Where does Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence’s strange behavior come from?

August 31, 2010 

Readers may recall that some years ago we informed the Journal News that St. Lawrence never graduated from Harvard. The JN called the Harvard Registrar’s office which verified our information. St. Lawrence still insisted he had graduated. A second call from the JN to the registrar elicited the same information. St. Lawrence still insisted that the mistake was Harvard’s not his, and that he believed that his diploma had been mailed to his parents’ home. Was this just a lie, or did St. Lawrence sincerely believed he had graduated from Harvard?  (For the record:  He never received a degree from any college, and in his first campaign he told The Journal News that he had both a BA and a Masters’ degree from Harvard.)

Then we have the strange case of our overflowing sewers. St. Lawrence as the self-appointed spokesman for Sewer District #1 insisted that our sewers were a miracle of modern engineering and the only overflow was the result of vandalism. We presented the official reports sent to the Department of Environmental Conservation by the District. They showed a very different situation. After many more overflows with pictures presented on this site the DEC finally fined the District $20,000 and demanded a comprehensive investigation that is still underway. Yet, St. Lawrence still insists we have a wonderful sewer system!

Then we have our “open space” investments. Virtually all of the tens of millions of dollars Ramapo has supposedly invested in “open space” was actually spent for “open space and other municipal purposes.”  Despite St. Lawrence’s constant reassurances that this land is being protected, his behavior suggests otherwise.

Recall that he signed a contract to sell the Tilcon quarry to a consortium that includes a powerful Suffern real estate family in Suffern. This family has donated generously to his campaigns. He gave them an option to buy the land for $4.4 million, land that his town called industrial wasteland. The developers immediately proposed a development of 495 high-end condos. If they can convince Suffern to go along with their proposal they will make at least $50 million profit just on the land.

When we sued to stop this sale, St. Lawrence’s lawyers told the court that his public statements and statements printed in Ramapo’s own publications were not legally binding because they had not been consecrated by an official town resolution. The court upheld his legal position. Today St. Lawrence is still telling The Journal News that all of the land he is purchasing in our name will be protected as open space.

Lastly, we have the notorious stadium. The land that he wants to build on was purchased, he tells us, as open space. Recall that St. Lawrence claimed early on that he had a business plan that demonstrated the economic viability of his plan. It was a lie. After we chased him for a few months, and after he had already spent at least hundreds of thousands of dollars and had already destroyed a beautiful twenty-acre forest, he finally found some “experts” who support his assertion. Yet, it remains obvious to anyone who reads the “Memorandum of Understanding” that this deal guarantees Ramapo will easily lose more than a million dollars a year.

So what should we conclude?  The most obvious explanation is that St. Lawrence is a chronic liar who will never admit he has lied or made a mistake. Then we have the possibility that he is a victim of magical thinking. Perhaps, like a three- year-old, he believes that what he wants to believe must be true.

Robert I. Rhodes, Chairman, Preserve Ramapo