The following letter was published in this week’s issue of the Gazette.
To the Editor, Why am I not surprised?
The Croton Village Board has totally bollixed up the ill-advised Croton Point Avenue (CPA) project. Now comes Democratic Chair Richard Masur desperately pointing fingers at others for the mess they have created. It could not possibly be the ineptitude of the Dem board that got us here. No! No! They are infallible! It’s got to be someone else!
Now Mr. Masur is an intelligent guy, but his feeble attempt at shifting blame is totally transparent. What he and his fellow Dems are doing is setting us up for the inevitable eventuality that the CPA project will either be cancelled, forcing us to effectively throw away the $600K already spent, or to proceed with the project at a cost far above what the board promised us it would be. And that the Dems, who have controlled the board for more than a decade, with the exception of two short years, are totally blameless. It’s all due to the other guys. If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you.
And Mr. Masur can’t even get his facts straight. He notes the “$1.7M in federal and county funds” for the project. True, there is a federal grant of $1.2M. But the $500K from the county was not designated for this project. It was awarded to the village when Croton took responsibility for CPA maintenance, to cover such maintenance in perpetuity. Realizing that the costs for CPA had been underestimated, a previous Dem board decided to use the entire amount for the current CPA debacle, a choice that, last time I checked, may not even be allowable under the terms set by the county for spending these funds.
CPA currently consists of a concrete roadway, requiring relatively little maintenance. But if the board opts to ram this project through, regardless of its cost, CPA will be paved with asphalt. As has been made very clear this past winter, asphalt roads are highly susceptible to potholes and CPA will require far more maintenance in the future. But the county funds, if the Dems have their way, will have been completely dissipated, and all maintenance costs will come right out of the pockets of Croton taxpayers...READ MORE FROM JOEL GINGOLD HERE.
Those hundreds and hundreds of cyclists (not) must be going nutz.
ReplyDeleteSOMETHING TO REMEMBER:
ReplyDeleteIn its September 2017 report, the Financial Sustainability Committee stated:
“Going forward, the FSC believes that expenses will grow at a faster pace than revenue over the next several years, putting the village at risk to deplete the fund balance.
The FSC believes that the Village should start to take measures to reduce operating costs now to avoid necessary deep cuts in future years if not addressed.
The expense growth becomes exacerbated if the Village undertakes additional large-scale projects and/or violates the debt policy.”
It further concluded that: “Reserves will deplete less quickly if The Village limits its Capital Plan.”