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Potsdam candidate Kennedy wants to bring environmental focus to local office

Posted 11/2/18

POTSDAM -- Democrat Toni Kennedy of Potsdam is a candidate for the Potsdam Town Council whose primary focus will be “environmental justice and environmental protection.” Kennedy is a registered …

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Potsdam candidate Kennedy wants to bring environmental focus to local office

Posted

POTSDAM -- Democrat Toni Kennedy of Potsdam is a candidate for the Potsdam Town Council whose primary focus will be “environmental justice and environmental protection.”

Kennedy is a registered nurse and case manager at Northern Lights Home Health Care and a Potsdam Central School Parent Teacher Association vice president and board member who also serves as the student advocacy chair for the Leatherstocking PTA region of central and northern New York. She volunteered for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2016 election for president. Two of her young children arein Potsdam schools now and a third begins preschool next year.

One idea she would like to see come to fruition is “solar gardens for people who don’t have individual solar panels, so they can connect and get the benefit” of the renewable energy source. And she points out that tapping solar and other renewable sources can mean more jobs for local people.

She is also interested in promoting “civic engagement, so people will register to vote and get out to vote,” not just among those of voting age but starting younger, with school students.

“We should get the younger generation involved through a Potsdam Youth Town Council,” to emulate the town board. She says it could lead to more involvement by young people in the community “so when they are of voting age they are aware of issues in the town and how the process works,” and have a chance of staying engaged.

In her work as a nurse she has become acutely aware of the difficult environments some people live in, and she wants “to have the opportunity to give people like that a voice in our town.”

When she was a Head Start nurse, she saw “four- and five-year-olds, low income and disabled, who I saw eating four or five plates of food on a Friday” knowing there might be no food for them over weekends. “Seeing that has motivated me to run” to try to make a difference.

Kennedy is running against Republican Larry Colbert for a board seat with one year left in its term. The seat became open following the death in May of Town Supervisor Rollin Beattie.

Kennedy won a Democratic primary against Jim Grant, the former town councilor who had been appointed to fill the empty board seat until this year’s election.