Rockland Review, April 10,2009

Yes, John we are serious about reducing taxes, spending and debt in the Village of Piermont. Otherwise, thanks for a great article reprinted below:


From Rockland Review, Friday, April 10, 2009
Natives Are Restless in Piermont
Commentary by John lurica
It has been brought to my attention that an uprising may be starting down in Pier­mont with a mailing last week by a group calling itself Unify Piermont. The members of the group seem to be a cross section of the people of the Village from each political party. The unifying force holding this group together is based upon the high taxes and high spending in the Vil­lage of Piermont.
The mailing itself was fairly simple in scope, first telling the reader that the Village debt has increased from 1.5 million dollars to 4 million dollars in 5 years. The letter points out that the repayment of this debt adds $700,000 in Piermont prop­erty tax payments each and every year in the future. The letter goes on to compare the situation in Piermont against other Villages in the County. The communication com­pares Piermont which has an annual budget of 4.7 million dollars, which is a spending of $1,741 per resident, to Nyack which has almost the same budget amount Nyack spends 4.9 million dollars, but with its much larger size,
and nearly the same budget amount, spends only $700 per resident. The lowest Vil­lage spending in the list was Chestnut Ridge, spending a mere $342 per resident. The per resident spending for the Villages of Pomona and Suffern was $567 and $524 respectively.
The mailing asked for people to take an interest. It wanted to know if people wanted to become involved or if they wanted to receive future mailings. For future mailings, one could call 845-613-7675, leaving a name and address or sign up by email at UnifyPiermont@Live.com. The group also has a web site, which had very little on it, because I viewed it on the first day only moments after it went online. The web site is at www.unifypiermont. blogspot.com.
I have not yet figured out, what this is all about. Are these people serious about running a challenge in the next election? Is this a mailing to feel out to see how people will respond to this information, with the Unify Piermont People going on from there? In any case, the whole thing is worth watching. Many of the Unify Piermont People have ran for office before, and sometimes on opposite sides. Now that they seem to be working together and things may become a bit more in­teresting. The reason why I have trouble deciding if the senders of the communica­tion are serious is because the flyer was written in a significantly passive voice, making it easy for any of the promoters to step away from it in the future. There is nothing I like better than a good competitive campaign. Watching things like this are better than watching the Super Bowl.
It was back in the early 70's that Piermont had an extremely interesting Village Board. At that time I was the Village Engineer, and the Board consisted of one Democrat, one Republican, one Conservative, one Right to Lifer, and one from the United Citizen's Party. There were no covert activities in the days of that Board. With five different philosophies, it was impossible to predict what the outcome of a meet­ing was going to be. Each meeting was an adventure where everything was fully discussed in public.