January 19, 2011 Is it fair to assume you can guess the size of a politician’s head by the number of hats he tries to put on it? If so, then nothing short of a haberdasher’s nightmare was created at the last Ramapo Town Board meeting.

The reorganizational meeting of the Ramapo Town Board was held Wednesday night, January 12. There was a long list of personnel appointments, a total of 51. Most were single positions filled by individuals, but there were a handful of individuals serving in two or more positions for the upcoming year.

Frances M. Hunter was appointed as:

1. Deputy Supervisor, and
2. A Member of the Police Commission.

Chief Peter Brower was appointed as:

1. Deputy Director of Emergency Services, and
2. Member of the Ramapo Traffic Safety Board.

With only one exception, the rest of the appointments were for individual positions. The exception was the Supervisor. Here is a list of the positions to which he was appointed:

Christopher St. Lawrence the current Ramapo Supervisor was appointed to:

1. Director of Finance for Ramapo (Appointed by himself--his first choice, Ryan Karben, didn’t work out.)
2. Member of the Police Commission.
3. Chairman of the Police Commission.
4. Member of the Ramapo Traffic Safety Board.
5. Chairman of the Ramapo Traffic Safety Board.

   Later in the evening, the Ramapo Local Development Corporation was designated as the Official Urban Development Sponsor and for that group the sitting officers include:

6. President of the RLDC is Christopher St. Lawrence.
7. Chairman of the Board of the RLDC is Christopher St. Lawrence.

   And besides these 2011 appointments, St. Lawrence also is:

8. The Chairman of the Rockland Solid Waste Management Authority.
9. The Vice Chairman of the Rockland County Sewer District No. 1.

So, by the end of the reorg ceremonies, there were the 50 or so town employees trying on their new hats and a grinning Supervisor balancing under his stack of 10.

And this does not exhaust the list. For instance, what if you were to submit a Freedom of Information request to the Ramapo Town Clerk’s Office for, say, the cell phone records for the phone issued by the town to the Supervisor, and then, the Town Clerk refuses to supply these records. Actually, you would still have several options. You could call Robert Freeman, Director of the NYS Committee on Open Government, but he would tell you the next step in the process is to appeal the rejected request to the town official responsible for handling those appeals. And who might you guess is wearing that hat at town hall? That’s right, and that’s number 11.

All this naturally leads to a rather serious question. Isn’t it dangerous to concentrate that much control over public funds in the hands of a single official in a town that, effectively, is ruled by a single political party? Especially an official who has shown such serious lapses of judgment in so many areas, from a half-million-dollar payoff to a favorite protégé in the police department to the creation of bizarre zoning schemes such as Adult Student Housing. An official who is willing to change the zoning for a favorite developer to allow his building 500 homes right on top of a critical aquifer? One who has shown a total disregard for the will of the taxpayers in the case of a $30 million high-risk craps shoot in a baseball league with teams that fail 70% of the time?

Reshuffle
A few other roster changes are worth noting. Christian Sampson, who had been the Ramapo Town Clerk, was appointed Deputy Receiver of Taxes along with Monica James. Stepping down is Nathan Oberman who will remain on the payroll as the Deputy Director of Finance.

In the Clerk’s Office, Maureen Pehush was appointed Deputy Town Clerk, Sara Osherovitz as Deputy Registrar of Vital Statistics, and Denise LaGarde as Sub-Registrar of Vital Statistics.

Finally, there was the establishment of a Town of Ramapo Community Health and Wellness Commission with Dr. Yitzchok Rothberger as administrator.

Michael Castelluccio
Preserve Ramapo
www.PreserveRamapo.org