The following letter was published in this week’s issue of the Gazette.
To the Editor, Among Democratic Chair Richard Masur’s many accomplishments, he is an historian, reaching back in time to pluck tidbits from the past in an attempt to demonstrate that Croton’s Democratic Village Boards are fierce defenders of the public purse. We should not criticize Mr. Masur for such actions; after all, that’s his job. So let’s take a page from his book and stroll down memory lane to see how those Boards performed.
Under Croton’s previous Democratic Mayor Leo Wiegman, whose administration included Trustee Ann Gallelli and, towards the end of his term, now-Mayor Brian Pugh, Croton’s debt rose from about $17.3M in May 2008 to $32.6 M in May 2015, an increase of nearly 90%.
Not satisfied with that, for FY 2015/2016, the Dem Board’s adopted budget included new borrowing of $11.6M, more than a third of the already existing total. Their forecast anticipated more than $20M in additional borrowing over the subsequent three years.
Mercifully, the voters turned the Dems out of office in November 2015. But by the time Croton United took control in December 2015, much the money from the proposed borrowing had already been committed by the Wiegman Board. Nonetheless, Croton United was able to cut about $3M from the total. It was this sequence of events that resulted in the debt numbers that Mr. Masur ballyhooed in his letter last week.
Appreciating that no one on the board was a fiscal expert, one of Croton United’s first actions was the appointment of the Financial Sustainability Committee (FSC), a group of fiscal professionals who volunteered to assist the board in navigating the rocks and shoals of municipal finance. Among the FSC’s first tasks was the creation of a Debt Policy to bring the village’s massive debt under control. READ MORE AT http://www.crotonunited.org/news-views/2019/4/26/as-we-look-forward-what-we-see-is-distressing
Sorry we are losing those volunteers but I can understand why. With this board, they're just spinning their wheels. Thanks guys for trying though.
ReplyDeleteWe owe the fin. comm. a debt of gratitude. To understand property taxes, you have to actually pay them.
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