The Town of Webster is getting ready for a change in leadership. Longtime Town Supervisor Ron Nesbitt, a Republican, was defeated in Tuesday’s election by Tom Flaherty.
Flaherty, a Democrat, had never run for office before this year, and he says one of the things that inspired to get involved, was the level of negative political discourse that is going on nationally.
“I really hope that one of the things that I can bring to the town is, there really are no partisan issues to the 45-47,000 people of Webster, so we shouldn’t be having Democrat-Republican issues, we should just have Webster-people issues,” Flaherty told WXXI News.
Flaherty says he wants to spend several months listening to town resident and staff before embarking on major goals and projects.
Flaherty says he's not trying to be overly critical of what the current administration has accomplished.
“What I do think is happening is that Webster is changing and it needs a governance and a leadership that is understanding of that change and making decisions now that are not only good for 2020, but trying to look out 20 years and see can we reasonably think this will make sense 20 years from now," he explained.
Flaherty says that one issue he will seek to help balance is the desire of many people in Webster to preserve open space, but making sure that is not done to the detriment of taxpayers.
