Ramapo has better uses for its $16.5M

Community View by Bruce Levine

The Journal News Aug. 21, 2010
Ramapo voters and taxpayers will be asked Tuesday to decide whether the town should guarantee $16.5 million in bonds to finance the building of a proposed minor league baseball stadium.

More than $7 million has already been spent on the purchase of the land and the destruction of the trees on the property, and the planning process has cost tens of thousands more. The new financing would
make the total capital cost of the project nearly $24 million. No one knows the operating and maintenance costs of the stadium, but the cost is bound to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.

Anytime a town seeks to spend money on a project, it has to consider three basic choices: To spend the money, to spend all or part of it on another priority, or to not spend it at all.

Ramapo voters should ask: "What could Ramapo do with $16.5 million?"

• In Suffern, it could buy the Schwartz Property near Lake Antrim, preserving the last large undeveloped parcel on the Mahwah River, and build the entire drainage project to relieve flooding at Squires Gate without a massive development on the former Tilcon
quarry site.

• In Spring Valley, it could finance the entire
downtown revitalization program, including
building the stalled affordable housing project on Main Street and Grove and rebuild miles of
sidewalks.

• In Monsey, it could fund sidewalks, drainage
projects, tree planting programs and pocket parks so our children would have decent, safe places to play.

• In northern Ramapo, it could buy the Patrick Farm property or purchase other land in Pomona threatened with development and preserve these lands forever.

• All over Ramapo, especially in the Route 59 and Route 17 corridors, it could be used to build infrastructure for key economic development sites to make them attractive to industries or businesses, bringing in ratables to reduce our taxes.

• It could be used to retain teachers or essential programs in East Ramapo and Ramapo Central schools, with the help of changes in state law.

Or, we could just not spend the money.

There are so many better alternatives for Ramapo taxpayers than funding a baseball stadium on speculation that a team will come, that it will succeed at this awful location and that, by some miracle, taxpayers will not be footing the bill.

In these difficult times, with our schools struggling, when long-needed projects must wait for funding, where families are being driven from their homes by the continued rise of already excessive property taxes, a baseball stadium should not be our first
priority.

The writer is former chairman of the Rockland County Legislature and was a Ramapo supervisor candidate in 2009.

Stadium vote
Town of Ramapo voters decide Tuesday whether the town should guarantee up to $16.5 million in financing for a proposed minor league baseball stadium at Pomona Road and Firemen's Memorial Drive. Balloting is 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. at voters' usual polling places, except in Sloatsburg, where polls will be at Village Hall, 96 Orange Turnpike.