Dorey Houle shifts to town council after much village board busyness
Digitizing documents, supporting food access, guiding police negotiations and teaching sign language have been among her projects.
| 12 Jan 2022 | 04:44
Dorey Houle shared a family picture. Left to right: Dorey, McKenna, Olivia, Harrison, Jake, Anthony, and Logan, all last name Houle (picture provided by Dorey Houle) (
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By Frances Ruth Harris
Dorey Houle comes to her post on the Town of Monroe council with a varied history of village doings. She provided this account of her efforts and accomplishments during her term as trustee of the Village of Monroe and earlier.
Houle recalled working with Monroe Police Department during school resource officer negotiations and facilitating the digitizing of village documents. In addition to police and documents, food was a focus for her. She noted her coordination of a relationship between the farmers market and Sacred Heart Food Pantry.
Assisting in safe continuation of the market through the pandemic was also among her projects as was guiding North Main and Pine Tree Elementary Schools through civic projects. Those included their Health and Wellness poster project and the Historic Properties Project, which elected the first Youth Board of Trustees
Houle also coordinated the village’s 125th anniversary celebrations that included the formation of the community BBQ that benefits the community’s volunteer organizations. She also supported the journalism club at Monroe-Woodbury Middle School by connecting the school with The Photo News, and initiated a collaboration of the Village of Monroe, MWCSD, and South Orange Family YMCA for the Orange County Youth Services Grant.
She and her husband moved their five children from Staten Island to Monroe in 2014. Her sons, Harrison and Jake, graduated from MWHS in 2018 and 2020, respectively. Harrison is a sergeant serving in South Korea at Camp Casey with the US Army, 2nd Infantry Division, Field Artillery. Jake is a film student at SUNY Rockland. Her daughter, Olivia, is an eighth grader at MWMS; and her 8-year old twins, McKenna and Logan, are in the third grade at Pine Tree Elementary. Her husband, Anthony, is a police officer with NYPD and a retired Master Sergeant with the US Air Force Reserves, having served with the NYANG Fighting 69th as a combat medic in Afghanistan in 2008.
Before their move, Dorey was a full-time lecturer and director of the American Sign Language (ASL) program in the Department of World Languages and Literatures at the City University of New York/College of Staten Island, where she developed the academic minor in ASL, wrote the Academic Self Study for the program, and chaired the Outcomes Assessment Committee for the department. She teaches a sign language program for babies at the Monroe Free Library.