I mention my military service frequently, but I don’t always expand on my assignments, and how specific skills and experience I gained make me qualified to serve you as the Ward One representative to the Clarkstown Town Council.

From April 2006 to April 2007, I was the Commander of a Civil Affairs Team which was tasked with rebuilding infrastructure and teaching governance to the Iraqi people in the Nineveh Province. I was imbedded with the Mayor of Tal’ Afar, Iraq, and I directly managed over $50 million in reconstruction funds to help rebuild a city torn apart by years of war.

This money built schools. It built roads and water pipelines. It built hospitals. And it built a morgue.

Rebuilding a city involves identifying needs, prioritizing projects, soliciting bids, and developing partnerships between public and private entities. This is as true in New City as it was in the Ninevah Province. It also involves preparing for disaster, which is where my sagacity to build a morgue came in.

On March 27, 2007, two truck bombs targeted the town of  Tal Afar, killing 152 and wounding 347 people. It was a crisis of epic proportions and unfathomable horror, but the devastation was slightly mitigated by the fact we had some infrastructure in place to serve the victims. We had just finished building the morgue, and we filled it beyond capacity.

I certainly don’t anticipate this sort of devastation in Clarkstown, and we are fortunate to have a strong infrastructure in place for instances such as the weather emergencies we have faced in the Hudson Valley. But emergencies are emergencies, and experience is experience, and Clarkstown deserves a Councilperson who has the experience, the foresight, and the fortitude to deal with any crisis.