Letter: Statement From Supervisor Candidate Charlie Barbuti

I am Charlie Barbuti and I am asking for your vote for Supervisor of the Town of Liberty. If you don’t know who I am, I have wasted an awful lot of money in advertising my furniture business over the last 38 years.

I was born and raised in Liberty and returned here after college to help my father out in his new furniture business. While he had started working in the business in 1946 for Russ Hodge, he never owned his own place. That changed in 1973 when he opened a furniture store on West Street in Liberty. Together we built Charlie Barbuti Furniture Mall into the premier furniture store it is today.

As a young man I joined many civic groups and worked hard to make Liberty a better place to live and raise a family. My family and business soon took priority in my life and I reduced my community involvement time. Fact was, I got tired of going to meetings and seeing nothing happen. We should get the gold medal for meeting and planning. Unfortunately we get the booby prize for making things happen. Should I be elected, this will be a central theme of my administration. It is time to “STOP TALKING AND START WALKING”. We have to stop talking about things that divide us and may never happen. We need to focus our efforts on the issues we agree on and spend all the energy we spend beating ourselves and each other up, on efforts to improve our quality of life. We live in a beautiful place and have a wonderful community.

LISTEN, LEARN AND LEAD. I have made this the centerpiece of my campaign. I want to LISTEN to your concerns and ideas. I will then do the research to LEARN the best ways to turn our dreams into reality. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. In fact, Liberty has a Comprehensive Plan, which I would use as the foundation of our future strategy. We need to study what has been working in other places and apply those ideas to Liberty. I will take what you tell me, what we learn together, work with the many individuals and organizations that are trying to improve our community and LEAD our Town to becoming what it says on all the signs. “Welcome to Liberty, the Heart of Sullivan County”. A heart is more than an emotional center, it is the pump that gives life to the body.