Candidate's Spotlight: Debbie Preston

10/25/2012 (Updated 11/5/2012 9:50:32 AM)

Fox: Welcome back to Fox 40 Candidate Spotlight and we bring in Debbie Preston, a Republican incumbent County Executive. Thank you every much for your time in stopping by.

We'll begin with your purposed budget which calls for a  0 percent tax increase thanks to in part a mix of consolidation and cuts. If you are re-elected how big of a goal will a zero % tax increase in future budgets be and which cuts in county government would you look to try and make that happen?

Preston: We had to make a lot of tough decisions and what we did was which I truly believe in and that moving forward we would continue to do is reacquire saving and by doing that savings that you see on a lot of the cuts that we made this year are going to be seeing year after year.

As we move forward we are going to continue to look for more of these  reacquiring savings. Just this year in this years budget we were able to cut and consolidate and that gave us what we're at is like 4 million of recurring savings. Looking at our debt that's another huge issue we looked at and we did that this year and we'll continue to do that.  I do think that it is important for the people of Broome County that we keep our taxes down as low as possible and my goal will and always will be to keep it as close to zero % as possible.

Fox 40: You're a proponent of fracking but what should the role of a County Executive be in carrying any fracking regulations handed down by the state?

Preston: I feel that the County's responsibility here is to how make sure that they have all the you knowledge know when and if the Governor, the DEC come down and say yes we're going to move forward with fracking and I continue to work on that. I feel that we need to be proactive and not wait for this decision to made. We are in the final stages of our  road use agreement and that's going to help us move to protect our
infrastructure and the other thing is that in the next few weeks we will be opening up our safe natural gas drilling office.  As far as the county lands I have done nothing. I have talked to no one about them.  I don't feel that it is the time to even think about that and certainly you wouldn't ever do anything on park land.

Fox: If you are re-elected what specific initiative would be on the top priority?

Preston: The same priority I've had in the last year and that's jobs and I'm very proud of the new incubators that I have built together with SUNY.  I want to move forward to see that come to fruition. In order to have you have to make sure you have the to go infrastructure along with this inventory.  I'm talking water and utilities. My goal is to continue to look at our airport quarters as our next businesses development area.

VIEW VIDEO