Saugerties Town Government Gives Tax Breaks to Section 8 Developer; Citizens Protest

I just received this from Patriot246:

From: patriot246 [mailto:patriot246@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, August 22, 2011 3:41 PM
To: jwilsy@saugerties.ny.us
Subject: Letter to the Saugerties Town Planning Board

                        Dear Ms Wilsey,

                         

                        In your capacity as secretary of the Saugerties Town Planning Board will you please forward the letter below with attachment.

                        Thank you.

                       

                                                            August 17, 2011

Mr. C. Howard Post, Chairman and Town of Saugerties Planning Board

Saugerties Town Planning Board

4 High Street

Saugerties, NY 12477

Dear Mr. Post,

On August 16, 2011 you presided over a “public hearing” regarding a project which includes the construction of 40 low income rental units in Glasco. After allowing Larry Regan from Regan Development Corporation to present his plans for over a half hour, the meeting was open for pubic comment and questions. In opening the meeting to the public Mr. Regan suggested to the public that he knew many of us were present out of concern about crime, impact on our schools, taxes and such issues and invited questions about those concerns. Mr. Post did not direct Mr.Regan from that those topics. After an hour and a half of sometimes heated discussion on socio-economic and natural resource issues, much was revealed about the plans that were not known. A school official pointed out that this project will cause a hike in school taxes translating into an extreme burden on the tax payers.

Many of us learned for the first time about NY State Law 581A and the negotiated deal with town officials to pay a total annual combined property and school tax of only $26,000 per year for the next 30 years for all of the 40 housing units, which includes 1,2 and 3 bedroom units. After allowing the public to question for well over an hour  time Mr. Post announced to us that we, the public, had raised almost no issues which the planning board would consider. Though many of us asked to keep the meeting open your board took a vote which was tied and Mr. Post cast the decisive vote to close the meeting.

Today I consulted with a state assemblyman and also met with the DEC and learned that in fact the State Environmental Quality Review does provide for consideration of the issues you Mr. Post said the board would not address. This is the instrument that your board uses for its review. The Full Environmental Assessment Form Section C #11 asks whether the project will create a demand for any community provided services (recreation, education, police and fire protection),none of which have been addressed.

This project low income rental housing project which promises to be a financial burden on all property tax payers is being considered as the same plan which was approved for high end upscale revenue producing town houses several years ago before this recession. It is highly likely to create a need another classroom to our school and bring into our school district children with special needs that drives the cost of education to skyrocket.

I am writing this letter to you, Mr. Post to ask that the Town Planning Board to address all of the areas mentioned in the previous statement, to reconsider whether this is indeed the same plan and above all to consider the socio-economic impact on the Hamlet of Glasco and town of Saugerties.

Respectfully,

Proud life time resident of Saugerties

Attached link: SEQR Full Environmental Assessment Form with highlighted addressed areas.

http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/permits_ej_operations_pdf/longeaf.pdf

The Fed Is Responsible for US Jobs Exiting to China

Gerald Celente of Trends Journal and Trends Research Institute just e-mailed with a special report about the exodus of jobs to China.  Celente takes a protectionist tack, with which I profoundly disagree. He writes:

"Libertarians and “free market” economists praise Wal-Mart’s low prices achieved by offshoring, but these prices do not include the costs of the decimated state and local tax bases that are destroying American cities, the costs of the high unemployment and the personal depression, crime, and income support programs. These and other costs are expenses imposed on third parties by the movement of American jobs abroad in order to maximize profits...



"Free trade works, if it works at all, only when capital and technology remain in the domestic economy and find their best use or comparative advantage. Offshoring is the contradiction of free trade. It is the pursuit of lowest factor cost and absolute advantage."


The basic statement of free trade, comparative advantage, is still valid.  There is no reason for an ongoing exodus of jobs under a free market system where there is no paper money system to artificially inflate the dollar at the expense of workers.  This has occurred since 1913, especially since 1970.

The dollar is used as a reserve currency around the world, not just in China. Its reserve currency status elevates its value. There are $10 overseas for every dollar here, with central banks around the world holding trillions in treasury bonds.  If the foreign dollar holdings were to be exchanged and the treasury bonds sold, as happens with bubbles, the dollar would be worth less than its current value. This happened to the pound in the early 20^th century.  Americans would be poorer, but manufacturing would return here. A Faustian bargain.

Under a libertarian system, a metallic standard, overseas investment would depreciate the dollar, eventually forcing overseas investors to repatriate their investments.  The flow of gold or silver would pose a market-based mechanism to limit expatriation of investment. This has not happened in our state-dominated economy because of the paper money system and the limited ability of planners like Bernanke and Geithner to function independently of special interest pressure.  Such pressure would not evaporate under a tighter degree of regulation. New forms of regulatory privilege would emerge. The current system is the result of government intervention and Progressivism.  When the Sherman Anti-trust Act was passed in 1890 and the Fed established in 1913 firms were far smaller, there was less monopoly, there was no possibility of unlimited expatriation of capital, the average real wage was rising (unlike since 1970s, when the gold standard was removed) and although there had been depressions in the Gilded Age, they were milder and briefer than the post-Fed depressions and recessions in 1920, 1930, 1974, 1978 and today.  Where does the investment capital to invest overseas come from? The Fed. It is not a libertarian free market phenomenon.

Celente's suggestion, to impose regulatory limits on where and how capital is deployed, would create impediments to investment and cause a stock market crash because of increased riskiness and regulatory controls. Small as well as large investors would be hurt.  This is what occurred in the early 1930s, with the Smoot Hawley tariff contributing to the Depression. 

Creating paper money with one hand and then imposing regulatory controls with the other disrupts expectations. Investment capital flees. New irrational bubbles form. Rather than expand firms’ investment here, investors would find overseas firms in which to invest.  Many US firms would leave the country. Why stay here? The wonderfully educated work force? A stable government? Low taxes? I don’t think so. Voluntaristic solutions work better than state compulsion by planners with human hence limited mental capacities and motivations.  

1933: Democratic Party Government Steals Public's Gold

H/t Daily Bail. From The Pittsburgh Press, March 10, 1933.  

"Fear of public disgrace or threatened fine or imprisonment drove hundreds of gold hoarders to the windows of the Federal Reserve Bank today, to turn in metal in sums raising from $5 to $700,000. "

What had become of the Americans of the Whiskey Rebellion? A nation that drinks obsequious cowardice from  its education system's deserves neither liberty nor security.

Harry Markopolos Finds Bank Currency Trade Scam

H/t Mairi.