Knickerbocker, Donahue Express Interest in Buchanan Mayoral Seat
Two familiar faces appear headed on a collision course for the mayor position in the Village of Buchanan in the March election.
With current Mayor Sean Murray having announced at a senior luncheon last month that he would not be seeing a third term, Deputy Mayor Theresa Knickerbocker and former Mayor Alfred Donahue have revealed their intentions to run for the village’s top seat.
For Knickerbocker, a lifelong village resident and property manager, it would be her third election in the last year. She was reelected to the village board last March and narrowly lost her bid to join the Cortlandt Town Board in November.
“When I got involved with the town I did not know Sean would not be running,” Knickerbocker said. “This is a great village. We’ve accomplished a lot the last four years and I want to keep moving the village forward. There’s a lot of challenges coming up and I think I can handle all of them. I have the most experience.”
Donahue, 78, served 12 years as village mayor from 1986-88, 1994-2002 and 2008-2010 and lost the last two elections to Murray. He has been a regular attendee of village board meetings and has lived in Buchanan since 1964.
“I was wishing Murray would run because of his record. A lot of residents don’t like the condition of the village,” said Donahue, a retired state trooper. “I like the village. I want the village to be separate. This board is sleeping with the Town of Cortlandt. They won’t make a move unless they talk to them. Cortlandt needs us. We don’t need them.”
One of the issues likely to be a hot topic in the campaign is the pilot program with Entergy that expires in June 2015. Both Knickerbocker and Donahue said the current 13-year deal was damaging to Buchanan.
“It definitely hurt the village. At one time, Con Edison (former owner of Indian Point) paid 95% of our taxes. With this pilot you’re looking at 37%,” said Knickerbocker. “The pilot affected not just the village. It affected the school district, it affected the county.”
“The deal stunk. We lost $7.5 million in taxes,” Donahue remarked. “That never should have been done. We took some beating.”
Knickerbocker is a registered Independent, while Donahue is a registered Republican. The Republican and Democratic leaders in the village are scheduled to hold their caucuses on January 27. Also up for election this year are councilmen Richard Funchion and Nicolas Zachary.
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