A Rebate for Ramapo

January 11, 2009

Those who are elected to public service are expected to swear a ceremonial oath to serve the voters who got them the job. But then there’s politics in Ramapo. Last week, on the very same day that he distributed his résumé in Albany, Christopher St. Lawrence raced back to the eight o’clock Town Reorganization meeting in time to grab off two chairmanships, the financial director’s position, and he also got his name on the Emergency Services committee—all were 4-0 rubber-stamp approval votes. And how he would be able to serve two constituencies if he went on the campaign trail for lieutenant governor? It never came up.

By the end of the Reorganization Meeting (adjourned at 8:56) Christopher St. Lawrence had been designated to serve the people of Ramapo as:

Town Supervisor
Director of Finance for Ramapo
Chairman of the Police Commission in Ramapo
Chairman of Ramapo Traffic Safety Board.
And for good measure, he had his name added as a Deputy Director of Emergency Services (all approved by 4-0 votes).

And if he gets the word from Cuomo, you will be able to watch his dust up 59 as he heads for the Thruway, Albany, and the campaign trail in his Town vehicle. The board, by the way, voted Wednesday night to "Authorize [his] use of a Supervisor's Vehicle."

This is crazy. If the Chief Financial Officer for any other enterprise showed up one day and told the CEO and the board that he would be back sometime soon, but that he had to leave to begin an extended job search, you probably could guess what the executives’ response would be.

But here in Ramapo, there are different rules. An absent CSL can be approved as CFO because the CEO is CSL, and as to whether the Board might raise a question, they seem to have a single collective mind that’s wired to a panel controlled by that same CSL. And will he collect his salary and have us continue paying his EZ-Pass and cell-phone bills as he chases his vacuous political smile around New York State? I think so.

The speculation about St. Lawrence’s political chances for the state job generally drifts to one end of the spectrum or the other. Some say there’s no way that he would ever survive a real vetting process and/or a real investigative press corps. I’m not so sure about that—anyone remember Spiro (nolo contendere) Agnew? We in Ramapo know about his phony academic degrees and his refusal to pay his taxes for years, his Master Plan of Destruction for the Town, but what about the people in Plattsburgh—will they believe what he tells them? And at the other speculative extreme there are people whispering, "Shut up—don’t say anything. Let him go, cut him loose. The state government is so dysfunctional he’ll become just one other indistinguishable political mope. Albany has whole buildings full of them.

Take a look at Two Letters that appeared in Sunday’s Journal News (January 10, 2010):

The last thing New York needs is another spend-happy politician. Ramapo Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence has handed out millions of dollars to improve parts of Rockland where there is little tax revenue being collected.

Why are taxes so high in New York? It's because we have a large population of people who do not pay taxes but reap all the benefits of a taxpayer. This group hides behind the religious tax exemption law and it costs us millions and millions of dollars. We all know that St. Lawrence will get the vote from Brooklyn, Monsey and Monroe.

Wake up New York, St. Lawrence will be the kiss of death for all of us. Young people are being forced out of Rockland because of high taxes, and its only getting worse and worse. Send a message to Albany and St. Lawrence we are done footing the bill.

Kurt Reinhard
Nanuet

Should the residents of the town of Ramapo laugh or cry? Ramapo Town Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence wants to run for statewide office. The good news is if he wins, he can't continue to destroy the town. The bad news is, he can attempt to wreak his own special brand of havoc on the entire state. After giving it a bit of thought, I think we in Ramapo will be better off, at least in the short term, without him. So as counter-intuitive as it sounds, I think everyone in Ramapo should vote for him, maybe even volunteer to work on his campaign.

Go, St. Lawrence, all the way to Albany!

In the letter he was distributing last week, St. Lawrence addressed his fellow New Yorkers with the following:

"I look forward to meeting with people from Buffalo to Brooklyn and Syracuse to Schenectady to discuss my vision for the Empire State and talk about how we can renew the promise of New York. Together, we can blaze a trail to a brighter future and a better state. Please feel free to e-mail me at celebratenewyork@gmail.com or visit www.chrisstlawrence.com. I am interested in hearing your ideas for a better New York, and I would welcome the opportunity to speak with you about my vision for the Empire State." (That URL has a really disturbing apocryphal look.)

If St. Lawrence does go on the campaign trail, it would seem the people of Ramapo might deserve a multiple-line rebate on their town taxes for an AWOL Supervisor, Director of Finance, Police Commission Chairman, Traffic Safety Board Chairman, and Deputy Director of Emergency Services. I mean, after all, what if we had an emergency?

Michael Castelluccio
www.PreserveRamapo.org