Meet the three candidates running for two seats on the Chester Select Board

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The Chester Telegraph sent a series of questions to the three candidates who are vying for two one-year seats on the Chester Select Board. Those two seats are currently held by Arianna Knapp and Tim Roper, who are running for re-election.

These questions address some of the issues for many Chester voters.  The candidates were asked to keep each of their answers to 250 words and have been lightly edited for style, spelling and grammar.

Town Meeting will begin at 6 p.m. on Monday, March 3 at Town Hall, 556 Elm St. in Chester, and via Zoom. Voting will take place on 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 4 by Australian ballot, also at Town Hall. Or you can pick up an early voting ballot at Town Hall.

Tell the readers a little about yourself, what they should know about you.

ARIANNA KNAPP: I have served on the Select Board for two years. I graduated high school in Colchester Vermont. My husband and I have five adult kids and a menagerie of cats and dogs. I live on the border of North Springfield on a dirt road, which means that there is a mile of mud between my motorcycle and the pavement every spring.

I am also a full-time business executive managing a large scale entertainment production company out of New York City and Los Angeles. The reality is that I travel extensively for work, and that has both positive and negative effects on my contributions as a Select Board member. Running a business, managing projects ranging in size from $10,000-$10,000,000 in scope, gives me a familiarity and comfort level with budgets and cost impacts and tracking. Managing staff and third party vendors has provided experience navigating conflicting priorities and driving to resolution balancing conflict management, compromise, and ideally, collaboration.

Spending time working in places that are so completely unlike Chester, and so far from what I call home, provides perspective. When I travel I get fresh reminders of just what it means to protect the rural nature of our town, and the Vermont-way to look at a situation.

My priority is the sustainability of a good quality of life for neighbors in Chester. That includes enticing businesses to Main Street and supporting growth for a thriving community of families.

TIM ROPER: I fell in love with Chester the first time I rode through town in April of 1988, and moved here with my wife following our marriage in March of ’89. My background is pretty diverse. I’m semi-retired from the solar energy industry where I worked for both national and Vermont-based solar installation companies for over a dozen years.

In the U.S. Air Force, I worked on jet engines, then I took a civil service job following my discharge. Later I worked as a lineman until being promoted to construction superintendent for a cable TV construction company. After completing the project that brought me to Vermont, I co-founded a similar company in Springfield and became a resident. I’ve also spent time as a licensed producer in the insurance and financial services industry where I helped folks to better position themselves for their retirement years.

After my own “retirement” in 2019 I started a small lawn care company to keep myself busy and add a little income. I also want to demonstrate that commercial electric lawn care equipment works really well and has some distinct advantages over gas and diesel powered equipment. Importantly, operating a business provides me with good insights to the challenges that all small business owners face on a regular basis.

JULIAN SOTTOVIA: My name is Julian R. Sottovia. My family has been in Chester for 55 years. I am 59 years old, I graduated with a bachelor’s in Political Science from Fordham University in New York. I went back to school to SUNY Farmingdale to study horticulture.

My business partner and I owned a landscape design firm for 26 years. We now own Matilda and Three Bears, an antique and gift shop on the Green in Chester.

I have worked with various village boards on Long Island, when I was living there. I was a vestry member of my church for six years and then a senior warden for five years. I am an Episcopalian. I have a long record of civic involvement whereever I am.

I live on Cavendish Road in Chester with my three cats and two birds. My goal is to keep Chester a beautiful and vibrant town. We need to bring businesses back. We need a pharmacy badly and some other essentials, which we do not have.

Why do you want to be on (or continue on) Chester’s Select Board?

TIM ROPER: For many years my work schedule kept me from being able to participate beyond coaching youth sports. In 2017, I volunteered for the Planning Commission. The seven years I spent there provided me with a better understanding of how our town government functions, leading to my desire to fill a vacant seat on the Select Board last year.

While there’s certainly a bit of a learning curve to the work, I think I’ve meshed well with the other Select Board members and I’m proud of the work our board has done over the past year. Recently, I’ve taken the lead on the analysis of the potential purchase of the solar array that’s located on town land.

Pending voters’ approval of the bond measure on March 4, I would very much like to work to complete that transaction. Owning the solar system will be good for our town in multiple ways, especially through providing a solid financial return on our investment, which will help to control costs now and well into the future.

JULIAN SOTTOVIA: I want to be on the Board so I can help make things happen. Chester is a beautiful place and we need to keep it that way. We also need to realize that to keep Chester a place where people want to live we must understand there are services and businesses that people need. I will try to work to achieve this. We also need to keep taxes down.

 

 

ARIANNA KNAPP: The more I learn about the people, the history and the quirks of our town, the more I want to keep digging. My perspective is this: A selectboard is a crew on a ship from this port to the next. Each year that crew can change, and the balance of skills and personalities is apt to shift, but the ship herself must stay afloat and always be moving forward on her journey. I believe that I have more to contribute, and I continue to learn and develop. I would like to see what lies ahead and how far we can go.

 

When the number of short-term rentals reached 70, the board capped the number at 65. Currently the actual number has declined to 68 (19 hosted and 49 unhosted) and there are four potential rentals (all unhosted) on a waiting list. There has been at least one complaint from a person who rehabbed a house intending to rent it short-term, that the cap is unfair. Is the town’s STR ordinance/policy fair and reasonable and does the board need to look at it with an eye toward any changes?

 

JULIAN SOTTOVIA: I understand the concerns about short-term rental. I think we do need to revisit this policy. With that said I understand how short-term rentals effect quality of life for our residents and also takes away business from our inns and lodging.

If I were on the board I think we should also look at more affordable housing. We need to look at our region and work with neighboring communities on housing (Springfield, Rockingham, Bellows Falls,etc.).

 

ARIANNA KNAPP: The community should continue to review the status of STR businesses and consider the threshold of the cap. Similar to how the balance of businesses and services might be reviewed with an eye toward attracting new business to town – what is the “right” number of auto mechanics or hardware stores or hotels in a town of this size?

The number of STRs is unlikely to ever please, or even satisfy, a majority of residents. Based on current trends, I would personally recommend an annual review of the cap.

TIM ROPER: This was and is a difficult decision for our town. Balancing property owners’ rights to rent for short-term profits with the need for more long-term housing is an issue that didn’t exist a few short years ago.

The short-term rental business has put us between the proverbial rock and a hard place as we’ve had teachers and police officers who wanted to come to work in Chester forced to decline job offers due to the lack of housing for themselves and their families.

To me, that shortage of family housing for working folks overrides the desire for more property owners to take advantage of the STR business model. While I empathize with those owners, barring an increase in long-term housing availability, I am not inclined to raise the cap.

Is there a function of town government that you would like to see improved? What is it and how would you improve it?

ARIANNA KNAPP: The more I learn about the function of our Chester town government and the operation of our municipality, the more I wish every resident was aware of just how strong and resourceful this town is. My primary push for improvement would be public communication about how things work, what is being done and why, and how residents can engage, contribute or even show appreciation. Separate and in addition to day-to-day information about operations, we need to continue to refine emergency notification and communications including the use of the recently adopted town-wide alert system.

TIM ROPER: I think we’re extremely fortunate to have a terrific town manager who oversees her strong department heads, all of whom work to minimize cost increases and maximize efficiencies. While it’s nice to say something about reducing taxes, the fact is that our town’s operational related tax increases are due to corporate driven inflation, not by inefficiencies within our town government.

 

JULIAN SOTTOVIA: We need to protect our historic properties (Green area, Depot, etc. ). Also make Chester an even better tourist destination to increase revenue for the town and businesses. Our businesses can’t survive with just our local community, we need to make our town more attractive to visitors. I would love to see the Green and Depot areas have more vitality. More events and activities for our residents and for our visitors.

 

There has been a lot of news reporting about federal budget cuts and their impact. We still don’t know exactly how Chester will be impacted. What are your thoughts on the cuts and how the town should prepare for possible impacts?

TIM ROPER: Moving ahead with the purchase of the solar field is one thing we can do to control our costs since we will always be using electricity, and we know that electric rates never go down. By purchasing the solar field we’ll effectively insulate ourselves from future rate inflation as well as lower our current cost for electricity.

One of the many things our town manager does well is to secure grant money that reduces our costs for maintenance, equipment replacement and system upgrades that would otherwise be fully borne by Chester’s taxpayers. With the DOGE slashing budgets and workforce of the federal agencies that administer those grant dollars, we could be facing significant local tax increases in the coming years.

As things stand with our proposed budget for 2025/26, the only way to cut the tax rate would be by reducing the services currently provided by the town. So, as it looks today, we should all be prepared to make choices between paying more to live here or getting by with a lot less of what our hard-working town employees provide us in the way of essential services.

JULIAN SOTTOVIA: First and foremost I’m opposed to the cuts that the current administration is doing. It will create hardship for all communities but especially rural communities such as Chester. It is hard to prepare for cuts we don’t really know yet. We need to spend our budget wisely. All the more reason to get more businesses back in Chester and get more tourists to increase Chester Town revenue.

 

ARIANNA KNAPP: For the past year, town leadership have explored and prepared to apply for grants and programs that may off-set anticipated large-scale work happening in town over the next few years. It is those grant programs that limit increases to taxes.

We are staying alert to potential changes on the landscape. If the funding sources for critical elements of infrastructure get cut, we will see local taxes go up and it will be up to residents, and specifically voters, to determine how some improvements do or do not get funded for staffing, inventory and infrastructure.

Based on the news reports and indications from Washington, there will not be funds coming for quality of life or beautification or town character development. It will be our responsibility as a community to insure that Chester continues to thrive and be inviting to attract businesses to Main Street and to support all our rural residents in a swiftly shifting landscape.