“The Wilmington Way” feature on the town’s Facebook page soon became a column in the Lake Placid News. Each story was about a different town employee — their background, jobs, hobbies and families. It was a “who’s who” of Holzer’s hometown, a place he affectionately calls Mayberry, the fictional North Carolina community in the “Andy Griffith Show” from the 1960s.

“I wanted to reassure our citizens that we had a great team of public officials and staff that were ready to help the town go through the pandemic,” he said. “I was trying to reassure people that we were all in it together, and we were going to get through it.”

In addition to his regular governing duties as supervisor — which include representing the town on the Essex County Board of Supervisors — Holzer continued communicating to the public. He wrote weekly updates and posted them on the town’s Facebook page. He also began a monthly newsletter that included more information from around town: special events, news from community organizations, where to find help for families, etc.

When the pandemic hit in March, many of the town’s goals were put on hold, but as a vaccine for COVID-19 begins its distribution across the United States, there is a general feeling of hope that things will get better in the new year. Goals that were put aside for 2020 will be reinstated for 2021.

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Hometown proud

Roy Holzer is a lifelong resident of the town of Wilmington. Born on July 4, 1965, he is a “fire cracker” with boundless energy.

Attending the Lake Placid High School, Holzer was at one point the class president and vice president of the Student Council, but he didn’t graduate with his fellow classmates.

“Back then, being so poor, I just wanted to get to work and make money,” Holzer said. “Looking back, I probably would have done that differently.”

Holzer earned his GED in 1985 and attended some classes at North Country Community College.

While he was still in high school, he became active in the community. As a sophomore in December 1982, he began publishing the town’s first monthly newspaper, The Wilmington News. The Adirondack Daily Enterprise called him a 17-year-old “tycoon” in a story about the newspaper. As a junior in 1983 at the age of 18, he successfully ran for Wilmington town council. His original campaign slogan — “Working for a better community” — could easily be his slogan today, based on his business and political career.

Holzer was elected supervisor in 1996 at the age of 31, and he served in that capacity for four years. In the summer of 2019, after Supervisor Randy Preston died, Holzer was appointed to the position until the end of the year. In November 2019, he was elected supervisor again.

Holzer has also served as a member of Wilmington Fire & Rescue for 26 years. He and his wife Becky owned the Little Super Market on state Route 86 for 22 years, selling the business to their niece and nephew, Cliff and Sarah Holzer, in May 2019. They currently own Whiteface Corners, a multi-purpose building with lodging and the location of the Pourman’s Tap House.

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Looking forward

The Lake Placid News caught up with Holzer by phone on Tuesday, Dec. 8 to ask him questions about being supervisor in 2020 and looking toward the challenges of 2021.

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LPN: What were your original goals for 2020?

Holzer: A year ago, I was ready to hit the ground running. I was soliciting people to serve on different committees like the Wilmington 2020 Task Force. This was a committee that would look at where we had been as a community, where we are today and the direction we want to go into the future. So it was going to be a very public attempt to get more people into the game, so to speak, to decide where we wanted to go as a community, whether it’s tourism, more residential, maybe a combination of both.

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LPN: In the middle of March, everybody went into survival mode.

Holzer: In January, before COVID really started kicking in, I had new supervisor training to do and things like that.

But I also wanted to do a thing called Wilmington Homestead Housing where we would develop areas of town that would be devoted totally toward locals that want to live here. It would be like mini-subdivisions where we’d have relaxed zoning to allow people who could actually afford to live in their home community. These subdivisions wouldn’t allow second home use or vacation rental use. It would be solely for the purpose of having your own place in your hometown.

And there was just a lot of other stuff, everything from youth programs to economic development to zoning, you name it. In March, that all got put by the wayside, and it became a worldwide pandemic and the rules of the game totally changed.

For me, it was making sure everyone kept their head about them. Here in Wilmington, I’m happy to say we did. We came together as a community.

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LPN: You’ve written a weekly update to keep people informed, but then you created a monthly newsletter.

Holzer: That’s a cool thing about living in a small community. It brings us all together. I’m always getting comments when we send the newsletter out saying, “Oh, I didn’t know they were doing that.” … So it’s a great tool that brings all the town organizations together in one little publication.

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LPN: You’ve been doing that since you were a teenager. Didn’t you start your own newspaper?

Holzer: The real reason was … I came from one of the poorest families in town, and my family goes back generations. We’ve always been dirt, dirt, dirt poor. And back when I was growing up here in Wilmington, there were no jobs to be had, not for teenagers. A dishwashing job would be fought for, believe it or not, back then. So it was my way of creating my own job. So I’d go around selling ads to all the businesses that would pay for the printing. And then we’d sell the newspaper for 10 cents a copy. For a teenager, I was actually doing quite well. And I didn’t have to wash dishes.

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LPN: It seems like, above and beyond being a public servant, you’ve always found the need to communicate to the public. Where does that need come from?

Holzer: I think it’s important that local governments, especially, are as transparent as possible. And by getting the information out to people, it helps with communication and keeps us all on the same page.

… As a result, you usually pick up a lot of good ideas from other people that read what you’re doing. And they say, “By the way, did you think of this?” “Well, no, but thanks for offering.”

… The good thing about communicating with the public, though, is they can choose whether they want to become involved or whether they want to seek out information. Or they can just put it aside.

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LPN: The pandemic’s been hard on a lot of people economically, losing their jobs or being laid off for a little bit. How has that affected Wilmington?

Holzer: Deep down, I have a lot of concerns about the local economy for people that live here. I have just as big a concern about some people’s mental health during all this. We’re social beings. I know I am. And I know staying home’s been even tough on me.

It’s not just a virus anymore. There’s so many branches of this tree growing out that we’re just trying to get ahead of it.

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LPN: Other than heading these big projects, given the pandemic, how do your see your job? Do you see it differently now?

Holzer: We’re a town of 1,253 people. So when you talk about town board members, town supervisor, we’re not just elected officials. You’re also people’s neighbors. You’re their friends. And you end up being a social worker, and we’re the ones that will respond when the chips are down to help each other out. So I don’t see it just being a political job, so to speak.

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LPN: Have you seen any hardship in town?

Holzer: Oh yeah. And real concern in people’s eyes. Fear of the unknown. And again, that gets back to making sure there’s as much information as we can get out to people, and being as reassuring as we possibly can is the key to getting through this.

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LPN: Looking toward next year for Wilmington, what are your goals now, other than survive?

Holzer: They’re getting back on track. Wilmington, in a lot of ways, is a town in transition right now. When you think about it, we’ve had a new supervisor. We have a new highway superintendent. Our town clerk is going to be retiring soon. And then we have a new codes officer. So those are four main positions that we’ve had a lot of change in for a small community.

My biggest goal would be to get right back on the goals we set for the beginning of 2020. Even in spite of the pandemic, we’ve actually gotten a lot done. We were able to move up to our new offices this year, which is more business-like, professional and streamlined. It’s handicap accessible. We’re able to move things around in our government center.

… A lot of this stuff I wanted to do in networking with our residents, you need to do one-on-one. We certainly do the Zoom meetings, and if we have to, we will, but nothing beats a face-to-face meeting.

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LPN: What’s one or two of your top priorities for 2021?

Holzer: One of the biggest things I have to get going on is in 2022, Wilmington is 200 years old. So we’re partnering with the Wilmington Historical Society, and we’re going to really celebrate that in big Mayberry fashion.

We definitely need to discuss some land use codes. We’re working on short-term housing rental regulations, things like that.

Normally what I do for my town board and members of the community is I will physically write a list of my priorities, and if any board members have anything, we jot them in on the sheet. If you came into my office right now, you’d see a big four-page paper stapled together, and as we’re accomplishing stuff, it will be crossed out and said “done,” “started” or a big red mark on it saying, “it didn’t work.”

Economic development, that’s going to be a big priority, not only for Wilmington but the whole area, making sure that our mom and pops in the small, independent businesses are able to survive the beginning of the year. I actually think economically we’ll probably be a little more challenged after the first of the year.