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 Anula Courtis, Woodstock’s Democratic town supervisor.

Courtis, 58, took office as supervisor in January after joining the Town Board in January 2024. A Woodstock resident for more than a decade, she previously served two terms on the town’s Human Rights Commission.

Her professional background includes business management, technology, and consulting. According to her LinkedIn profile, she worked as a project manager at McKinsey & Company from 1999 to 2004 and later served as managing director and CEO of 340Best, which provides administration, consulting, and compliance services for organizations participating in the federal 340B drug pricing program. She is also a director at GenEdge Health and works as a strategic advisor.

She studied communications at New York University for two years before receiving a scholarship to Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she transferred and earned her undergraduate degree.

Courtis is the only candidate whose name will appear on the ballot for supervisor. Former first deputy town clerk Meghann Reimondo is mounting a write-in campaign against her. Both candidates declined to debate. Reimondo also declined to participate in The Overlook’s candidate Q&A series.

The following has been edited for clarity and concision.

What’s the biggest issue facing Woodstock?

Courtis: One of the things that is really important to me is looking at affordable housing.

This year, my office applied for a couple of million dollars in federal funding to help build the infrastructure needed for affordable housing on town owned land. And that was a rather big start because it really does take all of the work that volunteers have put into affordable housing for years.

We’re continuing to utilize money to right now conduct surveys, and then we’re going to do a perc test. (A percolation test measures how quickly water drains into the soil.)

So before this year is over, the town board will select, let’s just say our first affordable housing property. All of that will be done publicly.

We need to look at some of our zoning to make sure that we’re protecting our environment, number one. And also, what type of housing are we going to have?

Infrastructure is very not glamorous. We’ve got leaky roofs. We’ve got all these problems that have been inherited. I am currently in the process of fixing some of those problems. So we’re going to be taking care of the courthouse.

What problems need to be addressed in town buildings?

Courtis: The brand new addition had two leaks in it. One was right smack in the center of that new addition where the heating, like that fan is there.

The windows were not installed properly. I can’t recall the piece of the window that was actually missing. And so rain was coming in through the windows into that new addition. That has been resolved.

So highway has horrible leaks. Their geothermal is in disrepair and has been.

We’re going to start with roofs and we’re going to work our way through to everything and anything that needs to be repaired. And we’re going to try to figure out how to balance the cost along with grants along with having strong relationships with other government officials who can help us and as well as the public.

We’re also going to look at solar. So that kind of feeds into infrastructure in my mind.

There’s a solar array that the project regeneration is going to be putting up and they’re going to over generate a power that the town might be able to buy at a discount.

Also where there’s public and private collaboration, we’re eligible to combine projects and we’re eligible for bigger grants and different types of grants.

So water, the water testing, what I’ve done is I’ve moved the water testing to quarterly. We had moved to a yearly and that’s back to quarterly.

We’ve hit some roadblocks with that this year. The idea of can we turn off one of the wells was explored and the answer is no, we cannot. Then, can we put a carbon activated filter on aging infrastructure? And the answer is no.

So we have moved on to the next layer of, well, what are we going to do? And that’s something that I feel we will be able to hit the ground running with next year as far as testing different solutions, or I should say possible solutions for putting a new well in place.

And we’re also going to look for grants for that as well. Anything you do with infrastructure is so big and so expensive.

Why can’t the town require the property owners at 10 Church Road to remove the dumped material and remediate the site?

Courtis: The town said it was fixed to the town’s satisfaction. So that is a very high legal bar to overcome. And I think that people don’t understand that part of it.

We want to get every stakeholder at the table and kind of lay this out and discuss it and figure out a path forward so all of us can move on, the town, the two properties involved, all of us. I mean, we all want this behind us.

And that’s what we’re going to do with an engineer who will drive the hydrologist who will do whatever mapping needs to happen to figure out what’s under that ground.

Now, I don’t know the situation there. I’m not an engineer, but there are times and I don’t know that this is one of them. But there are times where you cannot move stuff because you will cause way further pollution and put toxicity into the air.

There are steps that really need to be done by people who actually do this for a living.

What did you hope to accomplish this year that remains unfinished?

Courtis: I wish that Church Road could have moved a bit faster.

I’m glad this year we will select an engineering firm and we’ll have a clear path forward. I would have liked the audit to start a little bit sooner this year.

When do you expect to select the engineering firm for Church Road?

Courtis: In December and we will have a path forward. We’ll start the process of building a path for that engineering firm to do their thing and make recommendations.

We’ll be communicating with the public very shortly about that.

Following the fatal fire in Mount Tremper, how is the town approaching inspections of multi-unit buildings to help prevent another tragedy?

Courtis: In the past, they’re not great records for some matters pertaining to building and inspections. And I’m not saying anything was done incorrectly, but what we are doing is we’re looking at building permitting software for next year.

And what that’s going to do is it’s going to consolidate information about every home, every building in this town is going to help us look at short term rentals a little bit more carefully.

The new building department folks are coming up with a plan for how they’re going to approach all of this next year, and really make sure that we’re on top of things. We have a responsibility to have good, clean records, to make sure that they’re accurate, and to make sure that we have a plan for getting out there and going after the inspections that we have to.

We put that into the budget for next year.

Are unlicensed short-term rentals an issue in Woodstock?

Courtis: I think so. We don’t use any software currently to monitor the short term rental world in Woodstock.

We’re going to enhance how we monitor short term rentals moving forward. Put it that way.

Do booking platforms such as Airbnb help ensure that hosts have the required permits?

Courtis: I think the problem is that people have wisened up. So let’s say if you have somebody who for three years comes for leaf peeping season, then I think people are even circumventing Airbnb with those folks. So it’s going to be hard to catch everybody.

What we want to do is at least start with safety. An Airbnb is a business. And so we should maintain that that business is operating in a safe manner that the guests are aware of how to operate in a safe manner.

And also, everyone who has a permit for an owner occupied short term rental, is in fact the owner living there? Right now, there’s not a mechanism to really look deeply into that.

How will the budget workshops and public hearing inform revisions to the proposed budget?

Courtis: Yeah, absolutely. So the workshops are actually where the whole town board will sit down with the department head and kind of hash through and look at the numbers and say, oh, why is this up? Why is that down? What is this about?

We’re doing things a little differently this time where department heads were not involved in the past. Now they’re looking at their revenues. They’re looking at the line items, like we really worked together to get through this this year.

I learned a lot from them, but I think they learned something as well.

I am delivering to the board a budget that is under the tax cap. What they do from there, we have options. And that’s for them to discuss and consider.

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