Last week Nan Hayworth voted for the Ryan Budget Plan which would end Medicare for those currently under 55 - replacing it with a voucher which future seniors could use towards buying private insurance.
Good idea, bad idea or "let's only talk about Kiryas Joel"?
Friday, April 22, 2011
The Spiritual Self-Deception of Matthew Continetti
Kiryas Joel and the redefinition of ‘poverty’
By Matthew Continetti
Continetti is guest-blogging for The Post.
I can't be the only person who’s absolutely fascinated by this New York Times story on Kiryas Joel, N.Y., the poorest community in the United States. More than 70 percent of Kiryas Joel's residents fall beneath the poverty line — but the social pathologies we typically associate with deprivation are practically nonexistent.
The reason is that Kiryas Joel is populated almost entirely by Hasidic Jews. Here's Timesman Sam Roberts:
Poverty is largely invisible in the village. Parking lots are full, but strollers and tricycles seem to outnumber cars. A jeweler shares a storefront with a check-cashing office. To avoid stigmatizing poorer young couples or instilling guilt in parents, the chief rabbi recently decreed that diamond rings were not acceptable as engagement gifts and that one-man bands would suffice at weddings. Many residents who were approached by a reporter said they did not want to talk about their finances.
The social workers quoted in the piece seem flummoxed by Kiryas Joel. They realize that the community’s lack of income and its surplus of unusual occupations (i.e., Talmudic scholar) make residents eligible for cash transfers and grants. But the social workers also seem to suggest that the Jews of Kiryas Joel don't deserve welfare benefits because they aren’t, well, miserable.
I e-mailed Hudson Institute scholar Tevi Troy to get his take. “Seems to me that the people of KJ have made a conscious decision to pursue religious fulfillment over wealth pursuit,” Troy wrote back. “In doing so, their community is following a more 19th-century model, with strong community support for poor members of the community, and low tolerance for drugs, crime, or out-of-wedlock childrearing. Our current social service system was not designed with this type of community in mind, which is why some people in the NYT grumbled about social service dollars going to people who appear poor but happy.”
Articles such as Roberts’s lend support to research by Arthur Brooks and Derek Bok. They’ve both shown that, past a certain point, happiness is completely unrelated to income. As you read stories like these, you begin to wonder whether poverty is more a spiritual than economic condition. And if that’s the case, the residents of Kiryas Joel are as rich as Croesus.
By Matthew Continetti
Continetti is guest-blogging for The Post.
I can't be the only person who’s absolutely fascinated by this New York Times story on Kiryas Joel, N.Y., the poorest community in the United States. More than 70 percent of Kiryas Joel's residents fall beneath the poverty line — but the social pathologies we typically associate with deprivation are practically nonexistent.
The reason is that Kiryas Joel is populated almost entirely by Hasidic Jews. Here's Timesman Sam Roberts:
Poverty is largely invisible in the village. Parking lots are full, but strollers and tricycles seem to outnumber cars. A jeweler shares a storefront with a check-cashing office. To avoid stigmatizing poorer young couples or instilling guilt in parents, the chief rabbi recently decreed that diamond rings were not acceptable as engagement gifts and that one-man bands would suffice at weddings. Many residents who were approached by a reporter said they did not want to talk about their finances.
The social workers quoted in the piece seem flummoxed by Kiryas Joel. They realize that the community’s lack of income and its surplus of unusual occupations (i.e., Talmudic scholar) make residents eligible for cash transfers and grants. But the social workers also seem to suggest that the Jews of Kiryas Joel don't deserve welfare benefits because they aren’t, well, miserable.
I e-mailed Hudson Institute scholar Tevi Troy to get his take. “Seems to me that the people of KJ have made a conscious decision to pursue religious fulfillment over wealth pursuit,” Troy wrote back. “In doing so, their community is following a more 19th-century model, with strong community support for poor members of the community, and low tolerance for drugs, crime, or out-of-wedlock childrearing. Our current social service system was not designed with this type of community in mind, which is why some people in the NYT grumbled about social service dollars going to people who appear poor but happy.”
Articles such as Roberts’s lend support to research by Arthur Brooks and Derek Bok. They’ve both shown that, past a certain point, happiness is completely unrelated to income. As you read stories like these, you begin to wonder whether poverty is more a spiritual than economic condition. And if that’s the case, the residents of Kiryas Joel are as rich as Croesus.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
The Times Notices KJ
A Village With the Numbers, Not the Image, of the Poorest Place
By SAM ROBERTS
The poorest place in the United States is not a dusty Texas border town, a hollow in Appalachia, a remote Indian reservation or a blighted urban neighborhood. It has no slums or homeless people. No one who lives there is shabbily dressed or has to go hungry. Crime is virtually nonexistent.
And, yet, officially, at least, none of the nation’s 3,700 villages, towns or cities with more than 10,000 people has a higher proportion of its population living in poverty than Kiryas Joel, N.Y., a community of mostly garden apartments and town houses 50 miles northwest of New York City in suburban Orange County.
About 70 percent of the village’s 21,000 residents live in households whose income falls below the federal poverty threshold, according to the Census Bureau. Median family income ($17,929) and per capita income ($4,494) rank lower than any other comparable place in the country. Nearly half of the village’s households reported less than $15,000 in annual income.
About half of the residents receive food stamps, and one-third receive Medicaid benefits and rely on federal vouchers to help pay their housing costs.
Kiryas Joel’s unlikely ranking results largely from religious and cultural factors. Ultra-Orthodox Satmar Hasidic Jews predominate in the village; many of them moved there from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, beginning in the 1970s to accommodate a population that was growing geometrically.
Women marry young, remain in the village to raise their families and, according to religious strictures, do not use birth control. As a result, the median age (under 12) is the lowest in the country and the household size (nearly six) is the highest. Mothers rarely work outside the home while their children are young.
Most residents, raised as Yiddish speakers, do not speak much English. And most men devote themselves to Torah and Talmud studies rather than academic training — only 39 percent of the residents are high school graduates, and less than 5 percent have a bachelor’s degree. Several hundred adults study full time at religious institutions.
The concentration of poverty in Kiryas Joel, (pronounced KIR-yas Jo-EL) is not a deliberate strategy by the leaders of the Satmar sect, said Joel Oberlander, 30, a title examiner who lives in Williamsburg. “It puts a great strain on their resources,” he said. “They would love to see the better earners of the community relocate as well to balance the situation, but why would they?”
Still, the Census Bureau’s latest poverty estimates, based on the 2005-9 American Community Survey released last year, do not take into account the community’s tradition of philanthropy and no-interest loans. Moreover, some families may be eligible for public benefits because they earn low salaries from the religious congregations and other nonprofit groups that run businesses and religious schools. Nearly half of the village’s residents with jobs work for the public or parochial schools.
“If people want to work in a religious setting and make less than they would earn at B & H, that’s a choice people make,” said Gedalye Szegedin, the village administrator, referring to the giant photo and video retail store in Manhattan whose owner and many of whose employees are members of the Satmar sect.
“I don’t want to be judgmental,” Mr. Szegedin added. “I wouldn’t call it a poor community. I would say some are deprived. I would call it a community with a lot of income-related challenges.”
Because the community typically votes as a bloc, it wields disproportionate political influence, which enables it to meet those challenges creatively. A luxurious 60-bed postnatal maternal care center was built with $10 million in state and federal grants. Mothers can recuperate there for two weeks away from their large families. Rates, which begin at $120 a day, are not covered by Medicaid, although, Mr. Szegedin said, poorer women are typically subsidized by wealthier ones.
One lawmaker, Assemblywoman Nancy Calhoun, a Republican who represents an adjacent district in Orange County, has demanded an investigation by state officials into why Kiryas Joel received grants for the center. “They may be truly poor on paper,” Ms. Calhoun said. “They are not truly poor in reality.”
The village does aggressively pursue economic opportunities. A kosher poultry slaughterhouse, which processes 40,000 chickens a day, is community owned and considered a nonprofit organization. A bakery that produces 800 pounds of matzo daily is owned by one of the village’s synagogues.
Most children attend religious schools, but transportation and textbooks are publicly financed. Several hundred handicapped students are educated by the village’s own public school district, which, because virtually all the students are poor and disabled, is eligible for sizable state and federal government grants.
Statistically, no place comes close to Kiryas Joel. In Athens, Ohio, which ranks second in poverty, 56 percent of the residents are classified as poor.
Still, poverty is largely invisible in the village. Parking lots are full, but strollers and tricycles seem to outnumber cars. A jeweler shares a storefront with a check-cashing office. To avoid stigmatizing poorer young couples or instilling guilt in parents, the chief rabbi recently decreed that diamond rings were not acceptable as engagement gifts and that one-man bands would suffice at weddings. Many residents who were approached by a reporter said they did not want to talk about their finances.
“I cannot say as a group that they are cheating the system,” said William B. Helmreich, a sociology professor who specializes in Judaic studies at City College of the City University of New York, “but I do think that they have, no pun intended, unorthodox methods of getting financial support.”
All of which prompts a fundamental question: Are as many as 7 in 10 Kiryas Joel residents really poor?
“It is, in a sense, a statistical anomaly,” Professor Helmreich said. “They are clearly not wealthy, and they do have a lot of children. They spend whatever discretionary income they have on clothing, food and baby carriages. They don’t belong to country clubs or go to movies or go on trips to Aruba.
“They’re not scrounging around, though. They’re not presenting a picture of poverty as if you would go to a Mexican neighborhood in Corona. They do have organizations that lend money interest-free. They’re also supported by members of the community who are wealthier — it’s not declarable income if somebody buys them a baby carriage.”
David Jolly, the social services commissioner for Orange County, also said that while the number of people receiving benefits seemed disproportionately high, the number of caseloads — a family considered as a unit — was much less aberrant. A family of eight who reports as much as $48,156 in income is still eligible for food stamps, although the threshold for cash assistance ($37,010), which relatively few village residents receive, is lower.
Joel Steinberg, who lives in the village with his family and works as a comptroller for a real estate firm, said that before Passover, “the No. 1 project in the community was raising funds for food.”
Mr. Steinberg recalled encountering a neighbor soliciting help door-to-door last fall: “He had received two shut-off notices from his utility company, he’s behind with tuition and that his food stamps gets used up before the end of the month. He’s paying too much for transportation to his job, and he had had an unexpected expense that forced him into debt.”
William E. Rapfogel, chief executive of the Metropolitan Jewish Council on Poverty, said, “Sure, there are probably people taking advantage and people in the underground economy getting benefits they’re not entitled to, but there are also a lot of poor people.”
Mr. Szegedin, the village administrator, said critics tended to forget that state taxpayers were generally spared because thousands of village children are enrolled in religious schools. Nearby, the Monroe-Woodbury school district, with roughly the same school-age population, spends about $150 million annually, about one-third of which comes from the state. (Albany provides about $5 million of Kiryas Joel’s $16 million public school budget.)
“You also have no drug-treatment programs, no juvenile delinquency program, we’re not clogging the court system with criminal cases, you’re not running programs for AIDS or teen pregnancy,” he said. “I haven’t run the numbers, but I think it’s a wash.”
By SAM ROBERTS
The poorest place in the United States is not a dusty Texas border town, a hollow in Appalachia, a remote Indian reservation or a blighted urban neighborhood. It has no slums or homeless people. No one who lives there is shabbily dressed or has to go hungry. Crime is virtually nonexistent.
And, yet, officially, at least, none of the nation’s 3,700 villages, towns or cities with more than 10,000 people has a higher proportion of its population living in poverty than Kiryas Joel, N.Y., a community of mostly garden apartments and town houses 50 miles northwest of New York City in suburban Orange County.
About 70 percent of the village’s 21,000 residents live in households whose income falls below the federal poverty threshold, according to the Census Bureau. Median family income ($17,929) and per capita income ($4,494) rank lower than any other comparable place in the country. Nearly half of the village’s households reported less than $15,000 in annual income.
About half of the residents receive food stamps, and one-third receive Medicaid benefits and rely on federal vouchers to help pay their housing costs.
Kiryas Joel’s unlikely ranking results largely from religious and cultural factors. Ultra-Orthodox Satmar Hasidic Jews predominate in the village; many of them moved there from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, beginning in the 1970s to accommodate a population that was growing geometrically.
Women marry young, remain in the village to raise their families and, according to religious strictures, do not use birth control. As a result, the median age (under 12) is the lowest in the country and the household size (nearly six) is the highest. Mothers rarely work outside the home while their children are young.
Most residents, raised as Yiddish speakers, do not speak much English. And most men devote themselves to Torah and Talmud studies rather than academic training — only 39 percent of the residents are high school graduates, and less than 5 percent have a bachelor’s degree. Several hundred adults study full time at religious institutions.
The concentration of poverty in Kiryas Joel, (pronounced KIR-yas Jo-EL) is not a deliberate strategy by the leaders of the Satmar sect, said Joel Oberlander, 30, a title examiner who lives in Williamsburg. “It puts a great strain on their resources,” he said. “They would love to see the better earners of the community relocate as well to balance the situation, but why would they?”
Still, the Census Bureau’s latest poverty estimates, based on the 2005-9 American Community Survey released last year, do not take into account the community’s tradition of philanthropy and no-interest loans. Moreover, some families may be eligible for public benefits because they earn low salaries from the religious congregations and other nonprofit groups that run businesses and religious schools. Nearly half of the village’s residents with jobs work for the public or parochial schools.
“If people want to work in a religious setting and make less than they would earn at B & H, that’s a choice people make,” said Gedalye Szegedin, the village administrator, referring to the giant photo and video retail store in Manhattan whose owner and many of whose employees are members of the Satmar sect.
“I don’t want to be judgmental,” Mr. Szegedin added. “I wouldn’t call it a poor community. I would say some are deprived. I would call it a community with a lot of income-related challenges.”
Because the community typically votes as a bloc, it wields disproportionate political influence, which enables it to meet those challenges creatively. A luxurious 60-bed postnatal maternal care center was built with $10 million in state and federal grants. Mothers can recuperate there for two weeks away from their large families. Rates, which begin at $120 a day, are not covered by Medicaid, although, Mr. Szegedin said, poorer women are typically subsidized by wealthier ones.
One lawmaker, Assemblywoman Nancy Calhoun, a Republican who represents an adjacent district in Orange County, has demanded an investigation by state officials into why Kiryas Joel received grants for the center. “They may be truly poor on paper,” Ms. Calhoun said. “They are not truly poor in reality.”
The village does aggressively pursue economic opportunities. A kosher poultry slaughterhouse, which processes 40,000 chickens a day, is community owned and considered a nonprofit organization. A bakery that produces 800 pounds of matzo daily is owned by one of the village’s synagogues.
Most children attend religious schools, but transportation and textbooks are publicly financed. Several hundred handicapped students are educated by the village’s own public school district, which, because virtually all the students are poor and disabled, is eligible for sizable state and federal government grants.
Statistically, no place comes close to Kiryas Joel. In Athens, Ohio, which ranks second in poverty, 56 percent of the residents are classified as poor.
Still, poverty is largely invisible in the village. Parking lots are full, but strollers and tricycles seem to outnumber cars. A jeweler shares a storefront with a check-cashing office. To avoid stigmatizing poorer young couples or instilling guilt in parents, the chief rabbi recently decreed that diamond rings were not acceptable as engagement gifts and that one-man bands would suffice at weddings. Many residents who were approached by a reporter said they did not want to talk about their finances.
“I cannot say as a group that they are cheating the system,” said William B. Helmreich, a sociology professor who specializes in Judaic studies at City College of the City University of New York, “but I do think that they have, no pun intended, unorthodox methods of getting financial support.”
All of which prompts a fundamental question: Are as many as 7 in 10 Kiryas Joel residents really poor?
“It is, in a sense, a statistical anomaly,” Professor Helmreich said. “They are clearly not wealthy, and they do have a lot of children. They spend whatever discretionary income they have on clothing, food and baby carriages. They don’t belong to country clubs or go to movies or go on trips to Aruba.
“They’re not scrounging around, though. They’re not presenting a picture of poverty as if you would go to a Mexican neighborhood in Corona. They do have organizations that lend money interest-free. They’re also supported by members of the community who are wealthier — it’s not declarable income if somebody buys them a baby carriage.”
David Jolly, the social services commissioner for Orange County, also said that while the number of people receiving benefits seemed disproportionately high, the number of caseloads — a family considered as a unit — was much less aberrant. A family of eight who reports as much as $48,156 in income is still eligible for food stamps, although the threshold for cash assistance ($37,010), which relatively few village residents receive, is lower.
Joel Steinberg, who lives in the village with his family and works as a comptroller for a real estate firm, said that before Passover, “the No. 1 project in the community was raising funds for food.”
Mr. Steinberg recalled encountering a neighbor soliciting help door-to-door last fall: “He had received two shut-off notices from his utility company, he’s behind with tuition and that his food stamps gets used up before the end of the month. He’s paying too much for transportation to his job, and he had had an unexpected expense that forced him into debt.”
William E. Rapfogel, chief executive of the Metropolitan Jewish Council on Poverty, said, “Sure, there are probably people taking advantage and people in the underground economy getting benefits they’re not entitled to, but there are also a lot of poor people.”
Mr. Szegedin, the village administrator, said critics tended to forget that state taxpayers were generally spared because thousands of village children are enrolled in religious schools. Nearby, the Monroe-Woodbury school district, with roughly the same school-age population, spends about $150 million annually, about one-third of which comes from the state. (Albany provides about $5 million of Kiryas Joel’s $16 million public school budget.)
“You also have no drug-treatment programs, no juvenile delinquency program, we’re not clogging the court system with criminal cases, you’re not running programs for AIDS or teen pregnancy,” he said. “I haven’t run the numbers, but I think it’s a wash.”
Saturday, April 02, 2011
Pipeline Greenlighted
The New York State Court Appelate Division has denied an appeal by Woodbury and Harriman to reopen their lawsuit against the KJ Pipeline.
This appears to open the way for construction to begin.
Now what?
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
The Double Dip
Student fights state double-dipping
Montgomery native wants loophole cut
By John Sullivan
Times Herald-Record
Published: 2:00 AM - 02/21/11
Montgomery — With recent news of double-dipping state legislators igniting reader anger in newspaper opinion pages and elsewhere, Colin Schmitt half-expected a revolution in state government.
But no such upheaval has come among the majority of rank-and-file state Senate and Assembly members, so Schmitt has decided to lead the way on his own.
"Maybe sometimes a public outcry is enough, but sometimes you need continuous pressure," Schmitt said about his grass-roots campaign to eliminate a loophole that allows certain elected officials to earn pensions as well as full salaries.
The campaign — "Stop NY Double Dip" — is a special project of Schmitt's political action committee, New Dawn, formed in May to help a new generation of leaders take office.
Schmitt, a Montgomery native who became a legislative aide for Assemblywoman Annie Rabbitt, R-C-Greenwood Lake, when he was just 14, hopes to be among those who fill a representative position one day, he said.
He launched stopnydoubledip.com last week to promote a petition drive to close the loophole allowing elected state officials serving before 1995 to concurrently collect their pension and full salary.
Schmitt would also urge creating a retroactive change requiring elected leaders collecting both incomes to choose one or the other.
He would also support a pending bill sponsored by state Sen. Greg Ball and Assemblyman Mike Fitzpatrick to remove politicians from the pension system and move them to 401(k) plans.
State legislators, such as Assemblywoman Nancy Calhoun, R-C-Blooming Grove, and Sen. Bill Larkin, R-C-New Windsor, collect both pension and salary. They contend they are utilizing a benefit available to all state employees.
The payment of pensions in addition to salaries is considered a necessary evil in the public sector, as agencies compete for talent with private-sector jobs that pay a lot more, acknowledge some public policy experts.
But the perception of unfairness is hard to argue with.
"I've talked to a lot of people, who are struggling, and seeing someone who can just snap their fingers to get additional benefits without having to work a second job or anything is really disheartening," said Schmitt, a junior studying politics at The Catholic University of America in Washington.
There are currently 16 members of the state Senate and 46 members of the state Assembly eligible to collect pensions and salaries at the same time, according to Schmitt's research.
"If all those 62 cashed in, it would cost the state nearly $3.5 million a year," he said.
Schmitt plans to spend a good part of his non-study time collecting signatures for his campaign, he said. Saturday, going door to door in the Village of Montgomery, he collected some 50-55 signatures, adding to a list of some 250 responses he's gotten to his website, he said.
"Whether I'm the lone voice standing in the field or not, I'll be talking about this and kicking dirt about it until the next state election in 2012," he said.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Our School Districts (seen from Upstate)
From Websterpost.com
By Matt Schaertl
From WebsterCanandaigua, N.Y. — There is a need for serious review of school funding, but if you think there is waste in the Finger Lakes, take a look downstate.
In Assemblywoman Annie Rabbitt’s district, just northwest of New York City, is the Kiryas Joel School District. The district was founded by the ultra-orthodox Jewish community to educate special-needs children. On their website, they say they provide a “broad array of services in an efficient, professional and expeditious manner” and that the school “has truly been an exemplary partnership, which has made this such a successful American experiment.” Yes, it is a very successful experiment — in showing how not to run a school district.
Kiryas Joel collects $15,000 less from the local residents, per student, than the average school district. Why? They don’t need it. They collect $19,000 per student in state aid — which is 700 percent more than New York’s average school district receives. Worse, they collect $39,000 per student from the federal government every year. Blood boiling yet?
With Victor at $13 and Canandaigua hovering around $50 for “unclassified employee benefits” per pupil, KJSD is spending a whopping $11,543 per year, per student.
I am only speculating, but perhaps teacher benefits there include free mortgage payments. On the plus side, they do have only one-quarter the debt per student as the average district. Hey — kudos to KJSD for almost balancing your checkbook!
In total, America spends $110,884 per student per year for every public school student in that school district. That equates to $1,441,492 of taxes to produce ONE high school diploma. It would be less expensive to pay every student what an enlisted soldier earns from the time they enter kindergarten until they turn 75. It would be cheaper to educate those students by providing each their own individual teacher, plus allow that teacher to spend twice the state’s average cost.
Three miles from that district is the Monroe-Woodbury school system. They too spend more per pupil than any of our local districts, but at $19,088 per student I’d take it. The average home in that district is valued at $250,000 with an average family income 60 percent higher than the state average. Yet the residents pay $2,000 less per student locally than the typical school district. As far as “unclassified employee benefits,” they are similar to Red Jacket and Victor at $9 per student and have the normal amount of debt.
So while Assemblywoman Annie Rabbitt (Conservative by party affiliation, not by action) is, according to her website, trying to save the $8.2 million in funding for the Lake Placid Olympic facility, my question for her is why a school district that is smaller than DeSales is spending $10,000,000 more annually than Red Jacket, has 21 staff members with salaries above $100,000 (as compared to three at Red Jacket, four at Midlakes, five at Bloomfield and 18 at Canandaigua) and why the lowest-paid bus drivers, janitors, aides, office assistants, and cafeteria workers are all making more than $52,000 per year? (Source: www.seethruny.net.)
And by the way, for people like Annie Rabbitt, the Winter Olympics have not been here in three decades — and the committee lets you know eight years in advance if they are coming back. That’s another $240 million we could have saved since 1982. Lease it; take the cash.
By Matt Schaertl
From WebsterCanandaigua, N.Y. — There is a need for serious review of school funding, but if you think there is waste in the Finger Lakes, take a look downstate.
In Assemblywoman Annie Rabbitt’s district, just northwest of New York City, is the Kiryas Joel School District. The district was founded by the ultra-orthodox Jewish community to educate special-needs children. On their website, they say they provide a “broad array of services in an efficient, professional and expeditious manner” and that the school “has truly been an exemplary partnership, which has made this such a successful American experiment.” Yes, it is a very successful experiment — in showing how not to run a school district.
Kiryas Joel collects $15,000 less from the local residents, per student, than the average school district. Why? They don’t need it. They collect $19,000 per student in state aid — which is 700 percent more than New York’s average school district receives. Worse, they collect $39,000 per student from the federal government every year. Blood boiling yet?
With Victor at $13 and Canandaigua hovering around $50 for “unclassified employee benefits” per pupil, KJSD is spending a whopping $11,543 per year, per student.
I am only speculating, but perhaps teacher benefits there include free mortgage payments. On the plus side, they do have only one-quarter the debt per student as the average district. Hey — kudos to KJSD for almost balancing your checkbook!
In total, America spends $110,884 per student per year for every public school student in that school district. That equates to $1,441,492 of taxes to produce ONE high school diploma. It would be less expensive to pay every student what an enlisted soldier earns from the time they enter kindergarten until they turn 75. It would be cheaper to educate those students by providing each their own individual teacher, plus allow that teacher to spend twice the state’s average cost.
Three miles from that district is the Monroe-Woodbury school system. They too spend more per pupil than any of our local districts, but at $19,088 per student I’d take it. The average home in that district is valued at $250,000 with an average family income 60 percent higher than the state average. Yet the residents pay $2,000 less per student locally than the typical school district. As far as “unclassified employee benefits,” they are similar to Red Jacket and Victor at $9 per student and have the normal amount of debt.
So while Assemblywoman Annie Rabbitt (Conservative by party affiliation, not by action) is, according to her website, trying to save the $8.2 million in funding for the Lake Placid Olympic facility, my question for her is why a school district that is smaller than DeSales is spending $10,000,000 more annually than Red Jacket, has 21 staff members with salaries above $100,000 (as compared to three at Red Jacket, four at Midlakes, five at Bloomfield and 18 at Canandaigua) and why the lowest-paid bus drivers, janitors, aides, office assistants, and cafeteria workers are all making more than $52,000 per year? (Source: www.seethruny.net.)
And by the way, for people like Annie Rabbitt, the Winter Olympics have not been here in three decades — and the committee lets you know eight years in advance if they are coming back. That’s another $240 million we could have saved since 1982. Lease it; take the cash.
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
The Uncle Predicts
There is a very good chance that Mike, Tim and Tom are going to win re-election in the next village election.
One reason for that is their's were the only petitions turned in to Desiree.
Has Ralph lost hope?
Is he hibernating?
Has he recognized reality? (We just through this last one in as a joke)
So, barring a major write-in campaign, the election's outcome is pretty clear.
Can any of you spell U-N-C-L-E?
One reason for that is their's were the only petitions turned in to Desiree.
Has Ralph lost hope?
Is he hibernating?
Has he recognized reality? (We just through this last one in as a joke)
So, barring a major write-in campaign, the election's outcome is pretty clear.
Can any of you spell U-N-C-L-E?
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
The Uncle Goes There
Let's admit it, Woodbury has become boring.
And the Uncle even more so.
And while hackles are raised whenever Dear Old Uncle Betty pretends that there is a world beyond our borders, it may be time to look there.
So, if you hate and despise it, at least that's more of a response than talking about snow would evoke.
So, let us begin with some words of wisdom from Governor Sarah Palin, who today posted a video in response to the shootings in Tucson. Two things that she said particularly caught our attention:
1. "Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them."
2. "Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn."
Now, one can take the position that heated rhetoric is never to be blamed for acts of violence or one can posit that it might, in fact, incite them.
But how in the world is it possible for both to be true?
Just asking.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Hey, It'll Be A Bargain In 2042
Sen. Larkin, Assemblywoman Calhoun collect pensions early
Payments go to pair while still on the job
By John Sullivan
Times Herald-Record
State legislators Nancy Calhoun and William Larkin are among 11 legislators who recently filed retirement papers, which will allow them to receive pensions while still working and collecting public paychecks.
Calhoun, R-C-Blooming Grove, a 10-term assemblywoman, said she will be collecting a $60,400 annual pension starting next year. Larkin, R-C-Cornwall-on-Hudson, a 10-term state senator and former state assemblyman, declined to reveal his pension payment amount.
The payments come on top of the lawmakers' base salaries of $79,500 and the stipends they collect for other legislative duties. The arrangement is permitted under a pension-law loophole.
"It is legal, but it looks terrible," said Blair Horner, legislative director for the New York Public Interest Research Group. "We're at a time when the economy is tanking and state employees will be laid off; I think it rubs salt in the wounds of taxpayers when state officials exploit rules for their own benefit."
In addition to her base salary, Calhoun collected an additional $18,000 this year for serving on committees. Larkin said he did not know his current-year stipend. He received $20,500 in 2007. He currently serves as the Senate whip, as well as on eight legislative committees.
Legally collecting retirement benefits while still working is a perk for civil service workers in New York state. Hundreds of workers have received waivers allowing them to earn more than the $30,000 salary limit on their second civil service job after retiring from their first one.
State and local politicians are exempt from the waiver requirement, though they do have to be at least 65 years old to return to their previous jobs after filing for retirement.
Calhoun turned 65 in July. Larkin is 82.
Both emphasized the legality of their actions under state pension rules.
"This is something that can be done by any government official of New York state," Calhoun said. "I'm not the only person doing it."
"The people who say it's not right, then they should try to change the law," Larkin said. "I earn every single penny I make. I don't have to take a backseat to anybody on my hours of work or on serving my constituents."
Asked why he waited so long to file for the benefit, Larkin said, "I'm just preparing myself for whatever might happen in the future."
Calhoun said that by collecting now, her pension payment will be smaller, thus saving the state money. If she waited until the end of her upcoming two-year term, she said, the payment would be some $4,000 higher per year.
Based on the numbers Calhoun provided, the state will break even and begin saving money in roughly 2042, when Calhoun would be about 97.
Rep. NANCY CALHOUN
R-C-Blooming Grove
Pension: $60,400
Base salary: $79,500
Payment for serving on committees: $18,000
Calhoun, R-C-Blooming Grove, a 10-term assemblywoman, said she will be collecting a $60,400 annual pension starting next year. Larkin, R-C-Cornwall-on-Hudson, a 10-term state senator and former state assemblyman, declined to reveal his pension payment amount.
The payments come on top of the lawmakers' base salaries of $79,500 and the stipends they collect for other legislative duties. The arrangement is permitted under a pension-law loophole.
"It is legal, but it looks terrible," said Blair Horner, legislative director for the New York Public Interest Research Group. "We're at a time when the economy is tanking and state employees will be laid off; I think it rubs salt in the wounds of taxpayers when state officials exploit rules for their own benefit."
In addition to her base salary, Calhoun collected an additional $18,000 this year for serving on committees. Larkin said he did not know his current-year stipend. He received $20,500 in 2007. He currently serves as the Senate whip, as well as on eight legislative committees.
Legally collecting retirement benefits while still working is a perk for civil service workers in New York state. Hundreds of workers have received waivers allowing them to earn more than the $30,000 salary limit on their second civil service job after retiring from their first one.
State and local politicians are exempt from the waiver requirement, though they do have to be at least 65 years old to return to their previous jobs after filing for retirement.
Calhoun turned 65 in July. Larkin is 82.
Both emphasized the legality of their actions under state pension rules.
"This is something that can be done by any government official of New York state," Calhoun said. "I'm not the only person doing it."
"The people who say it's not right, then they should try to change the law," Larkin said. "I earn every single penny I make. I don't have to take a backseat to anybody on my hours of work or on serving my constituents."
Asked why he waited so long to file for the benefit, Larkin said, "I'm just preparing myself for whatever might happen in the future."
Calhoun said that by collecting now, her pension payment will be smaller, thus saving the state money. If she waited until the end of her upcoming two-year term, she said, the payment would be some $4,000 higher per year.
Based on the numbers Calhoun provided, the state will break even and begin saving money in roughly 2042, when Calhoun would be about 97.
Rep. NANCY CALHOUN
R-C-Blooming Grove
Pension: $60,400
Base salary: $79,500
Payment for serving on committees: $18,000
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