Board will expand from three to five members
By Liz Schevtchuk Armstrong
The Village of Nelsonville election on Tuesday, March 20, promises a blend of old and new.
Voters will select trustees for two Village Board slots, each with a term of two years. In addition, they will vote in a third trustee for a one-year term. The staggered terms allow the village to phase in the restoration of an old institution: a five-person board, consisting of a mayor and four trustees.
Three men have filed the necessary paperwork to appear on the ballot for the two-year terms, according to the village clerk: Michael Bowman, a Cold Spring Fire Company member and former Cold Spring village trustee who now lives in Nelsonville, on the James Pond Party ticket; David Moroney, a contractor who ran as a write-in candidate for Nelsonville mayor in 2015, on the Shamrock Party slate; and Rudolf Van Dommele of the Block Party.
Trustee Thomas Robertson, who was elected to a two-year term in 2016, is seeking the one-year term and is running unopposed, barring a write-in candidacy.
Nelsonville’s Village Board consisted of five members from 1855 to 1898. Then, for reasons now obscured, the composition changed to a mayor and two trustees.
Robertson pushed in early 2017 to restore the five-member board. After this election, all members will serve two-year terms. Nelsonville voters approved the expanded board in March 2017.
Nelsonville will provide the only village-election excitement this spring. Cold Spring voters in 2016 approved moving its Village Board elections to November, beginning this year.
