The (Sour) Grapes of Ralph

I would like to thank all those who came out to vote in the Village of Woodbury election. I especially thank the voters who voted for the Preservation Team: Ben Meyers, George Pedersen and Fred Ungerer.

This election was riddled with misleading and outright misrepresented and undeliverable promises by the Common Sense Party. However, around 65 percent of the voters were able to see through the smoke and mirrors, with the Common Sense Party candidates being elected with around only 35 percent of the votes, clearly not a mandate.

Actually, there are 6,350 registered voters in the Village of Woodbury, with 1,298 voting in this election, about 20 percent, with and average of 470 voting for the Common Sense Party candidates. This means about 7 percent of all village registered voters elected the new mayor and two trustees.
This tells all of us that staying home and not voting is not a good idea. Why let the few tell the many how our village should be governed?

Keep an eye on your Village Board and make them accountable to you.

Ralph Caruso, Chairman
Highland Mills

Drip, Drip, Drip

Kiryas Joel has come out with an amended FEIS on their pipeline plan. Now we're hearing about a proposed link up of water systems throughout Orange County (see below).

Good idea? Bad idea? Who's paying attention?

Orange County study calls for 19 water system links

By Chris Mckenna
Times Herald-Record
March 25, 2009 6:00 AM
GOSHEN — Orange County is proposing that 19 links be built among municipal water systems to help those with potential shortages, channel development and share supplies during droughts and other emergencies.

The so-called interconnections are among the recommendations in a plan the Water Authority has developed to safeguard the patchwork of wells, reservoirs and other resources that supply drinking water to almost three-quarters of the county's population.

The 245-page draft projects that municipalities will have plenty of water overall to keep pace with population growth through 2018, the endpoint of the study three consulting firms did for the authority.

But supplies will vary widely from one municipality to another by that time: Some will be flush with water while as many as seven could either run short or barely satisfy demand, according to the plan.

"We have plenty of water, but it's not necessarily in the right locations," said Planning Commissioner David Church, whose department oversees the authority.

The plan suggests erecting more storage tanks and strengthening conservation efforts. But it also provides the most detailed proposal to date for a series of regional water systems — or miniloops — that County Executive Ed Diana has long touted.

These scattered connections would be a more modest successor to a colossal water-loop idea the county conceived decades ago, only to see it collapse in the early '90s because of its high cost and lack of support from the municipalities.
The plan calls for immediate action on seven of those links, including one that would stretch 4.5 miles to connect the water-rich Village of Cornwall-on-Hudson with the Village of Washingtonville, which is expected to run low within a decade.

Shortages were also foreseen in the Villages of Goshen, Highland Falls, Monroe, Kiryas Joel and the cities of Middletown and Newburgh — although the plan acknowledges potential errors in the calculations for Newburgh, Middletown and Highland Falls.

To Resign or Not?

The new Village Board members take office in early April.

Mike's term on the Town Board is up this November.

If Mike resigns then John, Bo and Carlton will handpick his replacement. If he stays on, it will be up to the voters.

There is no law against his holding both positions, but should he?

What do you folks think?

Go Vote

Noon 'til 9 PM

Village Hall
(Above the Highland Mills Fire House)

Crapping In Your Ear

Perhaps to conserve paper, the late hitting lie is traveling by word of mouth.

The lie: If one particular slate wins, the incoming mayor will invoke a little known state law and downsize the Village Board to three members.

There is no such plan.

Because

There is no such law.

This is the droppings left by the male cow.

Who started passing this around? We don’t know, we can only guess.

The Silence of the Uncle?

A number of posters, or, likely, one poster, a number of times, has called on the Uncle to close up shop until after the election. He has gone so far as to claim that to do so would honor those who have fought to protect us.

The soldiers who took up arms (and too often laid down their lives) for this country did so to defend the people’s right to have these debates. It is no honor to them to seek to silence the voices we despise.

The best answer to lies and smears is truth, not censorship.

What drew me to this country was its ability to withstand lively, even ugly, debate without it leading to mobs in the plazas. I have seen enough of those.

I would hope that you are wise enough to tell baseless slander from supported fact. I would hope that you care enough about your community and your homes to decide your votes on something more tangible than anonymous accusations.

What appears here should never be the end of a search for truth, but, at best, a start. If you read something here that interests or disturbs you, make the effort to go find out more.

If you have questions, post them. If the answers don’t satisfy, look further.

But silence is never the answer.

The Bottom Line

It comes down to this:

If you want Caruso to run Woodbury, vote for the Preservation Party.

If you don't want Caruso to run Woodbury, vote for the Community Party or the Common Sense Party.

And if you don't think that Caruso intends to pull the strings if his candidates get elected, wake up.

When Joan Caruso (no relation) was Town Supervisor, Ralph "informed" her that she was to clear all town appointments and hires with him. She ignored him.

When Sheila Conroy was elected Town Supervisor, Ralph told her how she was supposed to vote. She ignored him.

After that Ralph tried to make damned sure that his candidates understood who was boss.

He managed to hold onto Mike Aronowitz for quite a while, but in the end Mike started thinking for himself. Some of you may remember Ralph's public tirade against Mike in Town Hall.

John Burke remains content to let Ralph do his thinking for him.

In this election, Caruso is trying to stay deep in the shadows, but there is no way he would back Meyers, Pederson and Ungerer unless he felt secure that they would carry out his wishes.

If that appeals to you, go for it. If not, stop it. Either way, vote!

Ugly Betty

This blog has gotten uglier than usual (if such a concept can be imagined).

The Uncle is not guiltless, nor does he have any desire to be so. But at least he has attempted to be stylishly offensive.

On Wednesday we vote for mayor and two trustees. Nine walk in, three survive.

Thursday will thus be recriminations day.

Do attempt to bear in mind that you all have to live here - at least until the real estate market stabilizes.

The Poison Pen of DePalma

On the Clowning Around thread some posters have asked what we can expect from Caruso in the Late Hitting Lie category.

What's your guess?

In any case, as soon as you see one send it along to : cuzzincookie@hotmail.com

The End Of The Affair

How do we break this to you? Are you sitting down?

Well, um, OK, Ralph doesn't love the Pieman.

We don't know how it happened - Did Ralph find him cheating with another main squeeze? Did a jealous Don Siebold muddy the water? Or was it just one of those things?

Who can say, but the love is gone. And when Ralph's love is gone, you're gone too.

So Ralph and the peanut gallery (Ankle Biter, Rump Roast, Mrs. Ralph) all trooped down to Village Hall and demanded that the Pieman be banished from Woodbury. Heaven forfend, a fate worse than death!

And if the Village Board shrinks from this command, well, Ralph's got his own brand spanking new Village Board waiting in the wings.

Oh what shall become of our dear Pieman? Sob, sob! Does this spell the end? Will he have to move in with John Burke? Does Burke snore? And will Amanda discover that Hermione is her long lost sister?

Keep tuned to this station for the next episode of

As The Stomach Churns

Clowning Around

Considering all the depressing negativity being expressed on this blog of late, the Uncle would like to thank Don Siebold for his hilarious letter to the Times Herald Record.

Every once in a while we need a good laugh and there have been few things funnier this week than his reference to the Preservation Team as people "who have no hidden agenda and are not beholden to special interest groups."

Thanks again Don.

The Record's Editorial

Opinion
The Woodburys look for ways to save money

March 05, 2009
This might not be the year that the Woodburys unravel their tangled governmental web, but at least most candidates for village office are talking about how to minimize the extra costs.

Three years ago, voters approved the creation of an overlay government, adding a village atop a town, in the hope that the new layer would provide more protection for any possible attempts by the nearby Village of Kiryas Joel to annex land and expand. No one knows if such extra protection was necessary, but all taxpayers now know that they are paying a price for the decision.

While many municipalities and school districts are moving, albeit slowly, or studying, albeit grudgingly, the possibilities of saving money by merging operations, sharing services or even dissolving one entity into another, Woodbury went the other way.

At first, there was lots of talk about how this would not cost any more. Now, there's some talk about how the extra costs that inevitably showed up could be reduced, although not eliminated.

There is one way to bring the costs back to where they were. That would be for the voters to conclude that one government offers enough protection and can provide services more efficiently than two.

It might take a few more elections, a few more years of realizing that no area the size of the Woodburys needs so many overlapping governments with their associated inefficiencies and costs. For now, talk of minimizing the damage for the misguided vote is refreshing.

A Bizarre Suggestion

Most of the recent postings have consisted of calling someone or other an idiot, a liar, a bitch, a shithead or even something nasty.

While this elevated discussion is certainly valuable, just for a change of pace, does anyone have something positive to say about any of the candidates? And no, I don't mean "I'm POSITIVE that so and so is an idiot, a liar, a bitch and a shithead."

So, this lonesome thread will be kept free of vituperation and open to arguments favoring your candidate of choice.

Why should we vote FOR someone?

What makes me think that this will be a very quiet part of town?

Eyewitness, Nu?

Merger idea heats up Village of Woodbury candidates' debate

By Chris Mckenna
Times Herald-Record
March 04, 2009 6:00 AM

CENTRAL VALLEY — The big question for nine Woodbury candidates Tuesday night was how to limit the cost of the extra layer of government residents brought upon themselves three years ago by voting to create a village within their town.

In a debate at Central Valley Elementary School sponsored by the citizens group OCEAN, three slates of contenders for mayor and two trustee seats threw out a litany of tax-cutting ideas that included reducing the use of consultants and more aggressive grant-seeking.

But the proposal promising the greater savings — and dominating much of the debate time — was the pledge by the Common Sense Party to seek to consolidate the town and village governments, thereby eliminating a board of paid elected officials and other duplications of costs.

"That would save you $600,000 to $700,000 a year," said Michael Queenan, a town councilman who's running for mayor on the Common Sense ticket. "That's currently what it's costing you to run the village right now."

In legal parlance, he and his running mates are proposing to create a coterminous town-village, similar to several other places in New York that have a town and village with identical borders operating under a single government.
The only problem for Woodbury: its town and village are not coterminous. Their borders are nearly the same, except that the town also encompasses part of the Village of Harriman, which also sits in the Town of Monroe.

The Common Sense candidates propose to rectify that problem with special legislation in Albany — but the other two contenders are uniformly skeptical.
"It's a pie-in-the-sky idea," said Sandra Capriglione, a trustee candidate on the CommUNITY Party slate.

The three mayoral candidates running on March 18 are incumbent Stephanie Berean-Weeks of the CommUNITY Party; Ben Meyers of the Preservation Party; and Queenan.

The six candidates for two trustee seats are: Tim Egan and Tom Flood of the Common Sense Party; George Pederson and Fred Ungerer of the Preservation Party; and Fred Lindlaw and Sandy Capriglione of the CommUNITY Party.

Any of you folks actually attend?

What are your impressions of what went down?