Caruso Finally Shows Up At A Debate

Pieman vs Cow Pie

My View: Village of Woodbury worth the cost and working well
By Ralph Caruso
August 15, 2007

In response to the editorial July 19 ("It takes a village to raise the cost"), I find the editorial page editor's opinions misleading at the least.

The Village of Woodbury was proposed only after considerable research and planning targeted at not having multiple villages in the Town of Woodbury. The Town of Woodbury now has the Village of Woodbury and a portion of the Village of Harriman. We are keeping too many layers of government from occurring, because all the lands in Woodbury are now covered by these villages, meaning no more villages can be created in the Town of Woodbury.

The additional cost to the residents of both the Village and Town of Woodbury is about $1.40 per $1,000 of assessed evaluation annually. The homes in Woodbury are assessed at 40 percent of value. A home valued at $250,000 is assessed at $100,000, and pays about $140 to operate the village government annually. Districts and services transferred from the town to the village do not result in duplication of services or costs. The expense for these transferred districts and services will be taxed by the village, while the town will reduce the taxes to the residents by an equal amount for future tax years.

Initially, the village charged everyone $223.38 for sewer use, because the fiscal year of the village runs from June 1, 2007, through May 31, 2008, and the town's fiscal year runs from Jan. 1, 2007, through Dec. 31, 2007, requiring the village to collect operation and maintenance taxes for sewer use for the five 2008 overlap months.

The taxpayers of Woodbury should not be fooled by the Times Herald-Record, which continually tells Woodbury residents what's good for them, and they should not be fooled by those who opposed the creation of the Village of Woodbury because of their special interests. The present Village Board is made up of members who opposed the creation of the village and contributed to the additional cost to Woodbury residents of about $60 annually more than proposed by the Citizens for the Preservation of Woodbury and its candidates. However, the protection the Village of Woodbury affords all Woodbury residents is well worth it.

The creation of the Village of Woodbury represents one of 555 created in New York state. Village law governs village organization and operations and places the responsibility with the mayor and trustees to make it work. That's why the Woodbury taxpayers elected them.

Part of their responsibility is to provide the residents fire protection. The present village mayor and trustees have been advised that village law provides for the creation of a village volunteer fire department and that the present town volunteer fire department cannot operate with Village Law 2-252.

Although not elected mayor, I continue to disagree and believe that the present Town of Woodbury volunteer fire department can operate as a joint town/village volunteer fire department, by applying Town Laws 11, 11a and 189a and Village Law 22-2210, 22-2212.

The greater majority of villages in the state have village volunteer fire departments. Regardless, our volunteer firefighters will continue to serve our community faithfully as they always have.

State law on annexation is the real trouble for Woodbury
By Jonathan Swiller
August 26, 2007

The Record's July 19 editorial discussing the new Village of Woodbury contained a number of inaccuracies. An Aug. 15 "My View" by Ralph Caruso rebuts the editorial but is, itself, misleading.

The editorial says that the "Legislature (should) step in and help the town and village (of Woodbury) negotiate a truce between the competing town and village water, sewer and fire districts." Not only are there no duplicate districts (town districts are being dissolved as the village takes over these functions), but no "truce" is needed. The town and village boards worked well together.

More troubling is the editorial's comment that "it is time for the officials in Woodbury to admit that they made a mistake ... and that they could use some state help to untangle this mess."

While forming a village creates problems, the "officials of Woodbury" have no mistakes to admit. With the single exception of Town Supervisor John Burke, no member of the town or village board favored the formation of the village. And both town and village officials immediately asked for "state help to untangle this mess." It was Ralph Caruso, himself, who was the prime advocate for forming a village.
Caruso now seeks to justify this by pointing out that having the Village of Woodbury prevents the formation of many smaller villages.

But during his two-year-plus campaign to create a village, this was never a major argument for going forward. Rather, Caruso repeatedly attempted to persuade people that forming a village would prevent annexation of Woodbury lands into Kiryas Joel. In fact, a village gave no protection against annexation.

Further, Caruso loudly claimed that creating a village would not appreciably increase taxes. Now Woodbury residents are seeing the painful reality in their additional tax bills. Caruso attempts to both minimize this increase and, at the same time, blame it on the Village Board.

But the increase is not negligible, and one of the reasons these board members were elected is that they told the public the truth — that having a village will be a financial burden. The board is doing its best to keep taxes down but has no choice but to pay expenses that Caruso pretended would not exist, such as unavoidable insurance and legal fees.

Throughout his campaign to become mayor of Woodbury, Caruso claimed that there would be no need to dissolve the Woodbury Fire District. He was refuted on this repeatedly, and yet he remained adamant. Now he performs a bit of a shell game. He states that he still insists that Woodbury can continue to have a volunteer fire department.

Of course it can have a volunteer fire department. That was never questioned. What was questioned was Caruso's false assertion that the town's fire district, under the control of its fire commissioners, would not have to be dissolved. He was wrong. And now he pretends that he was speaking about something else entirely.

Lastly, while the Record calls for state intervention to limit the proliferation of overlapping layers of government, the paper ought to be calling on Albany to address the underlying impetus that led to the creation of the Village of Woodbury: fear that Kiryas Joel would annex town lands. This very fear was exploited by Ralph Caruso to convince voters to form the village.

The Record should join with us in calling on the state Legislature to reform current annexation law so that targeted towns and villages would have a greater say in what becomes of their territory. That, at least, could help prevent the creation of future, unnecessary villages.