ANOTHER SCHEME DREAMED UP BY MAYOR PUGH

The following letter was published in this week’s issue of the Gazette.

To the editor:

Municipal finance is a dull subject. Or at least, it should be a dull subject. In Croton, municipal finance has gotten exciting. Croton taxpayers should be concerned.

The Croton Board of Trustees has bought in to another scheme dreamed up by Mayor Brian Pugh. At best the results are likely to be costly. At worst, we risk a disaster and potential litigation.

Mr. Pugh has long thought himself to be more clever than the rest of us when it comes to financial matters. As a trustee he proposed a sketchy interest rate arbitrage scheme involving issuance of tax-free bonds against the Gouveia endowment (that was back when he was telling us the endowment would last forever). Then there was the plan to rent Gouveia as a private residence; that this was prohibited as a matter of New York State law by the public trust doctrine did not bother him. More recently we had the scheme to set up a “charity” so that our property and school taxes would be deemed as “charitable donations” to the village and school district.  

Watching the Croton Board of Trustees in operation is like watching the board of directors at Kramerica Industries on Seinfeld: you never know what crazy scheme they will come up with next, and there is a good chance it is illegal.  READ MORE HERE.