The OM Factor

As the voting on the Large Parcel Law commenced in the Ulster County Legislature Thursday evening, District 10 (New Paltz) representative Susan Zimet drew attention to an important resource in the Town of Olive... its people.
Zimet said she was particularly moved by the fact that the people of Olive have been coming to meetings of the legislature, month after month, and that she knew from hearing different people from the town speak that there was a lot of suffering there because of the law. She said that she believed that ”we have to stick together as a county” and that we were not just New Paltz, Gardiner, Marlborough and so on; that we should be Ulster County. If people up there (in Olive) need help, she said, we should help them in seeing that, just like Saugerties didn’t want a casino in their place, we shouldn’t be shoving this (large parcel) thing down Olive’s throat either.
”I think that because the people showed up en masse time and again
and the fact that Charlie (Blumstein) filed that lawsuit saved the day here,” said OM member John Tisch. “Whether (the lawsuit) succeeds or not, it definitely has had an impact.”
Blumstein, who filed an amendment to his lawsuit in Albany on August 15th, increasing its page count from 25 to 49, agreed to expand the usual 20 days for respondents to reply by another requested ten days. He plans to file another suit in state supreme court within weeks which seeks to declare the Large Parcel Law inapplicable to Olive, without seeking damages. He says this suit is based on “guidelines in the New York State Constitution which would appear to preclude this type of scheme.” Without elaboration, he mentioned “home rule powers,” “due process” and tax code violations in
Articles 3 and 9 of the state document which, he said, had the fostering of intergovernmental cooperation as its primary purpose. He also has taken the prerequisite steps, he said, to legally challenge any attempt to reintroduce the Large Parcel Law in the legislature on due notice and civil rights grounds by sending a certified letter to the county legislature and mail to each of its members containing a List of Concerns under SEQUA laws in regard to Large Parcel enactment.
Perhaps the most outgoing and boisterous of Olive residents associated with OM, Blumstein was himself heckled by Woodstock Supervisor Jeremy Wilber at the county legislature meeting last week. Wilber belittled Blumstein for paying a meager amount in property taxes. Blumstein replies that he lives in a small cabin in the woods so that he can take time off to pursue his own interests. One of those interests is observing how “Wilber focuses on transferring wealth from moderate income Oliveans overwhelmingly to wealthy Woodstock land and homeowners... The 200k home in Woodstock got a 0-100 dollar benefit (from the Large Parcel Law) and the 300k-400k got $1500-2000 or more!”
Another Olive resident claimed at the meeting that Woodstock officials had their own four digit tax deductions to enjoy while, yet another recalls an E-mail sent out to Woodstock voters prior to the school board election in May, signed by Wilber and councilmen Knight, Wemp and McKenna, which boasted that Woodstock taxpayers had made a cool $1.7 million off of the reservoir in 2004.
Blumstein notes that, despite the post-9-11 real estate boom, “Woodstock says their town is worth 10% less in the last tax cycle” and that 4 of the 5 members of Woodstock’s Assessment board of review resigned in January. Reservations about “faulty” methods used in Woodstock’s last reval were expressed by resigning members, he pointed out. Taxes on an old ranch house, for example, which can be cited, doubled without improvements while a house owned by relatives of an official declined dramatically despite improvements.
These can all be the result of quirks in the system but Blumstein and other OM members still snort at Wilber’s claims that the law brought fairness and equity to the process. While it can be said that most in the group go about their research quietly, some are adept at expressing their views aloud. A prime example would be John Tisch, who addressed the legislature by asking them to close their eyes and visualize the 8,000 acres of the reservoir projected over the center of the business district of whichever town they were from.
”Every business, home or lot within that boundary, you’re going to give it up; all business revenue, sales tax, property tax,” Tisch told them. ”Imagine that 10 mile long parcel centered on Tinker Street, spreading to Meads Mountain and out through Bearsville, over towards Saugerties. Now, when you’re done giving up all the taxes that the entities in there are paying, we’re going to take the tax money from the owner of the reservoir because we’re going to call you a ‘large parcel.’ Now, you tell me if you think it would be fair and that you’d like that to happen to your town... The whole large parcel process to this point has been a masquerade of manipulation.”
”The civil war is over between the school and Olive,” declares Blumstein, who is shifting his focus to other targets he’d like to see ”play by the rules.”
”The school complies with all laws that they are aware of,” he said, “unlike the Legislature, who still do not seem to know what prior notice, public hearing or SEQRA means.”

Gary Alexander