After beating the longtime town supervisor in the race for St. Johnsville mayor in March, Dawn White says she’s embracing the role and leading the small Mongtomery County village into the future.
White is only months into her political career, which began after she became involved with local activists and village residents concerned with a private company’s potential purchase of roughly 3% of the village’s water for bottling.
“I don't think I've been in office a month and I discovered that they had FEMA money from a very bad flood that was here in 2016 and took out all of our decks," said White. "We are on the Mohawk River and we have a lovely harbor campground area. And our docks all washed away. So, they had FEMA money from 2017 to replace the docks, and it needed an in fuel pump, things like that, and they'd never spent it. And the grant ended in October. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is judo and we've got it. What can we do between now and October? So we have a wonderful engineering group Delaware Engineering, and they helped us and we were able to get some docks and the new fuel pump. We're working on sprucing up the campgrounds as next year is the diversity of the Erie Canal. And we're working on being ready for that. I feel that grants are important, I think to this administration's weren't overly impressed with what you can do with the grants.”
White, who ran on an independent line, says she’s committed to fighting the blight that many upstate New York communities are facing.
"I was contacted probably in July by Judy Damin, Judith Damin, who is from St. Johnsville, and is now the president of August Associates who is the consulting group that we have hired to help us come up with ideas to bring business into the village and revitalize the village," explained White. "They have done a great help to us already. They have connected us with some of the manufacturers who still have businesses here in the village and might be interested in expanding their businesses in the village, if we could get them some help with refurbishing part of their factories or taken down and then place in parts of their factories that would bring in more jobs.”
A secondary school in the village has been empty for months. White says finding a new tenant is a priority.
“There was somebody who initially was interested in purchasing it and making like, nice 55 plus apartments. But that didn't go through. I know, the school has had a couple offers with people who want to turn it into assisted living, which isn't necessarily a problem, but it doesn't really provide great jobs. I know when I went to a regional economic development meeting in Utica, last fall, they were saying that one of the top 10 economic growth areas for this area of the state, they expect it to be agribusiness," said White. "And we have a great number of large farmers around here who check their produce across the state. I know that they talked about education for agribusiness. And if we could get some kind of schools come in there, there's like four acres of green lawn behind the school that you could plant whatever you wanted. But if we could get, you know, some kind of a school in there to teach people how to develop their own farms and properties.”
White acknowledges the challenges generated by her relative inexperience as a politician, but says she’s working to be the best mayor for the village’s nearly 2,000 residents.
"I really love the New York Conference of Mayors. They're also a great help and source of information and education," said White. "And I found that’s a big part of it is education and educating myself on not just village law, but state policy. We have come up with some new state programs, if you're familiar with any of them, but Article 19-A is to help communities get a hold of blighted and abandoned properties and get control of them and do something with them and that came out in 2019. And then in 2023, the 19-B came out, which is to help you get control of old commercial properties and do something with them. I believe in networking, because I, again have very little political experience. So, I have met, meet on a regular basis with the mayor of Dolgeville, Mary Puznowski. I have developed what I hope is a good relationship with Montgomery County Economic Development. And we talk and share ideas all the time.”
White says her first months have centered on bringing municipal government up to speed.
"We now have a planning board in the village which we haven't had in over a decade," explained White. "And we applied for and received a grant to have the Department of State help us get an engineering firm in to review with the community and help make a new plan for progress, a 10 to 20 year plan. And other than that it's just day by day, ‘Oh, that didn't work? OK, we'll try something else.’ I have, for the most part a very good Board of Trustees who take on projects and have done have been a great help in fixing our cannabis law and zoning, and just lots of things— helping with code, updating things. There's many things in the village hasn't been updated in a very long time."
In March, Montgomery County established a new EMS Division and ambulance service to help shore up poor response times throughout the county. White says she’d like to see a more thorough continuum of care.
“At the moment we are working on the fire department, we would be exploring the possibility of becoming a fire district with the towns around us as that is becoming the way of fire departments to help them survive, the volunteer fire departments survive," said White. "We'll have meetings again this month on that with the other towns and town boards. I just think that supporting a fire department with the cost of a fairly new—not even a brand new one but a fairly new fire truck being a million dollars. That's a huge weight on village taxpayers and if we can spread that out over a much wider area by becoming a district. I think that would be best for everyone.”
White says she is hopeful for the future, with a busy summer expected to draw tourists to the village’s marina. With a regional influx in microchip investments, White hopes St. Johnsville can become a satellite town for new jobs in Oneida County.
