(Photo by Lauren Thomas)
After more than five hours of heated debate, village and town officials in New Paltz came to a conclusion on consolidation — they will ask Albany for special legislation. New Paltz will seek a special home rule law from the State of New York, allowing them to let town voters and village voters to cast a ballot — if and when a referendum calling for the merger of the two municipalities is held.
The two easiest ways to unify the two local governments — annexation of the town or the dissolution of the village — would disenfranchise one group of voters over the other. If the village annexed the town, only town residents outside the village could vote. If dissolution were put up again, only villagers could vote.
Villagers right now can vote in Town of New Paltz elections, since they’re also residents of the town. Townies, however, can’t vote in village elections. A majority of the Town Board and Village Board agreed to ask for legislation to make a consolidation vote a townwide election.
“We know that there are two routes to consolidation. Each one excludes one-half of our population. So for four years now, we have been working on a plan that would enable everybody in our community to vote,” explained Kitty Brown, a Town Board member.
Brown said she thought it’d behoove New Paltz to work towards consolidation — even if Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, D-Kingston, and state Sen. John Bonacic, R-Mount Hope, don’t feel warm and fuzzy about their proposed law.
“If our assemblyman and state senator say, ‘This is the most beautiful piece of legislation we’ve ever seen. We would be proud to bring it to the floor,’ then we have Option A. If they say, ‘We don’t understand this. Go away. We won’t carry it,’ we still have the route of annexation, we still have the route of dissolution, we still have the route of shared services,” Brown said.
Since 2009, New Paltz has been studying ways to either share services or merge the village and town governments. In April, the village and town hired the Rochester-based Center for Governmental Research (CGR) for $64,100 to develop a plan for a “coterminous” townwide village. Such a government would expand the Village Board out to the town boundaries, but would run with a unified Village Board.
You are being conned, and I don’t mean “consolidated”?
The town of new paltz is complicit with defrauding the residential property tax payer, and the village of new paltz is concomitant.
As the only indigent parcel owner in the Village of New Paltz, Ruger and Taylor, two landladies with STAR exemptions on commercial lodging services, should not be on the Town’s Board of Assessment review, ever. And Rich Steffens should NOT be sitting on the Village Planning Board for the same reason, STAR exemptions on his commercial lodging services.
The Town of New Paltz assessor does not know the difference between Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Payments. That is because the town assessor is without capacity and judgement. Therefore, the Town of New Paltz, the Village of New Paltz, the School District of New Paltz and the County of Ulster have all stolen cash from my sole indigent’s source of income. More than $4,000 in three years too.
How dumb is the town assessor? The Town assessor, the supervisor Zimet and the Board of Assessment Review say I should be charged for a commercial business in my house that I don’t have, but because the Town Assessor wants to shift attention away from Taylor and Ruger, who sit on the Board of Assessment Review, and do have STAR exemptions on their commercial lodging services, the dumb assessor says I have something that I don’t that can be taxed by the town, etc. Do you believe it.
Rich Steffens, with his STAR exemption on commercial lodging services also is running a racket, and just the fact the His Nibs is dumb enough to keep steffens on the village planning board make His Nibs suspect.
Margeret Taylor and A. Ruger are getting Zimet to have the assessor wrongly tax me in order to foreclose on my parcel and claim it as town property next to their park that they privatized. Now they want my land too. It happens when you are indigent, handicapped under the American With Disabilities Act and own a parcel of land that upsets the White “history” in the area?
About 10 years ago, when Mr. Johnson was Highway Super for the town of new paltz, he hired me to videotape all the tires, commercial truck tires, that had been thrown out over on the corner of 1 Millers Lane and South Ohioville. There were 86 big truck tires, all heaped up by the side of the road. Well, you know who `1 Millers lane belongs to? A. Ruger, the same A. Ruger who was renting the commercial lodging services with a STAR exemption who took the tires out of the auto body shop Ruger owned and took them out to the commercial rental house so be picked up at the taxpayers’ expense by the town. Nice.
And Galluci was part of the racket that let Ruger park his commercial tenants in the town/village park on Mulberry Street. Keving Barry and Kitty Brown each own rental properties that are not subject to commercial lodging service taxes because they as town board members would never help institute the Homestead Law which would do so, and instead, continue to defraud the residential property tax payer. Even Zimet is moving into Gardiner where the taxes are the third cheapest in the county because New Paltz has the third highest taxes in the county, and she don’t want to subsidize the businesses. she said on Television. Ha.
The assessment roll books of New Paltz are cooked, and you would have to be a fool to buy a parcel here until the state of new york comes in and does a revaluation. Zimet did nothing as supervisor to even provide money for a field audit by the assessor office, due every six years and annual land audits too. Never done nothing so do not vote for anybody this administration endorses. Zimet is so corrupt, the only thing she wouldn’t steal is a hot wood stove.
Does anybody read these things, or do I really have the whole place to myself? Yikes.
New Paltz is the only town in the county that has STAR exemptions on rooming houses actually labeled as “rooming houses”. I don’t mean they are even trying to hide it, like Taylor and Ruger do, but out and out have a 418 and a 483 with STAR exemptions. If you buy into New Paltz with those conditions extant, you are going to pay taxes for somebody else who is profiting at your expense.
Oh, and why would somebody want a 418 and STAR exemption? You can do deductions for the commercial lodging as well as getting the illegal exemption. How greedy is that?
Right across from town hall are two properties belonging to A. Kaplan Ruger who sits on the Board of Assessment Review. Both the properties are income producing, both the properties are misclassified, and both the properties are going to be torn down so that they can put in more rentals to be subsidized by the residential indigent disabled handicapped unfairly burdened parcel owner like myself. Ain’t nobody else in the village going to tell you because what are they gonna do, take my house away. They are already doing that and Zimet is so far into the rackets her name has become synonymous with them. Way.
Shell games of ownership. Zimet has a book full, but has yet to budget the money for the assessor office to do a field audit? Not even in the two terms she did in the last century did she budget for field audits. Could have saved herself alot of money and kept her house, but she has no political will and neither does her cabinet. What a deal?
Zimet appointed me to the Board of Assessment Review, and I did 10 years of it, seven as chairman. Now Zimet acts like we never have met and she is not trying to foreclose on my house as she steals my Federal supplemental security income. She said to me back then “Get in there (sic.) and watch them.” which I did, even to the point of keeping my wits about me and hanging on to my house, what is mine, not hers. She has kept members of the Board of Assessment Review in place despite conflicts of interest, and kept an assessor that is so dumb, she thinks that giving special favor to Kitty Browns rental units will keep her job. And so far, well, so far…???
Where is Kitty Brown’s illegal rental? Six Elting Place, right across from Village Hall. The assessment on it the rental goes down as the rents increase. Really.
I forced the Town to take its town government site off the internet because I kept noting in a local paper that the Board of Assessment Review, even as a board, was not listed on the Town web site, let alone the names of the members. If they put the names of the members of the Board of Assessment Review, A. Ruger, Margaret Taylor, Charlotte Carr, Dan Winfield and a fifth guy, there would be Hell to pay, because two of those members get STAR exemptions on commercial lodging services in violation of the laws of the state of New York, three of those people are in the real estate business directly, and one person on the board doesn’t own property in new paltz at all anymore, which may not be of any consequence, but how much do you really know about the members of a board that is to be the sole checks and balances in the system? Not.Zimet has stolen, during her administration, $2,500 from my indigent’s pockets/.
Are there STAR exemeptions on commercial lodging services around the county? Yup.
Are the books of Ulster County as cooked as the books of Albany County? Yup.
Does I wonder, as a former two decade inhabitant of Manhattan, why landlords upstate are not subject to commercial tax rates as they are in New York City? All the time.
Do I think that I am the only person in the State, let alone this neck of the woods, who understands the complexities and intricacies of the final assessment roll books of New York State? Yup, and yup. None of this is in a book anywheres, I made up the whole language and its meaning, and they are first great and different. And that is just the part I know.
Go to the Ulster County Real Property Tax services, and find the PDF for 2013 Town of New Paltz Final Assessment Roll Book. First page, there are five entries. The page contains one “#240” and two “280”s. The town of new paltz assessor is so dumb, that those numbers are included 200 times more throughout the rest of the entries in the books. How does that make the town of new paltz assessor dumb? It means thetown assesor doesn’t understand correctly the Property Classification Code of the State of New York. It seems she is not alone either, which makes Zimmet all the more a quizzical subject, on many fronts, all leading back to this inept version of final assessment roll books of New Paltz. Again. They should hire me as a consultant really. Lots of revenue being devoured greedily when it should be in the Welfare Fund for indigent handicapped former board of assessment review member parcel owner only one in the village, there are two in the town, but that is all. And that is Mudd with two “d”s.
I need to find out how town board member Kity Browns rooming house and two of Rugert’s all went down in assessed value in 2010 as their tax rent rates rose? That is really puzzling, unprecedented and never repeated either? I watched for stuff like that. Shell games, did I mention those. Those can be tricky, but taking information from several sources and tying them together to yield a meaning was surprisingly easy, if one were observant and recollecting enough? The best one was Deb-Mar, two owners of an illegal rooming house on Horsenden with kids and such stuffed into the cellar, first second and attic floors, all without being on anybody’s fire code inspection check list? Just like the fire that killed three students over at Marist college in Poughkeepsie, a 1913 house over there probably with 1913 wiring, no wonder it burned down the house? But on Horsenden a shell corporation owns the property and the money is good, so good, Zimettt doesn’t let the illegal rooming house there and elsewheres get shut down for fear of alienating the status quo. which can only manage 22 volunteer firemen for a town with a population of 14,000? Won’t even hire more firemen neither, you know, pay for them along with volunteers. That woould be like trying to combine the town and village. Just dissolve the village and more firemen will join and the town will be back to the 75 vollunteers it used to have 18 years ago. Why impose on the innocent firemen now and present them with a building on fire that nobody has information about the number of its inhabitants. Not too safe, is it?
If you file a Freedom of Information Act application at the Town Clerk office, you can get all the documents all of the above is based upon, as this year’s property grievance of mine included all this stuff. For real. The supervisor thinks its all over, but the fact of the matter is, she owes me the money and keeps thinking her assessor has capacity and judgement? I don’t think the Supervisor has read section 305 of the Real Property Tax law, but if she does, it would help get everybody their fair share of the tax burden instead of the town being complicit with defrauding the residential, indigent, handicapped ADA parcel owner, the Hoity-Toity district of town not withstanding.
I think the IRS should investigate any commercial lodging service owner with STAR exemptions who are town and village employees, compensated and non-compensated who earn more than $200,000 a year. This would address the “land” element of Capitalism and bring in untold revenue for indigents, American indigents, American Indigents.
This is my 23rd comment, one comment more than there are firemen in the town and village for 13,000 people. No recreation fees from developers are collected in the Village; there is no commercial property tax rate, proper classification and income capitalization for revenue producing parcels; the town of New Paltz assessor is without capacity and judgement; the Board of Assessment Review is guilty of malversation, malfeasance, maladministration and misconduct; the Assessment Books are full of errors of fact, clerical errors, omissions and unlawful entries; the board of assessment review is full of conflicts of interests and tax cheats (two, anyways) and I question authority because I am indigent, disabled handicapped, and a, God Forbid, a, a, a, a stakeholder.
The village abolished its assessing unit in 1978 and has been feeding lies to the town assessor since 1978. And the town assessor takes full part in this deception. Don’t buy a house in New Paltz until you find out for yourselves just how accurate this information is? Othewise, ever heard the words “Welcome, Stranger.”?
The assessor does not know the difference between Supplemental Security Income and Social Security. Even write a letter saying that the assessor in the town of New Paltz is really without capacity or judgment. Just makes up stuff, sends the made up stuff to county, but doesn’t give it to me the parcel owner under a freedom of information act application. So much for New Paltz honesty, integrity and transparency in government now here.
And as for the last supervisor, Hokansen, the supervisor who ended up missing $2 million and the state auditors couldn’t find where it went, she, Hokansen, still represents the Town of New Paltz on the County Planning Board. Zimett complained and complained for 8 months that they could not find the $2 million, and the state auditor had looked and Hokensen was called to the town hall to look at books several times, but nobody could find the money. Yet, Hokensen still sits on the county planning board, despite Zimmett being aghast of the financial situation she Zimmeett walked into? Do tell? It was Hokensen who moved from a $100,000 house during her administration to a $400,000 house by the end of her administration, hired the current assessor who is without capacity or judgement, and privatized the public park. And still she sits on the county planning board for New Paltz? Give me a break?
It was in Ruger’s rooming house on Church Street that His Nibs was staying before his Nibs moved into the town. Where he is now, in the village, could just as easily be one of the Board of Assessment Review member’s other rooming houses, maybe even the one with the STAR exemption under the name Kaplan. Who knows.