The following is a copy of a letter to the Pine Plains Town Planning Board, the lead agency charged with reviewing the potential impacts of Douglas Durst’s proposed 1,000-home subdivision.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Planning Board:
The Durst Organization has produced for you a labyrinth of numbers in its 1,500-page Environmental Impact Statement, all of which paint a glowing portrait of an environmentally sensitive, financially beneficial windfall for our rural communities.
I would like to focus your attention on ten simple, common-sense numbers which, when studied along with supporting data I will submit later, should help to convince you that the Carvel Development will not look anything like the upscale golfing resort proposed and that it could well become a financial disaster for the town, its property owners, its local businesses and the Pine Plains Central School District.
In a recent blitzkrieg of mailings to our homes, the Durst Organization extols the glories of its past accomplishments, the smiling family at its helm and the “environmental” virtues of its proposed Carvel development. But the glossy brochures, which offer a slew of misleading environmental claims and wildly inaccurate financial projections, neglect to tell us anything about the key players overseeing the project, their motivations or their track record in guiding comparable developments.
One of the mass mailings invites us as “dear neighbors” to “meet the Durst family,” and in this and future postings we hope to get to know the Dursts, not their soothing, sepia-toned portraits gracing the brochures, but their capabilities, their character and their business strategy.
We begin our “Durst Watch” series with links to four columns we’ve published since 2005. The first lays out the basic principles for our analysis of the costs and complications of growth in small towns. The other three explore in more detail the primary cause of tax increases brought on by rapid development: the cost of educating children from the new homes who attend the local public schools.
As the slowing U.S. economy curtails municipal tax revenues across the country, many Hudson Valley counties, including Columbia, Dutchess and Rensselaer, are also facing sharp increases in capital spending on roads and buildings.
The dual perils of declining sales taxes, which comprise 30-50% of a county’s tax revenues, and a large backlog of urgent capital projects will likely put a growing burden on property taxpayers, especially in more heavily indebted counties that cannot borrow much money to fill the fiscal gap.
Candidates sparring for local office in next week’s elections face a bewildering array of statistics they can use to tout their own financial achievements or criticize their opponents’ fiscal failures. Though the numbers are often confusing and occasionally misleading, there are legitimate methods of budget analysis that can be helpful in judging the financial performance of incumbent office holders.
As a case in point, we’ve focused on one contested race where finances are at the center of the campaign and where the stakes are high: the race for supervisor of Columbia County’s largest town, Kinderhook, where the four-term incumbent, Douglas McGivney, is running against Gary Strevell, who has served since 2003 as Mayor of Valatie, one of the incorporated villages within the town.
With local elections fast approaching, the time seems apt to highlight findings from our municipal budget research that may prompt voters to ask tough questions of incumbent office holders and may help candidates provide convincing answers.
We’ve compared data for 28 towns and ten villages in Columbia and northern Dutchess counties with the aim of identifying the best and worst municipalities in terms of their recent financial management, a crucial test for any elected official. The data, from the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC), provide preliminary answers to three basic fiscal questions: 1) How high are taxes in the town or village relative to its peer group; 2) How much have the municipality’s property taxes increased over the past three years; and 3) Are large future tax increases likely due to the town government’s failure to invest sufficiently in upgrading its highway department and road network, which typically account for two-thirds of town spending.
The results of our research, tabulated below, offer merely a rough sketch of fiscal performance, a handy reference guide for voters and candidates seeking to assess the strengths and weaknesses of current office holders.
Control of many town boards in our region is up for grabs this November, and with it decisions on proposed zoning ordinances, preservation efforts and assessment standards. In these critical local elections, which will affect the future of your lifestyle here for decades to come, literally a handful of votes can tip the scales.
We urge all readers who own or rent a home here to register and vote in their Hudson Valley towns.
Re-registering to vote from your primary residence to your second home, whether owned or rented, is simple, entirely legal and carries virtually no risk, as a website developed by the New York Democratic Lawyers Council makes clear. Please visit the site, CountryVote.org , which has convincing and authoritative answers to any questions about voting where your second home is located. (The only case where re-registering may cause complications, according to the site, is for rent-controlled tenants in New York City who are already in violation of the program’s guidelines.)
In order to change your registration, all you need to do is fill out the attached Registration Form with your country address. If you are unable to be here on Election Day, it is easy to apply for an Absentee Ballot once you have registered.
If you are an owner or renter of a second home and you are not registered here, please fill out the form and mail it in no later than October 12!
If you are registered here, please remember to vote on November 6!
If you have friends or neighbors who are not registered here and could be, please send them a link to this site today!
I sent the following letter to Pine Plains Supervisor Gregg Pulver, urging his board to eliminate generous incentives to developers in the town's proposed new zoning law.
Supervisor Pulver,
As your Town Board reviews the many controversial land use policies proposed in the Draft Zoning Law, there is one issue that all quarters of the community seem to agree on: a desire to promote more affordable housing for the benefit of Pine Plains residents who would otherwise be unable to buy a home in the town.
But the proposed ordinance, rather than devising a system that offers economic help to deserving residents, instead transfers most of the benefits to large-scale developers through so-called “density bonus” incentives. This seems to run counter to anyone’s interest—except the developers’—and I would urge you to revise the affordable housing regulations currently included in the plan.
Two country neighbors, the towns of Gallatin and Taghkanic in southern Columbia County, have a lot in common: rolling vistas of wooded, sparsely populated hills, abundant farms, and little commercial activity or road traffic to disturb the tranquil surroundings. But beneath their rustic setting, in the realm of budget discipline and financial health, the two adjacent towns are worlds apart.
Hillsdale Supervisor Art Baer’s letter to The Independent newspaper criticizing my last “Views From Gallatin” column takes aim at what he describes as my “superficial analysis and presentation of data” comparing tax rates and other fiscal measures of 28 towns in our region.
I would like to respond to each of his points, but first I would reiterate that the purpose of the budget columns and database is “to shed light on what drives our property taxes, and what we can do to control them” by comparing financial profiles of towns which may be facing very different fiscal challenges. As I wrote in the May 29 column for The Independent, the data, provided by the Office of the State Comptroller, “may not reflect the quality of services offered by different towns.”
"I'd rather be here than anywhere else. To me this is home, and it is wonderful to be here. This is as close to a Norman Rockwell moment as you can imagine. It makes you proud to be a citizen of this town, this state, this nation."
-- Governor Eliot Spitzer speaking at Memorial Day
celebrations in Pine Plains
