Cheektowaga
GOP sets sights on Democratic stronghold
3 seek board seats in Cheektowaga
Three Republican challengers are taking aim at the longtime Democratic Party stronghold of Cheektowaga, talking of reform and downsizing as they seek seats on the Town Board.
They want to reduce the board from seven members to five and lower health insurance costs for the members, as they try to unseat three Democratic incumbents.
“It’s one of the few towns that has lifetime health insurance for elected officials and their spouses,” said Joseph W. Karnath, a former executive of a nonprofit group and a GOP candidate for the board.
“Even if I was elected, I wouldn’t want it,” Karnath said of the health insurance that can be worth $16,000 and comes automatically with the $20,800 annual salary for the part-time job. “I’d have to donate it back to the town.”
Karnath; Roger Heymanowski, who teaches video production at a local prison; and John J. Kaczorowski, a former autoworker and AFL-CIO union council president, believe that Democratic control of the board has kept out minority views.
Health insurance is a top issue, and a pricey and difficult one to measure: The Town Board voted to change personnel policy this month and end lifetime health insurance for managers and elected officials.
Yet current board members, managers and union staff are eligible for lifetime health insurance.
An incumbent board member running for re-election, Stanley J. Kaznowski III, and the town clerk declined to immediately reveal the sum: The numbers would be released only under a Freedom of Information Law request, said Town Clerk Alice Magierski, who left the Town Board last year.
“If it’s not a record,” she said, “the town doesn’t need to supply it.”
While Magierski sent the information by e-mail hours after the request, names were blacked out, and it was impossible to distinguish which plans were chosen by board members.
Republican candidate Heymanowski would like the town health insurance payments to be audited to find out, for example, whether some who get family insurance are still married.
Other Republican goals include changing the senior citizen property tax discount—the School Tax Relief Program, or “enhanced STAR” — so that it renews automatically.
As for the board’s size, “You don’t need six or seven people to figure out what’s going on in a town. Plus, it’s costly,” Heymanowski said.
Kaznowski, who is finishing the two years that were left in Magierski’s term, said the current size of the board is an appropriate match for Cheektowaga’s problems. As a founding member of the Buffalo Cheektowaga Revitalization Task Force, he has been meeting with police and residents to address crime and abandoned houses. He aims to improve deteriorating housing stock and expand code enforcement efforts to make homeowners accountable for keeping up their property.
“More dollars can be saved by addressing these problems than they can by downsizing,” said Kaznowski, 52, a lifelong resident who graduated from Canisius College and is chief financial officer for Curtis Screw Co. “We’re a higher-maintenance community because we’re a first-ring suburb.”
A look at the candidates:
• Democrat Patricia A. Jaworowicz, 63, an incumbent since 1982 and widow of former Council Member Donald J. Wegner, did not return calls or a questionnaire asking for information on her candidacy. Instead, a list of accomplishments was e-mailed, such as planning the $15 million expansion of the police and court building.
“I have been serving as chairman of our Police and Justice Court Committee and, over the years, have served as chairman of many other subcommittees, including Budget and Finance, Highway, Sanitation, Community Development and others,” she wrote.
• Incumbent Democrat James P. Rogowski, 37, a lifelong resident of Sloan and Cheektowaga, is finishing his first four-year term on the board and has master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Buffalo State College and teaches technology at Lockport High School. He said on a questionnaire that he was proud of his work on the town’s new antitexting law for drivers and his lobbying to keep St. Joseph Hospital open.
“Throughout my first term in Town Hall, I have distinguished myself as an idealist, a creative thinker with conservative spending values making me one of the most accomplished and finest leaders in government today,” he said.
• Karnath, 66, has spent most of his life in Cheektowaga. He graduated from Maryvale High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s in rehab counseling from the University at Buffalo. From 1981 to 2001, he was executive director of Southeast Works in Depew, a work program for the disabled.
“When I left, we were debt-free,” he said. He now works part time as a soccer referee for Erie County schools. School-related jobs, at Williamsville’s Christian Central Academy and other schools, include substitute teaching, coaching girls varsity soccer and driving a bus.
• Kaczorowski, 67, a graduate of Emerson High School, is a lifelong town resident and spent his career at the Town of Tonawanda General Motors plant. His work holding union-related offices led him to represent 100,000 steel, auto and communications workers, among others. “I’m a consensus- builder,” he said. “I have the time as a retiree to go . . . talk to people in the community, not just on the phone.”
• Heymanowski, 64, a town resident for the last 14 years, is a Vietnam War veteran, has an associate’s degree from Erie Community College and a bachelor’s in communication from the online school Almeda University. A former sheriff’s deputy who handled security for State Supreme Court justices, he was also the owner of the former Barbizon Modeling School. For 21 years, he has hosted a public-access program. He said that his interviews with massage therapists, amateur boxers and community organizations led a local prison, which he declined to name for security reasons, to hire him to teach.
If elected, he said, he would work to bring a minority party perspective. After a town employee stopped by his house to ask about a new concrete patio, he has been concerned about town employees trying to catch homeowners making improvements without permits.
“That scares the daylights out of people,” he said. “People are afraid to spend the money on things because they’re going to get reassessed.”
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