Meet Town of Woodstock's Supervisor Bill McKenna
by Bond Brungard
WOODSTOCK – At one time, decades ago, Town of Woodstock Supervisor Bill McKenna, then a contractor, pulled out onto Main Street in the middle of January and found it deserted. “There wasn’t a single car in either direction,” he said. “That doesn’t happen now.”
After serving as a town councilman for many years, McKenna is now settling in his fourth term as town supervisor. And he’s trying to enhance the town’s image as a tourist center, something that was embraced during the last few decades with disappearing manufacturing jobs in the county, culminating with the closure of IBM’s Kingston facility in the early to mid-1990s. At some point county executive Mike Hein declared tourism was going to be our new industry,” he said. “I recall at the time most towns celebrated that. It’s a celebration of our beautiful landscape, our diversity, our music and our culture. So I have embraced that.”
A warmer weather Saturday or Sunday finds visitors searching for a scarce parking spot in Woodstock’s hamlet, either in a municipal parking lot or on a side street. Driving along Main Street is a stop and go affair as other drivers look for spots, or pedestrians move through crosswalks to visit the abundance of shops and small restaurants. There is also an eclectic flea market. But when it gets colder, the flea market disappears, however the tourists and other regional residents, seeking a day out, have been sticking around.
When manufacturing did have a long foothold in Ulster County in the second half of the 1900s, Woodstock was an artist’s community near the wilds of the Catskill Mountains and a retreat home for artists such as Bob Dylan, members of The Band and others, where they worked and recorded music. And Levon Helm, The Band’s drummer, helped revive a live music scene that fit perfectly into the town’s vision of economic sustainability and viability through the arts. “Back in 2004, Levon Helm really got things rolling with his weekly or bi-weekly Midnight Rambles. And that gave local artists a venue because he would have opening acts sometimes,” said McKenna. “It helped Woodstock remain a place for live performances.” Helm died in 2012, but the venue still offers live music along with others, such as the Colony Café.
Woodstock’s popularity is also bolstered by its location in the Catskills and the abundance of natural solitude. About 40 percent of the town’s acreage is preserved and protected by the state, NYC or the City of Kingston, which uses Cooper Lake in the town as a drinking water source. “So a lot of the landscape is never going to change.” And this has led to a scarcity of developable land. “I don’t think we’re going to see radical change,” he said. “I think the town hasn’t changed that much in the last 50 years.”
Woodstock has ensured wetlands are maintained with strict zoning while other needs, like affordable housing, are difficult to come by. McKenna expects some of the town’s older, larger homes to be renovated into multiple units, or additional RUPCO projects, like some others done in town already, will help with housing. “I’m optimistic we’ll see some more projects like that come to fruition in the next couple of years,” he said. “(Affordable housing is) not (just) a Woodstock problem, or a county problem, in a lot of ways it’s a national problem.”