April 15, 2008  Letter to The Journal News

While County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef and other politicians were peacocking at that massive Nyack press conference celebrating the roundup of street-corner drug entrepreneurs, ("25 arrested in Nyack cocaine raid," Thursday) in Spring Valley, a more egregious crime was going down.

Mayor George Darden and his obedient village board colleagues were imposing a whopping 9.7 percent tax increase on Rockland's poorest people. ("Property tax rate to rise 9.65 percent in Spring Valley," Thursday.)

So my friend who lives on the Spring Valley side of Eckerson Road will now pay $2,313 in combined village and town taxes. But my other friend who has the exact same house on the Hillcrest side of Eckerson Road pays $1,118 in town taxes.

So in a truly honest and socially just world, the mayor, the village board, Village Attorney Bruce Levine and assistant Village Attorney Ryan Karben, as well as Vanderhoef, state Sen. Tom Morahan, Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee, Assemblyman Kenneth Zebrowski, supervisors Christopher St. Lawrence of Ramapo and Alex Gromack of Clarkstown, county Legislature Chairwoman Harriet Cornell, county Legislators Bill Darden and Jacques Michel and the remaining of Rockland's political class who tolerate and permit this gross injustice would have their names added to the list of Nyack perpetrators.

Irv Feiner
Nyack