The New Paltz Town Agenda for 2026
Transition to a new board
The single biggest agenda item heading into 2026 is the transition to a new Town Supervisor and an almost entirely new Town Board.
With the exception of Kitty Brown, every seat has changed hands. Kate Ryan and Sean O’Sullivan both defeated incumbent Republican Randall Leverette, while Esi Lewis and Edgar Rodriguez chose not to stand for re-election. That leaves a board with a lot of fresh faces, a lot of ambition — and very little institutional memory.
The new board now includes:
Tim Rogers – Town Supervisor
Rogers won decisively, taking roughly 76% of the vote. He previously served as Mayor of the Village and ran on a platform of accountability, reduced bureaucracy, and improved efficiency. The centerpiece of that message was consolidation of the Town and Village of New Paltz.
Those are attractive ideas to anyone who has ever tried to navigate local government as a business owner or resident. But slogans are cheap; delivery is expensive. Consolidation is easy to promise and notoriously difficult to execute — especially within realistic timelines.
Kate Ryan – Council Member
Ryan is a public-interest lawyer with experience advocating for families across Ulster County, particularly the most vulnerable. That background brings a strong values-based lens to the board, though it remains to be seen how that translates into operational decision-making when tradeoffs and cost controls come into play.
Sean O’Sullivan – Council Member
O’Sullivan is something of an unknown quantity in town politics. He has served on the Village Zoning Board of Appeals for a decade, is closely aligned with the new Supervisor, and comes from organized labor. He also coaches the New Paltz Wrestling Club. His experience could be an asset, especially the wrestling, as staffing questions unfold.
Town–Village consolidation: The hard part starts now
Consolidation is what won Tim Rogers the election — not because residents are eager to dissolve the Village, but because they were promised efficiencies: lower costs, simpler processes, clearer lines of responsibility.
The problem is that the savings are theoretical, while the complexity is very real.
With extensive duplication between Town and Village functions, consolidation immediately raises uncomfortable questions:
Which roles stay?
Which roles go?
Who decides?
And under what labor agreements?
Nearly all staff are unionized. That makes eliminating or restructuring positions legally and politically difficult — especially with a union leader and a public-interest lawyer sitting on the board. Negotiations will be slow, careful, and expensive.
There’s also a timing disconnect that voters may not fully appreciate. Consolidation rarely produces savings in year one — or even year three. Costs typically rise at the outset due to legal work, consultants, systems integration, and transitional management. If a consolidation vote even makes it onto the November 2026 ballot, implementation would likely stretch another two years beyond that.
Best case scenario? Any real savings might appear closer to 2030.
And as with most mergers — public or private — there’s a strong chance the biggest winners will be the consultants hired to “manage the process,” not the taxpayers expecting immediate relief.
Police Oversight: An unfinished and uncomfortable chapter
This issue isn’t going away.
The abrupt disbanding of the Citizen Police Commission by the previous board — done with minimal transparency or community engagement — has left lingering damage. The odor hasn’t dissipated, and without experienced voices like Esi Lewis, Edgar Rodriguez, and Randall Leverette at the table, resolving it may take longer than anyone expects.
Chapter 34 of the Town Code created a citizen-led Police Commission in 2021 in direct response to a New York State executive order requiring municipalities to adopt reform plans to remain eligible for future state funding.
As of July 2025, that commission no longer exists.
While its duties have technically been absorbed by the Town Board, there is now no independent, citizen-led oversight body. That raises two practical questions:
First, how does this affect eligibility for state funding tied to police reform?
Second, how does the Town intend to manage public trust without formal, independent oversight?
Absent that structure, the burden shifts to us, the residents to monitor police actions more closely and demand accountability directly from elected officials. But how will the Police Chief and our ‘thin blue line’ react to increased public attention and difficult questions?
FYI: The New Paltz Police Department represents a disproportionately large share of the Town budget compared to peer municipalities (excluding SUNY). On a per-resident basis, costs rival those of New York City.
At stake is access to Governor Hochul’s $127 million in statewide funding for police technology and equipment. Losing eligibility over governance missteps would be a costly mistake.
Website Transition: A case study in how not to do it
If you want a small but telling example of operational dysfunction, look no further than the Town’s recent website transition.
The Town moved from townofnewpaltz.org to townofnewpaltzny.gov.
The Village remains at villageofnewpaltz.gov (no “ny”).
The Town’s YouTube channel was shut down after a Zoom-bombing incident and quietly re-launched under an obscure handle (http://www.youtube.com/@TownofNewPaltz1678) that no one would ever find organically.
Some Town employees still use email addresses tied to the old domain. The Planning Board portal, MuniCollab, lives on a dot-com — adding yet another layer of confusion.
The unintended upside for the new administration is that they’re unlikely to be overwhelmed by constituent emails. Most residents have simply given up trying to figure out how to contact anyone. That may buy them breathing room — but it’s not a strategy.