Incoming Woodstock Supervisor Anula Courtis filled two key roles in her administration and roiled local politics by rejecting weeks of work by a Town Board colleague to redesign the town’s website.
Courtis named Daniel Gallant, 49, a development consultant to arts organizations, as deputy supervisor, and former Saugerties Art Commission Chair Yvonne Rojas-Cowan, 51, as confidential secretary, as Supervisor Bill McKenna prepares to step down after roughly two decades on the Town Board.
Courtis, 57, also signaled a significant shift in the town’s website overhaul, declining in the new year to move forward with an effort led by Town Board member Laura Ricci that was previewed at the board’s final meeting of the year Tuesday.
Courtis said she expects Gallant, who has been described by NPR’s Planet Money podcast as “a genius at raising money for artists,” to bring communications, fundraising and institutional leadership experience to the role. She said she has not yet decided who will fill the vacant Town Board seat created by her elevation to supervisor.
“He’s smart, independent and effective,” Courtis said. “I’m excited for him to start.”
Gallant, who has owned a home in Woodstock for seven years and moved there permanently in 2021, has held senior leadership roles at major cultural institutions, including the Nuyorican Poets Café and director of theater and talk programs at the 92nd Street Y. A Swarthmore College and Columbia University graduate, Gallant also served as interim director of external affairs at the Vineyard Theatre in Union Square during the summer and fall of this year. He was formerly director of White Feather Farm in Saugerties.
“I am excited to officially support Anula and the Town Board during what is a complex transition after an administration that’s been in office for almost a decade,” Gallant said. “Much of my work has focused on helping institutions navigate moments like this, particularly on the financial and strategic side.”
The deputy supervisor role is unpaid, and Gallant said he will balance the position alongside his paid consulting work. He worked with Courtis before the primary election in June, and did not formally apply to the role. He also said in a phone conversation on Wednesday evening that Woodstock’s rising cost of living and evolving identity make this a pivotal moment for the town to reassess how it uses its resources, infrastructure and its cultural legacy, as affordability challenges threaten its long-standing reputation as an arts community.
Rojas-Cowan, who lives in Saugerties since 2013, said she had not been seeking a new role when Gallant approached her about the position and that she initially hesitated before meeting with Courtis.
“It was rather sudden. At first I wasn’t interested in the role. ” Rojas-Cowan said. “Then I met with Anula and realized we share the same goals.”
Rojas-Cowan, exhibitions director at the Woodstock Artists Association & Museum and a former chair of the Saugerties Arts Commission, said her background in corporate finance and operations aligns with the demands of the confidential secretary role.
“The confidential secretary is the gatekeeper,” she said. “Anula is charged with handling a great deal of responsibility, and my role is to make sure she can focus on the priorities.”
As for the town’s website, whose url must now end in .gov instead of .org under state law, Courtis said the woodstockny.org site can be pointed to the town’s new domain without a full rebuild. She plans to hire an outside expert in 2026 to select the best platform.
“I am 100 percent looking into a new website,” she said.
Courtis said she doesn’t believe a member of the town board should be responsible for building or managing the town’s website and said Ricci’s involvement was at the discretion of outgoing Supervisor Bill McKenna. Courtis characterized the timing of its rollout, to meet a Dec. 21 state deadline, as disruptive to her transition.
Ricci had planned for the revised site to go live Dec. 19 and to host a public Zoom “office hours” session the evening of Monday, Dec. 22 to solicit feedback. It was not clear whether either will now take place.
Ricci, however, said her work on the website was focused on ensuring the town’s compliance with state requirements before McKenna leaves office and said she was not informed of Courtis’ plans to abandon the revised site.
“First of all yes, it is possible to re-direct the website, but if you re-direct it it pops up as .org,” Ricci said. “She may well have a plan for a website she would rather use. Communication would’ve been nice. She’s not communicating that to me.”
Ricci said she was acting to ensure McKenna’s administration met legal requirements before the end of his term.
“I am working on making Bill’s administration compliant with the law,” Ricci said. “I am trying to leave a website that Bill McKenna can leave in his legacy. If she can find a better web service, God bless her. If it can be activated in January, God bless her.”
Courtis is set to assume office in January, marking the first change in Woodstock’s top elected position since McKenna was elected supervisor in 2017.
In other business at the board’s meeting on Tuesday, a zoning hearing Lizzie Vann’s Project Regeneration was postponed to next year from Dec. 16 because officials determined that they’d failed to meet a 10-day public notice requirement under town law.
Separately, Ricci thanked Supervisor Bill McKenna at the meeting for his decades of service.
“Some of the best people that I’ve worked with are right here in this room,” said Ricci, who has often sided with McKenna on board votes.
McKenna, in turn, reflected on the moment, noting that the meeting capped more than two decades of service in town government, and more than 500 meetings.
“There’s a lot of institutional history that the town is losing,” McKenna said Thursday. “It’s the first time I’ve had nothing to do since I was a teenager.”
McKenna said he plans to take a couple of months off before committing to a new venture. He said he may return to construction or, jokingly, write a book with Howard Harris, a former Zoning Board of Appeals member and longtime critic of the supervisor.
Noah Eckstein is the editor-in-chief of The Overlook. Send correspondence to noah@theoverlooknews.com.