MINOA — The unopposed incumbent candidates for Minoa’s open mayor and trustee seats were reelected March 19.
Including the counting of absentee ballots, certified totals shared online by the Onondaga County Board of Elections included 173 votes to reelect Bill Brazill as mayor and 177 votes and 160 votes respectively for John Abbott and Eric Christensen, who regained their village trustee positions. All ran on the Trust Party ticket.
Bill Brazill
Brazill, who has been mayor of Minoa for the past eight years, said he’s “thrilled” to be given the chance to serve another four years in his position.
“It is really the honor and the privilege of a lifetime for me to be mayor because I just love this village,” Brazill said. “The future of Minoa is brighter than ever, and we’re just getting started.”
Brazill has lived in Minoa since 1967, when he was eight years old. He was named acting village justice in 1991 and remained in the judicial seat for a full decade prior to becoming a trustee in 2002.
From there, he served under late mayor John Regan, who he called an “unbelievable man,” and the late Dick Donovan, adding that he learned plenty along the way from both. Brazill said Donovan, for whom he fulfilled the role of deputy mayor, can be credited along with Regan with taking the village in a commendable direction.
“When I ran for mayor and Dick retired, it was like someone handing me the keys to a Cadillac,” Brazill said.
As for his goals going forward, Brazill said he seeks to send in applications for more Main Street funding and grant assistance for the village while getting Minoa’s green bridge rehabbed, local sidewalks improved, ornamental street lighting put up, and his envisioned pocket park project finished. He said he also hopes to see the completion of the Minoa Farms neighborhood right down to the last of the 135 lots left.
Brazill said he enjoys being able to educate residents, keep them up to date, hear what they have to say, and see how he can help through his “Pizza with the Mayor” and “Tea with the Mayor” events.
He said that now that he’s retired from his job as a United Rentals salesman, he can “more or less be a full-time mayor.” He added that he’s fortunate to have department personnel and fellow village board members that act together as a team.
“We do what’s best for this village and we have no other agenda,” he said. “We all are here for one reason: to make Minoa the best we can make it.”
John Abbott
A resident of Minoa for 50 years altogether, Abbott has been on the village board for a dozen years.
Abbott is a life member and former officer of the village’s fire department, and for decades he took on the duty of ambulance driver. He is also the owner and founder of Abbott’s Catering, which puts on weddings, graduation parties, and corporate functions.
He said that as trustee he’s learned how to help people deal with changing times in the village, and through it all he said he’s always made a point of regularly inviting people to board meetings to speak their minds and bring up any concerns they may have.
Abbott, who used to live near Montgomery, Alabama, and Atlanta, Georgia, said he appreciates that Minoa is a “nice, safe place” without the “hustle and bustle” of other busier communities, going on to say that it’s like Sleepy Hollow compared to other places because of how quiet and relaxing it is.
Still, he said he enjoys visiting bigger cities when attending conferences around the state.
Abbott added that he enjoys the traditions of the village of Minoa, including the fire department’s field days with its fireworks, pushball tournaments and amusement park rides. He also appreciates the Halloween handout of doughnuts and cider and the car shows with music every week during the summer.
Most of all, though, he said he enjoys helping to make decisions for the village, interacting with neighbors, meeting new people and building friendships with other villagers.
Eric Christensen
Ever since he was first elected 14 years ago, Christensen said he has enjoyed serving on the village board with the other trustees as well as Donovan and now Brazill in the mayor’s chair. He said both mayors have given cherished guidance to everyone else on the board in addition to being informative and approachable people.
“It’ll hopefully be an enjoyable four years, and hopefully we can get things accomplished that we’re already working on,” Christensen said of his next term. He said one accomplishment would be the completion of upgrades to the village’s wastewater treatment plant.
Christensen said he has valued the knowledge passed on to him by fellow residents of Minoa. He said he will always listen to what they have to say while working with the rest of the board to address problems that arise for them.
“The residents are wonderful,” Christensen said. “Without the residents, we wouldn’t have a village.”
He said he wants to ensure that Minoa stays the quiet village it’s been for as long as he’s lived there, which is about 35 years in total. However, he said he does like to see things become more energized when the village hosts the Teal Ribbon Run to raise funds for ovarian cancer research and the Lake Effect Half & Quarter Marathon to benefit Make-A-Wish Central New York. Since they’ve come to Minoa, Christensen has helped to organize both runs.
For the past 11 years, Christensen has worked for the finance department of a furniture retailer, and earlier this year, he was appointed to the Town of Manlius’ zoning board of appeals.
Christensen said this approaching term will be his last as a Minoa village trustee. He said that once it wraps up, he’ll make a goal of enjoying other parts of life more, like spending more time with his wife, gardening and setting up his model trains.
“This is a job I never thought I’d do,” he said. “I never thought I’d get into politics. There’ve been ups and downs, but I can definitely say I’ve enjoyed it.”
Ballot Proposition
This most recent Election Day, the ballot proposition to amend the Minoa Fire Department’s service award program passed, with a count of 175 “yes” votes to 19 “no” votes.
In effect since 1991, the service award program is a retirement program provided by the Village of Minoa that awards credits to the volunteer members of the village’s fire department to contribute to retirement savings.
The passing of the proposition allows a firefighter to receive credits when completing scheduled stand-by hours in the stations or responding from home for emergency responses.
