I have served this past year as Economic Development Director for the Village of Ellenville. The primary goal at hand was to administer the Micro-Enterprise Small Business Development Grant that was awarded the village a year and a half ago, and to concurrently work with other programs and assets to spur business and commercial growth within the village.

The pursuit of these goals allowed me the opportunity to work with many individuals and organizations within the village, as well as many excellent professionals at the county and state level. Daily, I have asked myself, "Why has this once beautiful and vibrant community lost the 'vibrant' part of its description, and what will it take to regain its vibrancy?" It is clear that the village still has its underlying beauty and assets: location, infrastructure, and most importantly, a diverse and strong community. Why does it not thrive economically?

The answer to this question is right in front of us. This community is, in my opinion, the proverbial "canary in the coal mine" and portends the future for other communities, not only in Ulster County, but statewide, if we do not drastically change our tax structure and expense base. The Village of Ellenville has a combined average tax levy per $1,000 dollars full value of real property that is double the mean of all other Ulster County jurisdictions. This is compounded by the lower value of real property within the community, relative to the surrounding area. Why don't people take advantage of low interest business loans and grants designed to create incentives to invest in our CBD? Because they cannot make any profit from doing so. Why are there so many vacancies? Because it doesn't make sense to work hard, long hours running your own business when the end result is that the return is taken by the government. The very programs designed to alleviate the problem may actually be compounding it, as they are funded by our tax dollars, and the bureaucratic expense of administering these programs is simply staggering.

The village, town, county, and state are caught up in an ever expanding snowball, racing downhill towards a cliff, this snowball being the ever increasing property and school taxes. If reform doesn't come soon, the end result is obvious. When the coming of a Walmart is seen by a community as being a good thing, all the warning bells should go off. We are doing something drastically wrong, and only we can fix it.

It is quite easy to see the solutions, but there is nothing easy about achieving them. Political ambition and partisanship must be put aside so the will of the community can move forward.

I offer below some of the issues to be addressed that can start to work towards resolution of the problem.

1) We have home rule in New York, but we are not allowed to make decisions on many things that we must spend on. This is tantamount to taxation without representation. We are layered with unfunded mandates, on both a municipal level and a school level, from both the state and federal governments. Many of these mandates are good things, but many do not apply to our specific needs, and often, even if it is a good thing, a cost/benefit analysis for the specific community would put it in the "Want, but cannot afford" category that we all use as individuals to make decisions in our personal lives.

2) We must end duplication of services in the different municipal layers. There are many examples of this, and mutual understanding that it takes place, but little done towards achieving a reduction. In my opinion, within the village, a glaring example of this is taking place right now under our own noses. The county is building a sheriff's station at the edge of the village, with our tax dollars, and there is a local police station funded by our tax dollars. There must be some opportunity for major cost reduction from both jurisdictions here, if only they could work together.

3) A revaluation must take place within the Town of Wawarsing. It's been 50 years, and there are many paying more than their fair share, and many paying less than their fair share. The macro-dynamics of the region has completely changed in this time, with no reflection of these changes being made in property values. The town should see a healthy village as a gem within its boundaries, but instead it moves forward as if it were truly independent of the village, and this direction will continue to drain both municipalities.

4) Unions have raised salary and wage benefits of their members above both the mean and means of the communities that pay them. This is across the board at municipal, school, county, and state levels. It is also reflected in the outdated Davis-Bacon wage laws. We have seen what the combination of bad management and powerful unions has done to the auto industry in America. Let's learn from mistakes and fix this problem before our communities go the same way as Chrysler and GM. Let's act before bankruptcy claims us. When bankruptcy comes, it won't be someone else, it will be us.

5) With the amount of money that pours into, and is consumed by, the Albany political machine, as taxpayers and citizens we should demand an output that has the grace and intelligence of a work by Shakespeare; not the cage of monkeys hoping to randomly generate a single sonnet by pounding the keys of their typewriters, which is what we are currently getting.

6) I strongly believe that we should hold elections on Election Day, in November. School board and budget elections are now held in May, and I attribute the very low levels of attendance at these elections to a lack of knowledge on the part of the greater community. The only people who come out are those who are directly involved in the school district and its operations. Schools should have the ability to plan ahead and hold their elections when the community expects to go to the polls. They should also be required to offer the details of their budgets more openly, available on their websites so all can see where our money is going, in detail.

This is only a start, and to reiterate what I wrote earlier, the solutions are easy to see, but very hard to achieve. We can only achieve them if we use our strengths and work together as one. The Village of Ellenville is suffering because the burden of taxes has become too great. Surrounding communities, counties, and the state as a whole are headed in the same direction. We must stop the snowball, and save the canary.