"CURIOSITY GALORE" 10-26-2025 GUEST: REBECCA EDWARDS, TOWN OF POUGHKEEPSIE SUPERVISOR - POLITICAL USEFULNESS OF CURIOSITY.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The views and opinions expressed in the following programmer those
of the speaker and don't necessarily represent those of the station.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's staff management or ownership.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
Good morning, you'll find me out with Pete and the
Poe Gold. I'm Peter Leonard and I'm the Poet Gold
and we're on the air this morning with the Town
of Poughkeepsie supervisor Rebecca Edwards. And she's up for reelection
today now this year. And before we get to her,
we're going to go right to the poet Hold for
her weekly poem, prayer, incantation goal. Please let it roll.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Well, I'm going to offer two very short poems this
morning from my new book, be the poem Living Beyond
Our Fears. The first poem is from the section Inner Standing,
and here it is. It's very short, so listen. When
fear becomes greater than our compassion, we lose our joy.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
The second poem I'm going to read is from the
actual section of Fear, and here's another short one. It's
entitled Walls. The wall between us is fear. This is
where our humanity separates.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Okay, we're getting a little anatomy of fear and joy. Here, okay,
and Rebecca right to you with you've already been in
an office for two years and you're up for reelection,
and I guess I'm before you get to the political
so of our personal so. I know you've been a

(01:23):
professor at VASA in history, and how was the transition
from being a history of professor to being an actual
town supervisor with civic responsibilities.

Speaker 4 (01:34):
Thank you so much, Pete and Goal for having me here.
It's just so good to see you again, and I
really appreciate it. It's been an interesting change. I actually
drive from my house just like I was used to
go to go teach, and then I just drive another
mile and it's like I want another planet and a
very different world. I've learned a lot about sewer plants,

(01:55):
and I think some of that work has taught me
a lot. It's really been a steep learning curve, but
I have enjoyed it all. There's just a lot of
really interesting things to work on, and everyone at town
Hall has been very welcoming and it's just a great
team to work with. I couldn't ask for better colleagues.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Now, I'm sure that when you say it's taught you
a lot there are probably a list of things, But
does any one thing sort of stick out like an
aha lesson that you've learned.

Speaker 5 (02:27):
Oh, that's a really good question.

Speaker 4 (02:29):
I think I have a deeper appreciation for some things
that I took for granted, like when you turn the
water on or flush the toilet or whatever, and to
understand the systems behind that, and getting to know the
town street by street, and talking with people who've lived
here for decades, and learning about all the different life
experiences people have had here. People who came over from

(02:51):
Ireland when they were sixteen, people who ran a restaurant
for a long period of time, retired small business owners,
members of the immigrant community, with all kinds of backgrounds.
It's just really amazing how diverse and complex one town
can be.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
You know, complex is a good word. Yeah, yes, I
guess it's still on a sort of more personal side
of things, is it. You know, you've obviously studied American
history for a very long time, and American history at
some levels political history, but you have a better sense
of how it's been for the makers of political history.

(03:32):
By holding an election to office, you have an insight
into American history studies.

Speaker 4 (03:40):
It's really interesting because yes, I studied the history of
public policy and the history of elections and history of
political parties and things like that, and so it does
cause me to reflect. It's sometimes hard to see the
connections in the moment, but often you just feel that
politics is really about people just asking for what they need, really,

(04:05):
and I think there's a tension between high ideals in
politics and just pragmatic delivering what people need.

Speaker 5 (04:14):
And when you are writing on.

Speaker 4 (04:17):
The page, it's easier to think about the big ideals.
But when you're in office, you really are talking to
people about their grocery bills and trying to figure out
how to make housing more affordable around here, which is
a huge and very difficult job, and things like that,
and so you really do, at a municipal level at
least talk about really pragmatic bread and butter issues, and

(04:39):
I think sometimes Americans are suspicious of that.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
They tend to.

Speaker 4 (04:43):
Think, you know, like, well, if you're going to run
for office, it should be for some incredibly grand, idealistic goal,
and those are there, but really you're trying to help
people live their lives and not overly burden them with regulations,
and you know, red tape and help them, you know,
support them as they try to do good things.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
And that's probably true from you know, the municipal level
all the way up through the Congress and the president.
Of politics is about what you're doing, and most of it,
from what you're saying here, is overwhelmingly not colamorous. It
is a practicality to political life.

Speaker 4 (05:27):
Yeah, I think it is practical, and I like that.
I don't really want to go to Albany or Washington.
I've never wanted to do that. I do. I was
in the county legislature before, which was part of being
a legislative body, and I admit that I like being
an executive more. I think that there's more opportunity to
put a vision forward and say, we want to improve

(05:49):
our parks and expand our green spaces and protect the environment,
and we want to you know, you can fulfill a goal,
whereas when you're part of a legislature, you sort of
are part of a school of fish and you have
to you know, there's only so much that you can
do as one person. You can try to bring legislation forward,
persuade other folks, but it's a little bit of a

(06:09):
hybrid job. The supervisor because you don't have the independent
powers of a mayor or an executive like that. But
we have a seven person board in the town. I'm
only one of those seven votes. When we actually go
to vote for something, there have to be a majority
of town board members who are for it, and I
only get one vote out of seven. But as the supervisor,

(06:30):
I get to propose the budget and shape how we
do things and work day to day at town hall
and sort of you know, move things along, and it
feels very satisfying and productive.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
I think, you know, when you speaking about earlier about
the high ideals the public may have in contrast to
the practicality of what the body may actually have to do.
Some of that I think comes from the lack of
being informed of how a governmental system, you know work,
And I don't know if they still have civics in

(07:03):
you know, in schools, on a on a on a
public skill level to help people really get an understanding
as we become adults. I know, when I first moved
up here in Poughkeepsie, there was a pothole in front
of our home and my cousin would always complain about it,
and I was like, well, have you tried to call
anyone like the town supervisor or or the you know
department that takes care of the streets, you know. And

(07:25):
but finally we got it fixed because I started calling
and calling and calling, right, you know. But uh, but yeah,
so so I think sometimes it's just a lack of knowledge.
You know, we want, we want something to be attainable,
but yet may not know how to go about and
get who's the right person to contact.

Speaker 5 (07:43):
Right, Absolutely all the time.

Speaker 4 (07:44):
And I feel like most elected officials are, uh this
we sort of our traffic cops because people don't know
whether they should be calling you know, the Attorney General
Civil Rights hotline or do you need to call your
town board member, or do you need to be calling
the Department of Health or do you need you know,
and you're just helping people find the places they need
to go. I think probably one of the things I'm
most proud of is that we put out a residence

(08:06):
services guide last spring, and we're going to do that
every year. And the town had just not been very
good at communicating with residents, and so once a year,
we're going to mail to every household a guide of
you know, here's.

Speaker 5 (08:19):
What's going on.

Speaker 4 (08:20):
Here's our summer camp, here's the programs at the Senior Center,
here's when you know leaf pickup is going to happen
in the fall, and.

Speaker 5 (08:27):
All the things that we do.

Speaker 4 (08:28):
And it just makes the town government visible to people.
And so we had more people start showing up at
the Senior Center, and we had more people showing up
for the highway transfer station dates and calling town hall
and just being aware of what might be what we
do and what we don't do, and some information lines
and just helping people just navigate what they need.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Well, I know, I know my neighborhood pretty much appreciates
the leaf pickup schedule because you guys always extended because
our leaves always fall a little later.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
After the last dates.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yes, they're just like we'll put them out and we'll
get around it picking them up when we see them.

Speaker 4 (09:01):
The Highway Department is incredibly dedicated. Yes, it's a great group.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
So you're in the town. You live in the town, right,
so you're a constituent of and you know, one of
the things that occurred to me when you were talking
just about the making the information available and respect for
the information and how to communicate it. Now, I guess

(09:28):
two years ago when you were running for your initial term,
I yessue of being an academic was any advantage because
I think some people have a prejudice against academics, and
but are there any advantages to it? And it was
a long you know, it was two years ago, but
I remember you said, well, yeah, well, you know, I'm
very good at research and like I can really read

(09:49):
things quickly being a fast reader. You weren't think it's important,
but if you can read fast and get to the
heart of things, that makes you a very good executive.
Right have you found that that actually works out for you,
being able to read fast and remember stuff and gets
an important thoughts.

Speaker 4 (10:08):
I think it does help learning to speed read or
skim read and get the context. It's also, you know,
it seems like it's Serving in public office is the
kind of ultimate liberal arts exercise, because you just need
to be curious about everything. If you're curious and you
want to understand how things work and you want to
solve problems, you want to identify them, understand why they happen,

(10:29):
and try to figure out what the best solution is.
And what I love about the job is that often
there's a legal aspect to things. There's a financial aspect,
there's an engineering aspect, there's you know, there's a whole
bunch of different pieces to the puzzle. You're trying to
think about, how can we lighten up property taxes on
people without that being a revenue issue?

Speaker 5 (10:49):
And you know, how do things work?

Speaker 4 (10:51):
And so if you're curious and interested in people and
you want to solve problems, which is kind of what
you do as a teacher and as and as a researcher,
those are skills that are I think essential to good
public policy.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
If you're just turning in you're listening to finding out
with Pete and the poet Gold. I'm Peter and I'm
the poet Gold, and we're here having a conversation with
Rebecca Edwards, who is the town supervisor of Poughkeepsie.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
You know, I want to underline to go a little
further with the notion of curiosity, because your curiosity is
such a personal trait and it's it's to me, it's
an underrated one. Like we talk about people, oh, you know,
such as she's very smart and all, and being smart

(11:38):
means almost nothing other than being very curious, right, I mean, well.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
I think I listened to something that Lauren Hill was
talking about sort of like the hustler, meaning that you know,
the person that always has that thing on the side,
that innovativeness and and and she had a good point
going back to your point of bringing the academics an academic.
She said that the that the academic in the politician

(12:04):
is sort of like the soul of politics and the
and the hustler of the curiosity is the innovative. They
have ingenuity, they're coming with a new idea and the
ideas to blend those two together. And I thought it
was I thought that it was I like the way
that she had put that together.

Speaker 5 (12:20):
That's really interesting. It's very interesting.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
And I'll tell you I'm interested in a lot of things.
I don't get a little hood about the engineering. I
think that just qualifies me from off of responsibility.

Speaker 4 (12:38):
Well, one of the facts I found out that I'm
sort of fascinated by is that, so you know, what
do we do with our how does our sewage system work?

Speaker 3 (12:47):
Right?

Speaker 5 (12:48):
And when we send we.

Speaker 4 (12:51):
Of course some people are on septic, but those people
who are on sewer, we have a whole sewer plant
of our own. And then we contribute flow, as they say,
to two other plants, and two of those plants we
reduce the moisture in sewage into what they call cake,
which is the solids. We put them on eighteen wheelers
that we ship them to Naugatuck, Connecticut, and we incinerate it.

Speaker 5 (13:15):
And that just.

Speaker 4 (13:15):
Seems to me like not the most efficient thing to do.
And what is the alternative then? Right? So if you
want to say, look, that's really expensive for the town.
It's costing one just from one plant, like twenty thousand
dollars a month, and it's bad for the climate. We're
trying to reduce our fossil fuel IMPEG, so you know,
trucking all our sewage waste over to Naugatuck that can't

(13:37):
be a good idea. What are the alternatives? So if
you start wanting to solve problems, then you kind of
end up being curious about things that even maybe a
lot of people aren't as curious about.

Speaker 5 (13:46):
But I don't, you know.

Speaker 4 (13:47):
And also the other thing is is knowing what you don't.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Know right right right.

Speaker 4 (13:50):
And knowing where, okay, what kind of engineer could help
answer that question or what kind of lawyer could help
solve this problem or who's ex or tees?

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Do I need scientists?

Speaker 5 (14:02):
Yeah? Exactly?

Speaker 2 (14:03):
How do I convert waste into energy? Exactly?

Speaker 1 (14:06):
How do we do that so we don't have necessarily
ship it someplace? Can it become something else that that's
vital for our environment?

Speaker 4 (14:16):
And then you run into the current research on p
fas because human waste has p fas in it. Okay,
is that forever? So it's a it's a it's what
they call forever chemicals that are but actually they're not
forever chemicals because if you cook p fas at a
high enough temperature, it breaks apart and then it's you know,

(14:36):
it's no longer toxic. But we have a problem with
p fas on our water supply and you know other
places because it's coming out of plastics, and you know
some of the environmental contamination. So everything's all connected together.
It's terrific to have three colleges in town, Marist and
Vassar and Dutch's Community College. It's terrific to have IBM
here and to have a ton of retired engineers who

(14:58):
are people who are really interested in these kinds of right,
because a town really runs on a lot of volunteer energy.
And so for example, the members of our Climate Smart
task Force, they're just a great group. And there are
people who've been interested in things like battery energy storage systems,
you know, that kind of thing. And we've had some
fantastic public hearings where the people who've come to the

(15:19):
public hearings have really done their homework and said, this
is where we are, this is the what's happening with
litianion batteries, and is what you know.

Speaker 5 (15:27):
They've really dug deep.

Speaker 4 (15:29):
And when you're trying to run a town, it helps
to have people who have a passion like that, who
can really pursue answers.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
Absolutely, that's so great to hear, you know.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
And so I'm learning a good deal of your job
requires or is enhanced by knowing who's in the town,
what resources, intellectual resource that you have in the town.
You know, retired IBM as a good engineering That is.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
Something key that you said.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Those people, those individuals will always identify themselves as well,
you know, they they will show up at the town
meeting and they will you know, uh, those who want
to contribute in some capacity will always raise their hands.

Speaker 5 (16:12):
That's right, say that's right.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
What can I do.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
So.

Speaker 4 (16:14):
We have in Greg Freeman, who's running this year in
Ward one, is a retired IBM engineer. He has a
number of patents to his name. He's a very distinguished
career as an engineer. And there's a certain parallel between
that and some of the people who who are you know,
have scientific expertise, someone like Kirsten Manking at Vassar who
who knows more about the Casper kill and than anybody

(16:35):
and what the toxic wastes are that have impacted that
from the landfill right over here. In fact, actually I
think we're sitting on the landfill right now in this
radio station. So that's another issue. And uh, it's it's
really a good thing. We also have, you know, we
we have a lot we have. I've appointed a citizens
Committee on Housing Affordability. That's one of the very first

(16:56):
things I did, and that's been a great group of
people who bring their experiences, their life experiences to share
what they know. We've done some work for tenant Advocacy,
which was really a good thing to hear from renters
about what kinds of experiences they're having with their landlords,
which varies a lot. And then we created a citizen's

(17:16):
financial advisory committee, so people who have financial expertise, who
are retired from jobs where they have that kind of eerien.
It's incredibly helpful because it's a big town budget and
we need help from people who want to study and
understand different parts of it.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
Now, when it comes to a rental affordability and you
said you have a team, you put together a plan,
where does that go Because initially you said that you're
not the person per se to make the decision.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
So where do you take that to?

Speaker 1 (17:45):
Where do you take that information to say, well, this
is what we found in our study.

Speaker 4 (17:49):
So we have just tried to we're trying to do
a series of policies and we're looking at what more
we can do. For example, the town was very restrictive
in people's ability to create what we call an accessory apartment,
like adding an apartment to your house, and we loosen
the rules on that so that people can if they
want to put a cottage in the backyard, or convert

(18:12):
a garage, or put a two bedroom in instead of
just a one bedroom. Trying to make it a little
easier for homeowners who are already in the town to
earn some income on having becoming landlords. We're working on
inclusionary zoning right now. I hope before the end of
the year we will have a vote on that, and

(18:32):
that will just simply say when developers come in and
if they want to build, for every ten units they
want to build, one of them has to be workforce
housing or affordable housing. And we've set up a mechanism
to oversee that and make sure that those are affordable
units so that we maintain affordable housing. There's a lot
more we can do, and we're just looking at the

(18:53):
different things we could do to just encourage more affordable
housing to be built and to be available here.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
So the small let's say this someone doesn't have ten units,
but the smaller homes. If someone wanted to put two
apartments or rent out another another space, what would be
the impact of that on their taxes.

Speaker 5 (19:13):
Well, that's a really good question.

Speaker 4 (19:14):
We haven't tackled whether we are exempting that from a
tax increase when the house is revalued, but we uh,
you know, but obviously someone would be able to earn
a lot of income doing that if they want to
create an apartment, and a lot of people also want
them for family members. So that you've got you know,

(19:34):
an aging parent or a teenager who's home, or you
know child in their twenties, or people are often building
you know, for for for family members, and I think
we want in some selected areas of town to make
sure that duplexes and you know, things like that are

(19:56):
possible for people. A lot of the town of Pickupsy
is single family homes and is going to stay single
family homes. But we have a couple of areas, like
in the center of Arlington. I think one of the
most promising areas is the former psychiatric center site. The
commercial side has gotten developed, but then the residential side
has gone by the wayside, and that's an area where

(20:16):
we could really build. And I think we should just
not be building luxury apartments. We need to be building
providing home ownership opportunities and providing affordable housing that people
can you know, that's not going to bankrupt people.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
If you're just tuning in, you listen to finding out
with Pete and the Poe with Gold and I'm the
Poe with Gold, then we're having a very informative conversation
with the town.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
To give the supervisor Rebecca Edwards.

Speaker 3 (20:39):
Yeah, no, if you want. Information is.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
Absolutely too much information.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
So I'm struck by your phrase earlier that you have
to know what you don't know, because I mean, one
part of academic life is having great expertise, and so
I've seen some people become sort of defensive about that
and get up tight. But what you're saying, as a

(21:11):
political leader, your job is not to know everything in
the world, but be very clear what you do know
and what you don't know, and what you don't know, finding.

Speaker 4 (21:20):
People that you know right, and who do you trust,
who's giving you good advice right, And that's a really
challenging thing. And for example, we have a labor lawyer
for the town and who works you know, and we
have someone else who does taxerts, and people who have
different expertise, and so you need to learn about all
those areas. It's an interesting connection that I hadn't thought

(21:41):
about till you asked that question. But as a as
a scholar, as a researcher, I've always been kind of
a generalist.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
You know.

Speaker 4 (21:48):
The book that I wrote that I was so satisfying
to me was about America in the late nineteenth century,
and I didn't just want to write about one little bit,
but to draw connections, right, what were the experiences of
indigenous people in that period, and how did they compare
with the experiences of young people who were coming over
from Greece or from Italy? And how do we think

(22:10):
about women's experiences across class lines? And what was happening
in cities and how might we contrast that to what
was happening in the farms and you know those I
just wanted to tell a big story about religion and
and you know, in social change and all the ways
that life was changing in the late nineteenth century. What
it meant to be part of the First March on

(22:32):
Washington with Kark Coxey's army, or you know, all these
different sort of grassroots things that were bubbling up.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
And so in the same way.

Speaker 4 (22:40):
I think being an elected official you kind of have
to be interested in everything.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Now I'm going to ask you what is the name
of you book? Because I didn't I didn't know that.

Speaker 4 (22:47):
Oh sure, I wrote a book called New Spirits America
and the Gilded Age.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
Okay, thank you, the New Spirits boy. It's profetictive in
your your job now wanting new stuff.

Speaker 4 (22:59):
Well, period, it always gets called the Gilded age, and
it's kind of like the dumping ground for American history,
Like everything was awful, and the labor unions all got defeated,
and you know, farmers had their last crusade, and then
then everything bad happened then, and then you kind of
go on to a story of a great and glorious
twentieth century. And I just always thought that's too simplistic.

(23:19):
A lot of really interesting things were happening in the
wake of reconstruction and the wake of the Civil War.
There were a huge number of people who were aspiring
to do better, going back to that question of you know,
just doing better for themselves and their families, finding that
security and safety and progress that people wanted. And so
it's a very cool period to write about a whole

(23:41):
array of people who started maybe they started out enslaved,
maybe they started off, you know, in a little village
somewhere in Norway and ended up, you know, in San
Francisco starting a banking empire or something, right, you know,
I mean, just all these incredible stories and those biogras
I he's all woven together tell a really compelling story.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
And complex is the word that you used before, and
the complexity of American history. Uh, sort of put it
into the town of Poughkeepsie. Uh, there's a relationship there.
And you know we're talking to Rebecca. You know, we've
known each other for years. But I don't think I
ever really show you in these terms before. But just

(24:24):
in terms of an elected official, what makes you have
an affinity for that is having curiosity where we were used,
but then also when you use the word trust and
knowing who to trust. So it seems to me that
two quality political qualities you would have is that you
are curious and you have good judgment. And uh, and

(24:49):
you know we don't. Nobody campaigns on those two things, right.
You know, man, I'm really curious.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
That my judgment and my judgment is like great judgment.

Speaker 4 (25:01):
I don't know, maybe that should be as campaign slogan,
but judge.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
Right, what you do is you're demonstrating both right now.
So I guess I'm trying to focus those two things
as political qualities. That are the personal qualities. They have
political ramifications.

Speaker 4 (25:20):
I appreciate that, I hope. So I think you know,
partly people trust because you give them information.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
Right.

Speaker 4 (25:26):
You try to be as transparent as you possibly can.
You're not hiding anything and you're just trying when you
It seems to me that when you face a really
difficult problem, like we need to build a new police
courts facility and it's been put off for ages, decades
and decades and not cheap, and it needs to not
just be something that I'm trying to persuade everybody to do,
but a collective problem that we all say, hey, look,

(25:48):
our police station is sinking into the ground. It's on
an uncapped landfill. This is not okay, how are we
going to.

Speaker 5 (25:54):
Solve the problem?

Speaker 4 (25:55):
Right? This has been lingering since the nineteen nineties. Somebody
should do not something about this decades ago? Okay, what
are we going to do? And presenting budget or financial
information or any kind of problem, just trying to present
it also helps everybody own it and that honestly makes
me sleep a little better, and because it's not just
all on me. But hey, how are we as a

(26:16):
community going to come together and what are we going
to do here?

Speaker 1 (26:19):
And that's that's you know, you use one of my
what my brother would say, my favorite word is own it.
You know. There, I think that as citizens and I
get it, you know, sometimes we're so caught up in
our lives, our day to day going to work, coming home,
raising family, that we may need to grow in the
area of accountability of the choices that we make in

(26:40):
our own lives.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
You know, own it.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
We are a community, We just don't live in our
houses and totally unattached to our neighbor. The land and
the trees are connected to each other. So as human beings,
whether we recognize it or not, we're also connected to
each other. And part of that is exactly what you're saying.
If there's a collective issue, it's your place as a
town supervisor to disseminate that information to let us know,

(27:04):
but it's our place as a community to step up
to that.

Speaker 5 (27:07):
That's really beautiful.

Speaker 4 (27:09):
The two pieces of that I would say are sometimes
I think my job is to go to a three
and a half hour meeting so that I can just
in a little report to people say hey, we made
the following three decisions last night, and here they are.
Boom boom boom. It takes you two seconds because people
don't have three and a half hours to attend a meeting,
right So my job is to sort of to still
it down and try to find out what's the most
important stuff that people want to know and get it

(27:32):
out there. But I do think if I had a
dream for Poughkeepsie, it would be that we really do
a better job of recognizing and celebrating how diverse we are.

Speaker 5 (27:45):
I feel like our civic.

Speaker 4 (27:46):
Culture, our town hall culture is still we're still striving
to recognize who we are because we are just immensely diverse.
When you knock doors and you go talk to people
around town, they're from all over the world. They speak
all the languages in the world. They are just their
life experiences are so it's rich, rich and so diverse,

(28:08):
and we need to create those kinds of spaces where
we can sort of see each other and celebrate each other.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
Absolutely, And that's why I love it here.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
We have like two many of stuff, But just a
part of the job, besides knowing the people, it's relating
to other officers. How do you get along. What's the
importance of getting along with the county executive for the
mayor of Poughkeepsie or the congressman. What are political relations like?

Speaker 5 (28:37):
I try to stay in touch with everybody.

Speaker 4 (28:38):
I think we all easily get in our silos with
the problems we're trying to solve. I particularly would want
to work on stronger relationship between the City of Pikeepsie
and the Town of Pepsi. So Mayor Flowers and I
have met regularly or at least as regularly as we can,
and hoping to use time next year to identify to
bring the town Board and the City Council together and

(29:00):
to identify some projects that we'd like to work on
together and to try to build where we can, stronger
ties because we sink or swim together absolutely, and the
county is also very important. There's a lot of county
services that the county provides that the town doesn't provide,
so we really do need to work together. EMS is
a big one right now that mayors and supervisors all
over the Dutchess very much want the county to take

(29:23):
the lead on EMS. EMS is emergency services like ambulances
and so we're all so that's an interesting group being
in the Dutchess County mayors and supervisors because that's you know,
mayors from red Hook and Beakman and Beacon and everywhere,
and it's very interesting.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
We want to make sure people know there's an election
coming up in so Vember fourth, Rebecca Edwards is running
for re election for the Town of Poughkeepsie Supervisor, and
anybody who can recall the previous twenty nine minutes might
be inclined to vote you, even if they might not
have had that opinion earlier in the morning.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
But I want to thank our listeners for tuning in
to finding out with Pete and the poet God. We
appreciate you and Rebecca Edwards, thank you so much for
being here, and please come back again.

Speaker 4 (30:12):
Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be here.
I'm so grateful to have this conversation with both of you.

Speaker 5 (30:17):
It's always a pleasure.