely vote for it.

Now, is that enough to move the needle? I think we all probably know not. Is that enough to move it in the right direction and combined with other actions, make the area more favorable to families and longer term residents and primary ownership? I hope so.

When it comes to helping housing, obviously at some level you have to build housing, right? More housing has to be built. But there’s a very big difference between building some single family homes in a rural area with large space between them and building larger complexes or luxury condos. And so how do you better sort of direct the development to ways that are most supported by the community? And a lot of that, to your point, is very much going to be the local townships leading the way on that.

In some cases, county parcels have been directly converted to housing. And I certainly support that. Admittedly, there’s not very many examples of that within District 22. So it’s not necessarily something that could become a direct on the ground benefit here per se. But housing is obviously regional. And if you can take a little bit of weight off of the housing issues in, say, Kingston, then the hope is that that kind of goes beyond just the borders.

How would you stay connected with residents in the district’s more remote communities, including those who don’t use social media or have reliable internet?

Drake: I think the name of the game is trying to have as much presence as possible. And so I have been attending, whenever possible, the town board meetings of the respective constituent towns.

And that’s not the end all be all of being able to hear from people. But I think that’s sort of a minimal baseline for being able to understand what are the challenges that are really happening here within each of these four townships.

I’m going there because I want a sandwich, right? I’m not going there as a political tour, but it’s nice to be able to hear what people are talking about and try to make a friend. And so I think that just having as much presence as possible is kind of the name of the game to hear those issues and then hopefully represent them well.

How could the county’s economic development department better support rural businesses that depend on local customers rather than tourists?

Drake: One of, I think a fairly long standing challenge or criticism of that department is not entirely knowing its focus or its strategy.

Tourism has its component and will obviously undoubtedly be an aspect of that. But there’s a lot of other industries. We certainly have contractors and lumber and in some cases there’s agriculture not entirely within District 22, but making sure that all of that is cohesive in the plan that would be my hope is to work with the county executive and that department to make sure that that becomes a focus.

How would you improve access to health care in the district’s more remote communities?

Drake: When you get down to it, the transportation and the access is the area that is most actionable from the county level.

No matter where you are in District 22, you’re probably 30 plus minutes from a hospital and possibly even longer for other medical care. Certainly, a blood lab or a primary care physician. And so how do you address that transportation issue? And I think the answer to that has to be micro transit, a little bit of a jargony word. But when you get down to it, transportation, public transportation that is not reliant upon dedicated scheduled lines, but is more of your taxi or Uber model where you are identifying a person who wants a ride and scheduling that ride to a singular destination.

And because folks are going to different hospitals at different times, I think it’s almost impossible to create a bus system that can really accommodate that successfully.

That would serve routine appointments. What about emergency medical care?

Drake: For emergencies, obviously, you’re still basically relying on ambulances.

It was a funding act that was passed last year that provided funding to anchor agencies this year. I think it went okay, but I think that program has to be sort of expanded and better understood.

That’s got to be kind of a broader state conversation of how we are addressing ambulance services as a critical service. And I know Senator Hinchey is working on a bill around that as well. So I would support that. But that’s obviously outside of the county.

Volunteer fire departments are struggling to recruit and retain members. How would you address that?

Drake: At one level, you can say, well, if there’s not enough volunteer firefighters, then we have to look at paid firefighters. But obviously that’s a huge challenge.

Having even a District 22 fire service is maybe not entirely viable. But if you look at the Catskills as a fire district, a multi-county special fire district, I think you might have a much better opportunity to find the efficiencies of size, perhaps a large enough area that you can maintain a really vibrant volunteer community.

That volunteer sensibility is really important and couldn’t say more about how useful and valuable and dedicated those folks are. But if that size would allow for some number of paid people who are perhaps in charge of training and equipment maintenance, that might better allow us to respond in emergencies, and compensate for the fact that those volunteer departments may not always be able to get their volunteer numbers.

So I think it would hopefully be a bit of a hybrid, but I think to be effective, it probably has to cover a larger area. And because of the sort of the unique characteristics of the Catskills, in my mind, that unique area isn’t necessarily, say, the entirety of Ulster County. It’s more focused on the area that has those very specific flood and fire challenges.

Boiceville residents served by the Hudson Valley Water Company have reported recurring water problems. What could you do as a county legislator to help?

Drake: We’re government. We need to provide clean water to everyone.

As a legislator, you obviously don’t have the same executive mechanisms that you do as either a town supervisor or, say, a county executive. You don’t have a department, you don’t have a direct enforcement mechanism. So your primary power is obviously coming up with ideas and trying to connect people.

The first entity that comes to my mind is the county Department of Health. The DOH is responsible for, among other things, evaluating water supplies. So like in Shandaken, they inspect our water tower and they review things like boil water alerts and things like that.

And they’re both a source of oversight as well as a source of technical expertise. So do they have either an oversight mechanism that can kind of improve things or do they have technical expertise to kind of drill down to what we need on the ground here to actually sort of fix this.

Obviously not trying to step on any toes with the town, the town’s lead on the ground. And so if they feel like they have a solution in mind, I would be seeking to support that.

Could connecting those homes to a water system in Shandaken be an option?

Drake: To some extent there simply aren’t any pipes currently existent. And of course, that’s expensive work.

I would defer to our water operator to confirm this, but I don’t have any reason to believe that the water supply is overtaxed, like we have enough water. There are a lot of challenges with the water supply insofar as maintenance and the pumps are old and the meters are starting to age out. We have a lot of challenges there, but the actual quantity of water is not really one of the problems.

That’s actually kind of an interesting solution. It would require some municipal partnerships.

Why do you identify as a Democrat?

Drake: When I was in high school, my first week of high school was September 11th, and the subsequent 4 or 5 years I considered to be sort of the worst possible case of how the country reacted to that under a Republican president. And that’s largely what started me in sort of the political sphere.

A sort of a broader national policy of what appeared to be revenge didn’t strike me as the correct approach and then appears to effectively be the approach of the Republican Party at the national level ever since. I’m quite grateful that the local level, those conversations don’t necessarily take that kind of tenor.

Is there another priority you want voters to know about?

Drake: I think route 28 safety is something that’s also super important. Making sure that that’s a safe transit corridor for everyone. It’s clearly the lifeline for the majority of District 22.

Noah Eckstein is the editor-in-chief of The Overlook. Send correspondence to noah@theoverlooknews.com.