Town of Mount Hope Republican Supervisor Matthew Howell is seeking a second term to continue serving the community that generations of his family call home.
His top priority is to keep the tax levy stable and make the town economically viable in the long run by growing revenues and attracting businesses that fit the community’s character.
“When I started as a supervisor, I asked the employees to treat their job like it is their own. That’s how I work every day,” he told The Epoch Times. “And this job is not for me; it is for the people that live here.”
Howell faces former Mount Hope Police Chief Paul Rickard in the June 27 Republican primary and is the endorsed candidate of the Mount Hope Republican Committee.
Howell’s roots run deep in the area; his ancestors moved to Orange County from Long Island in the early 1800s and fought in the Civil War.
Howell’s great-grandfather served as Mount Hope town supervisor and chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors in the late 1960s.
His great-grandfather also founded A.C. Howell, a local propane service company, which Howell and his family continue to run.
Howell handles purchasing and does a lot of hands-on work, including servicing and installations in warm months and propane deliveries in winter.
It prompted him to run for a seat on the town board that year, and he won, along with a new Democratic supervisor and town councilman.
Town Board Work
As a councilman, Howell supported preserving a piece of land that later became a dog-walking park.“We were able to maintain an open, green space that the community can benefit from,” he said.
In 2016, new kitchen appliances, hardwood floors, and wheelchair-accessible bathrooms were put in the senior center after a month of renovations.
A new youth center, which was converted from a former indoor pool for sewing workers from a nearby factory, opened its doors to residents three years ago.
With a price tag of about $600,000, the center was primarily funded by state grants.
Town Supervisor
Infrastructure improvement continues under Howell’s leadership, including an ongoing addition to the town hall that will house four new offices.One office is for use by planning board members so that they have enough space to store files and review large blueprints without carrying them back and forth to the town board room, he said.
The supervisor job comes with more day-to-day responsibilities than a councilman’s, and Howell works hard to balance his family, career, and public role.
He goes to the town hall almost every weekday after work. He then takes the unfinished work home to work on after his four young children go to bed; on Tuesdays, he usually spends four hours at his supervisor’s office.
Howell also worked on his first town budget as supervisor last year and made the difficult decision to raise the town tax levy by about 5 percent, or $97,000.
The tax bump came after years of low or almost zero increases.
Howell said the town was able to take on bigger spending plans without much increase in the tax levy in the past because of savings in both capital reserves and fund balance accounts, in which unspent revenues accumulate.
Increased revenues from commercial solar projects also helped, he added.
But the fund balance couldn’t be used at the same rate because that would drive the account too low and render the town unprotected on rainy days, he said.
Last year, he took $20,000 less from the account to balance the budget.
Reelection Bid
The key to keeping the town tax levy stable in the long run is to grow the tax base to offset the inflation and contractual increases the town must bear, Howell said.Despite the economic benefits, he isn’t in favor of more solar panels coming into the town because they take up large sizes of open space and often require tree cutting.
He plans to fill up a handful of empty lots in the business districts based on the 2019 town zoning map, especially the commercial corridor along Route 211.
“Not the big, massive, Walmart-style type of business, but smaller and community-based—that would be my ideal type of business to come to Mount Hope,” he said.
If reelected, he also wants to continue to nourish the town’s growing diversity.
“I’ve met a lot of people of Asian heritage in the past two or three years, and we had a lot of new food and cultural events that I’ve never seen,” he said. “One of my goals is to celebrate our cultural diversity and flourish from the benefits that it brings.”
