letter to the editor from steve greenfield

A very interesting thing about the turnout for public comment at the joint Town-Village meeting held last Thursday to consider text for a consolidation referendum: a whole bunch of people with many years of successful local government budgeting experience and relevant professional credentials came down to critique the financial report at the heart of the matter. These included people favoring consolidation, people opposing it, and people who are neutral, and were hoping clear data would help them make up their minds -- in other words, three completely different perspectives -- yet all of them were issuing the exact same critique -- the financial report is an epic fail. And so it is.

Pro-consolidation people in particular must consider the implications of this. People already in the "no" column are obviously going to stay there. People in the "not sure yet" column have nothing to move them towards "yes," and much in the combativeness of the defense of the document by its purveyors to confirm suspicions that it is politicized to the point of being potentially fraudulent. And for those of us leaning towards "yes," the report as it now stands pretty much guarantees that should the matter be hastily put to a referendum, it will not only fail to garner passage, but in so doing, will send it to the "dead issue" pile for at least another generation, if not forever.

Town Supervisor Susan Zimet's contention that the matter must be rushed to the ballot booths before May, lest the composition of the Village Board change to one less inclined to put the matter to referendum at all, is the exact wrong approach for consolidation advocates to take. Is there a risk that new Village trustees may be elected in May who will not vote to go to referendum? Sure. And if most Villagers are anti-consolidation, that's a legitimate way for them to express that, saving the expense and divisiveness of the referendum process. But they might not. And even if they do, there's another Village election in two years. Weigh that against the risk of putting it to the public now, with no supporting data; with a mountain of data that is demonstrably false; with the risks completely ignored; and with prominent pro-consolidation residents refusing to support the vote due to bad information. Because in that scenario, it's the consolidation itself that fails, not the process of getting it to the voters, and when that happens, it's over for good.

If New Paltz citizens, no matter what their initial position on this matter may be, are to have the fair debate to which they are entitled on a matter of such historic import, and if pro-consolidation citizens in particular are to have a reasonable chance at their goal, the pause button has to be hit right now. Everyone please contact your Town and Village Board members, and ask that the process be delayed for at least as long as it may take to unpack what went wrong with the financial report, and to reassemble it with useful, plainly verifiable data.