Pamela Fenoff, Knox supervisor candidate

Pamela Fenoff

KNOX — Currently the planning board’s secretary, Independence Party member Pamela Fenoff wants to unseat incumbent supervisor Michael Hammond. She says he has been in the job for too long.

With Independence Party, Conservative, and Republican endorsements, Fenoff said she first wanted to run for a council seat, then for supervisor when she learned Hammond was approaching four decades in office.

Fenoff, 49, works part-time as an office manager for Krieger Solutions, a social consulting firm, and has held jobs as a dispatcher for an electric utility, a saleswoman, and an administrative assistant at a pharmaceutical company.  She was formerly an ad representative for The Altamont Enterprise.

She has negotiated contracts working for a trucking company in Missouri, she said, and written grant applications for Schenectady Community Action Program.

“I’m also 20 years older than Mike was when he took the job,” said Fenoff, who says the town board lacks “customer service.”

Fenoff said she encourages the current direction taken with the expanded business district in the hamlet.

“I don’t want to see anything that doesn’t fit with the aesthetic value, the rural character that everyone is talking about,” said Fenoff.

A business in the business district that had been proposed for Route 146, Hitman’s Towing, is operating illegally in an area zoned for residential use, Fenoff noted. But she thinks the town has not enforced the zoning law as much as it should. She would like the town board to consider the second business district, not specifically to reward Hitman’s Towing.

“I know what I’d like to do and that is just make them a business district,” Fenoff said of the area around Hitman’s Towing. “And, from now on, anyone coming in needs to play by the rules, but you can’t do that over the whole entire town.” She suggested a townwide assessment of zoning compliance.

If elected, Fenoff said, she would want the town to follow the resolution of posting any vacant positions.

“I’d have to look at each circumstance, but there’s no job in the town of Knox that I think would require terribly expedient turn around,” said Fenoff. “There’s nothing that urgent going on in the town that we can’t wait a couple weeks to get the opportunity out there.”

Fenoff believes the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) Act is unconstitutional, but the issue of gun-control did not motivate her candidacy, she said, although the town board’s process did.

“I have no plans to do anything with that at this point,” said Fenoff. “But that was definitely part of confirming the fact that we need change in Knox government, because they were prepared with that resolution before they even had that meeting.”

The Altamont Enterprise is focused on hyper-local, high-quality journalism. We produce free election guides, curate readers' opinion pieces, and engage with important local issues. Subscriptions open full access to our work and make it possible.