Not All or Nothing
At a recent county discussion on Congressman Hinchey’s smaller-resort proposal, legislative minority leader Glen Noonan decried what he saw as a regional view that Ulster County isn’t business-friendly. We don’t know that that’s true, nor do we take issue with the comment. But we do think that concerning the proposed Belleayre Resort and its developers, Ulster County has been extremely supportive, even generous.
Since 2001, the legislature’s passed two resolutions endorsing its developer’s $300 million-or-nothing version of the project, without any potentially annoying public input at all. The county Health Department played a critical role in helping make possible the acquisition of major water resources for the project from the people of Pine Hill. The county’s also put its good faith & credit where its friends are. The rebuild of the Emerson Inn, destroyed by fire last year, is a project of the county’s Industrial Development Agency, which will technically own the place for some years until its bond is paid off. And since, among other benefits, projects structured this way are exempt from property taxes and typically pay only a small amount “in-lieu-of” them, it’s not as if the project’s benefits come without a municipal cost. In theory, all this is for the good. It’s what county IDA’s are supposed to do, and it is genuinely necessary for economic development. It isn’t however free money, as when community block grant funds available to Shandaken were used in the 90’s to rebuild the Risely barn as Catskill Corners, now the Emerson Place complex.
We haven’t seen the agreement in place between the County IDA and Mr. Gitter’s companies for the Emerson rebuild, so we’re not in a position to comment on it yet. But if it’s in any way similar to the agreements under which the rest of the complex is now taxed, or the proposed Belleayre Resort would in future pay taxes, we’d have very serious concerns that both the town and the county have once again given away the store. So delighted as we are to see the Emerson rebuilt in Shandaken, we also believe that a measure of fairness is due both to the town and the county’s taxpayers, one that prior agreements between the county and the developer don’t quite seem to capture.
Some months back for example, we told you exactly what the proposed resort - the whole shebang, 15 or more years in the future - was slated to contribute in town taxes. We told you the tax bill for hundreds of millions worth of development on almost 2,000 acres was less than the amount the town gets now from a single sewer plant on 10 acres. And based on Crossroads’ own numbers straight from the DEIS, that’s the simple truth. But some of the numbers the developer is circulating now, we believe fall short of that yardstick by a good measure. Now we understand that public relations problems on the scale the company’s had these last few years sometimes calls for a certain level of creativity with numbers. And we don’t begrudge the developer a healthy heap of fudge-factor in trying to sell the project’s presumed economic benefits. But we do think that governments, even town governments, should hold to a different standard of objectivity.
In lobbying against the Hinchey proposal, Shandaken narrowly passed a resolution wildly overstating the resort project’s tax benefit to the town. By our accounting it’s wrong by 400 percent; after the fact even Supervisor Cross now agrees it’s wrong by at least 200 percent. So big deal one could say, the numbers were wrong. Well it’s a huge deal, because those wrong numbers represent over a million dollars a year in tax revenue that Shandaken will never see from Marriot or whoever buys the Crossroads permits if they’re eventually granted and the project’s built. Government’s job is to advocate for the public good, and of course we’re all entitled to different views of what that might include. We’re also entitled to truthfulness when our town government goes on the record on our behalf.
As to the merits of the Hinchey proposal, we - like Hinchey and we think like most people in Shandaken - favor a scaled-down version of the resort. Crossroads so far, says that’s economically infeasible, it’s still all or nothing, but they are, after 61⁄2 years and a judge’s ruling compelling that discussion, at least willing to talk. So’s everyone it seems. So we think Hinchey’s done a great service in at least moving the dialogue forward. And Mr. Gitter certainly seems sincere in expressing receptivity. Without getting ahead of ourselves, this could suggest the kind of progress we’ve all grown older waiting for.
Like many people, we believe the provision in Hinchey’s initial proposal for the sale to the state of the project’s entire eastern half is not the best option. Instead, we’d prefer to see some kind of development there, presumably residential, that could add meaningfully to our tax base. Options like that are for the developer alone to propose, if indeed that’s an alternate lower-impact scenario they could live with. But Donald Trump not too long ago shelved his plans for a Westchester golf course, deciding the site was worth more as high-end residential real estate, even without a great ski area next door. Our view is Mr. Gitter might arrive at the same conclusion should he deign to consider it seriously. We’ll also go out on a limb and suggest that a $150-200 million project sold and under construction might be more valuable to our region and his investors than a $300-400 million project that never gets built. That’s just a guess though. We’d have to triple-check the math before making a call like that…
BP