MASSENA -- Republican town council candidate Sue Bellor says if she’s elected, she wants to see the council work to preserve employment, and she says she’s moved past the conflict she had with the town supervisor after he fired her from the MMH Board of Managers in January.

She said, if elected, she wants to focus on being involved with the strategic planning process.

At the August Town Council meeting, Massena Business Development Corp.

Executive Director Jim Murphy told the board that the plan should plot out where the town goes over the next decade or so. And he suggested it have mechanisms built in to carry it out, such as involving it in annual budget talks and using it for HR evaluations of town employees.

“If elected, id like to get involved in strategic planning … do whatever I can to retain jobs here in Massena, growing jobs in Massena,” she said.

She also says she’d like to see Massena’s various boards do a better job of getting their agendas and related materials out to the public. She said she thinks transparency is important for the local government boards, and they could improve in that area.

“I’d like to see all the boards … making sure they communicate on the website with their minutes, their agenda, in detail … we’re all taxpayers, and that could be communicated better,” she said.

The boards generally put their agendas and minutes on the town website.

She said she wants residents to “feel someone’s listening to them and bring up whatever issues that have with the board. Bi-partisan of course, I want to work with people. I want people to see I’m transparent. People need to be shown they have my respect, whether they’re paid employees or volunteers … Ethics is very, very important in dealing with people all then time,” Bellor said.

She suggested could do more to bring in more revenue at Massena International Airport.

“Why can’t we go back and see what we can do to try and improve the revenue?” she said, suggesting one way could be to extend the runway to be more competitive with Ogdensburg’s airport.

Bellor said she has moved past her friction with Town Supervisor Steve O’Shaughnessy from her time on the MMH board.

“They were hurtful experiences for many of us, but we’ve got to move on. We’ve got to keep our hospital open,” she said. “We’ve got to accept things the way they are … I’m open to any positive changes for Massena Memorial Hospital. I believe the current board and the Town Council will work this out.”

She said she hopes voters all participate in the upcoming referendum on the sale of MMH to St. Lawrence Health System, and that both MMH and SLHS will get enough good information to the voters in advance.

“I hope everybody will get out to vote in the election and think it through. I hope the hospital gets out enough information to make people comfortable in their vote, too. I believe that will happen,” she said. “I would encourage them to … get out all the positives of what’s going to happen. You don’t have to put out the negatives.”

“Maybe they can tell us how many jobs … we’re going to have all these services,” Bellor said. A lot of us are an aging population and we’ve got to have our hospital.”

When asked what qualifies her for the office, Bellor pointed to her education career and involvement with several community organizations.

“I have a lot of leadership background, not only with school teaching and being International Baccalaureate coordinator at the high school … I’ve led a lot of organizations,” she said. She has been district governor for the Rotary Club, which she said put her at the head of “68 Rotary clubs in Canada and the United States, 23 in Northern New York and 45 in Canada. I’ve met up with a lot of people, a lot of clubs, a lot of personalities.” She is also involved with the local New York State Women chapter.

“I like working as part of a team,” she said. “I’ve also worked on teams with United States Department of Education being a grant reviewer … you have to work with people all over the country for that.”