An utter disgrace best describes the behavior of Clarkstown Supervisor Alex Gromack at last week's Town Board Meeting. Taking the position as he so often does in describing himself in the vein of, a” Career Politicians job “is a noble profession. Then once again diminishing that value and using his throne of authoritarian power to publicly scold, denigrate and demonize an elderly citizen, whose only crime was in expressing his disgust over all the high salaries and benefits, the Town Board is giving to all the unions and themselves.
This senior citizen, believes he can no longer afford to live in a community that is intent on making this town only affordable to the town employees who are over compensated for their jobs. Higher Taxes and debt seem to be an attempt to achieve the number one spot for highest taxed town in the country. Supervisor Gromack’s description of Police salaries as being “obscene” and placing blame on his predecessor is true, but he continues on with this obscenity, while trying his best to hide it.
Town Board meetings are in constant violation in the spirit of the N. Y. State Open Meetings Law. Deliberately hiding PBA and CSEA contract settlements in non descript language added to agenda items at the very last minute. This is done in an attempt to avoid public comment. Continuing these violations as they often do with a lack of transparency by having no public deliberations on any subject item.
They all then display a public epiphany and vote Yes in rapid fire on every spending initiative. The recent hiring of 8 or what they will not say yet is 10 more police officers is a career politicians Jedi mind trick to make you believe by hiring these officers will be a cost savings over the already overly obscene salaries the retiring officers are paid. We have an average officers salary for 2012 at $179,688.55 an increase of $25,476 for each one over 2011, What do you surmise 2013 will bring?
Certainly the pensions for each of these recent retirees will be approaching $200,000 for one person. These new hires with a little overtime and guaranteed benefits will achieve six figure salary payouts in their first year or two. These claimed savings will only be an anomoly for a very short period of time. Don't be fooled by their one sided statistics.
Keep listening and believing the Jedi mind tricks and you to, will be taxed out of your home. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next Gromack Decree will be to even eliminate the " Public Comment " from Town Board Meetings. We know now the kitchen is getting to hot for him and exposing his arrogant displays of emotion at the expense of indefensible senior citizens, coupled with the desire for absolute power this Supervisor is intent on achieving, will ultimately corrupt us all. Dictatorships should never be tolerated in a republic.
I would urge all interested citizens to witness for their own edification, come out for the next Town Board Meeting on March 7th at 8pm, Town Hall, Maple Ave.
Frank Grandel ( President / Clarkstown Taxpayers )
