{"id":5549,"date":"2011-11-04T16:48:23","date_gmt":"2011-11-04T20:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=5549"},"modified":"2011-11-04T16:49:44","modified_gmt":"2011-11-04T20:49:44","slug":"haaf-her-business-experience-means-shorter-learning-curve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=5549","title":{"rendered":"Haaf: says business experience means shorter learning curve"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pocopson supervisor candidate cites her DuPont background, bipartisan support as making her the best choice<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

By Mike McGann<\/strong>, Editor, UnionvilleTimes.com<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Carol Haaf<\/p><\/div>\n

POCOPSON \u2014 In a word, she said she feels she represents a certain degree of continuity for township voters.<\/p>\n

Carol Haaf is seeking to become the second Democrat in recent years elected to the township Board of Supervisors \u2014 and hopes to replace the retiring Lauressa McNemar. She\u2019s running against Ricki Stumpo, a newly-minted Republican, in the Nov. 8 election. Stumpo, a former Democrat, lost a write-in bid for the Democratic nomination in May to Haaf, but defeated planning commission member Steve Simonson for the GOP nod.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s not alone in feeling that she could pick up the work of the current board and continue without missing a beat: she\u2019s been publicly endorsed not just by McNemar, a Democrat, but Republican supervisors Georgia Brutscher and Steve Conary, who say they like her business and managerial experience (she\u2019s a retired DuPont executive).<\/p>\n

Haaf, in turn, suggests that the current group of supervisors have done a good job in attacking the issues that face the township and have put in place a good plan for the coming years \u2014 preserving open space, fighting to maintain the essential character of the township all while keeping a tight reign on expenses.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they\u2019ve shown a great vision,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

After retiring from DuPont about three years ago \u2014 and dealing with some family issues \u2013 she became increasingly active in township activities, joining the township\u2019s Stream Team, which works to clean and maintain the township\u2019s waterways. She\u2019s also served as one of the township\u2019s Democratic Committee members.<\/p>\n

But with time and the energy to step up her efforts, Haaf said she feels she\u2019d like to do more.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s time to get out and make a contribution,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Her experience at DuPont, where she managed budgets of as large as $18 million \u2014 almost 20 times larger than that of the township\u2019s \u2014 gives her a sense that she\u2019d enter the job without a steep learning curve.<\/p>\n

Still, there are things she hopes to work on if elected. She\u2019s worried that beyond a small number of folks who attend meetings, most residents don\u2019t have a sense of what is happening. Although there has been somewhat more media coverage of supervisor meetings of late, she said she is concerned about a lack of connection with residents. She’d like to see the township\u2019s Web site get retooled to be more user-friendly \u2014 and look at whether social media, such as Facebook, should be used to increase dialog between residents and elected officials.<\/p>\n

One other issue: she said she\u2019d like to get moving on the renovation work on the Barnard House, slated to be the township\u2019s new office\/meeting site, as well as the home to the Kennett Underground Railway. Right now, the township is forced to spend money on upkeep and stabilization of the 19th century building \u2014 but severe cuts in available government grant money have stalled efforts to get the real work on the building underway.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we have to get moving on the Barnard House,\u201d she said, although she didn\u2019t commit to any one funding source \u2014 admitting that finding a way to pay for the project would be the big challenge and it is an issue the current board has been working hard to overcome.<\/p>\n

She emphasizes that supervisors have to be careful, though, in how they spend money. While there is a certain amount of wealth in the township, there are also residents who are far less well off and with the cost of virtually everything else going up, can\u2019t easily weather a local tax increase.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a big differential in the distribution of wealth,\u201d she said. \u201cSure, there are some folks with money. But not everyone does and we need to keep that in mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although becoming a township supervisor is a bit of a challenge, Haaf says she\u2019s excited at the prospect, in part because the township has so many good people \u2014 especially those who are volunteers for the township\u2019s various committees and commissions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pocopson supervisor candidate cites her DuPont background, bipartisan support as making her the best choice By Mike McGann, Editor, UnionvilleTimes.com POCOPSON \u2014 In a word, she said she feels she represents a certain degree of continuity for township voters. Carol Haaf is seeking to become the second Democrat in recent years elected to the township […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[182,10,596],"class_list":["post-5549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","tag-election-2011","tag-pocopson","tag-township-supervisor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}