Richmond is set to have a new village president after the April 6 election, as incumbent Craig Kunz is running for a trustee seat instead.

Kunz is running along with incumbents Terry Fulmer and Linda Weiss for the three open seats. The race for village president, by contrast, is competitive.

Adam Metz, a longtime village resident and former Richmond Township supervisor, said he sought to give Richmond residents a chance to express whether they want change on the Village Board, so he threw his name in the running for village president against incumbent Trustee Toni Wardanian.

“They need to be more proactive in understanding what needs to be done in the future,” said Metz, who is a trustee for the township cemetery board. “There is no direction or control in Zoom Village Board meetings that I’ve seen. They really need to find a different way.”

If elected, Wardanian, a real estate agent, said she would prioritize adding more parking in downtown Richmond, pointing in particular to the empty plot next to the current downtown village parking lot.

The lot, across Broadway from the Seaside Prime restaurant, would be a great parcel to purchase for a new parking lot, but Wardanian said the price in the past has been too high for her liking.

“If it became available at fair market price and we could acquire that, it would double the spots that we have right now in our municipal lot,” Wardanian said. “It could be a long shot but worth the conversation.”

Metz in an interview suggested setting up an agreement with Richmond Grade School to use its lot on some evenings and running a shuttle service between the school and downtown area. He said that could solve the village’s parking woes, which Wardanian also said aren’t awful but do sometimes require residents to walk a few blocks to their downtown destinations.

Metz also said he wants to encourage the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or another environmental group to promote wildlife-based tourism to the village and surrounding area, as well as to buy and manage some of the vacant land in and around Richmond.

Right now, Metz said, the village doesn’t have enough of a draw. He said he wants to keep experimenting to get more and different businesses into town so there is the right mix to attract visitors.

“I don’t want slow growth but smart growth. Let’s move at a reasonable pace,” Metz said.

Wardanian raised concerns about the village’s water and sewer utility assets being overbuilt for the size of the community.

She said the utility system easily could handle service to hundreds more homes if it were added onto the infrastructure, as it was designed to reach properties that had been eyed for development. Those plans, however, fell through during the Great Recession.

To keep utility rates flat while still building up capital funds to maintain the utility, Wardanian said she wants to look at expanding the village’s contracts with septic tank maintenance companies and water tankers, letting them use the village’s utility system in exchange for fees paid to the village.

“Tell me what our system can handle, and I want to go out and find that business that needs it,” said Wardanian, who was appointed as a trustee in 2019. “I know we can do more. Those are the kinds of things I want to do because they would increase revenue without having to pass costs onto the residents.”