March 17, 2011  Community View in The Journal News

Michael Castelluccio

The state is "functionally bankrupt;" Rockland County is scraping to crawl out of its own deficit; and East Ramapo is selling schools. But here in the town of Ramapo the spending is ramping up at Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence's ballpark.

The private investors never showed up, so work in and around the crater on Pomona Road is 100 percent taxpayer funded. In one recent two-week period, cost overruns totaled $2.3 million. St. Lawrence and two council members, Fran Hunter and Daniel Friedman, didn't bat an eye voting their approval. (Feb. 23 Town Board meeting minutes show $2,315,890.30 approved.) That was just two weeks after a Feb. 9 Town Board meeting at which the same three approved $1,307,069.85 in overruns.

But wait, there's more. Two resolutions that did not appear on the Feb. 23 meeting agenda were approved by the baseball tax trio. The cost to taxpayers is unclear. The resolutions seek the town's reimbursement of the Ramapo Local Development Corp. for work on the recreational project. One approves a 50 percent reimbursement of the total cost of the Holt Construction contract for work at the ballfield site. It doesn't reveal the dollar cost. Another resolution reimburses the Ramapo Local Development Corporation 15 percent of the DLR Group's contract. Have the numbers now become so obscenely large that the resolutions now aren't revealing actual figures?

So what happened to St. Lawrence's vow after the defeat of this project in the August referendum? That solemn declaration he made in an Aug. 25 Journal News article: "The stadium will be built with private money. There will be no taxpayer dollars. I got the message." Forget it. They aren't even calling the project Project Grand Slam anymore. It's too recognizable. The name first morphed to "Firemen's Memorial Drive Improvement" and then to "Firemen's Memorial Park."

What is the future of the ballpark? The voters rejected it, private investors want no part of it, and yet St. Lawrence, Fran Hunter and Daniel Friedman continue to approve more than $1 million in taxpayers' dollars a week on this insane gamble.

And numerous dodges now seem in place to hide each new expense from public view.