| Subject: Scaleranetti-nomics |
Author:
Ned Depew
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Date Posted: 10:05:02 08/27/05 Sat
Friends -
next time you go to look for a delicious, wholesome whole-foods breakfast or lunch and come up against a locked closed door at Earthfoods, be sure to walk across the street and thank Rick Scalera.
Sal Sanchez and Jean Duff-Sanchez were graduates of the Columbia County Micro- business seminar, who parlayed what they learned there into a very successful business. They were able to leverage property they already owned and a track-record as restaurateurs into loans that allowed them to open Earthfoods and develop it into the second (after The Cascades), highly successful owner-operated restaurant in Hudson.
Now they have closed their doors and fled.
Why?
Ask Rick "The business-killer" Scalera.
Thanks to the Scalera Administration's heavy-handed way with "re-valuation," done through the appointment of a totally-unqualified single assessor who is solely responsible to the Mayor for her paycheck, assessments and taxes for the business-owners on Warren Street have skyrocketed.
The Sanchezes paid less than $90,000 for their building and renovated it at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars, then installed and ran a business that gave employment to dozens of people - not to mention the ripple effect of the money spent for supplies from local farmers and merchants.
But Rick Scalera raised their taxes from an original level of around $6,000/year to a current level of over $18,000! That's 300% in less than ten years! If all the other property in the City had been raise proportionally, that wouldn't have mattered much - but Scalera opted for "selective revaluation" in a way that puts the overwhelming burden of increased taxes on those who are subject to re-val, while those whose re-valuation is several years away actually end up with substantial short-term tax reductions! It isn't fair - but hey - - it isn't meant to be!
With his Administration's clear goal of taxing and spending, Scalera has caused both the City Budget and off-budget spending to mushroom, including sacrificing nearly all of our "surplus" - our savings account - for personal political gain.
Sal Sanchez bought a closed restaurant in Austerlitz, with nearly an acre of land and a building with twice the square footage of his current location and his tax bill is about the same as what he paid when he first came to Hudson - about $6K/year. The way he sees it, he can move to Austerlitz, do 30-40% less business, and still make more money than he was making in Hudson, paying between 30 - 40% of his after-expenses-and-taxes profits for Hudson property taxes.
Don't make a mistake - Sal was willing to pay his fair share of the Hudson's taxes - but that is not what he and other Warren Street business owners (those who brought the town back to life by their own gargantuan efforts, with little or no help from the City) have been asked to do. By the Assessor's own admission, they are bearing the brunt of the rise in property taxes and bearing a disproportionate share of the tax burden.
Why? Because the re-valuation is being done in phases, over six years. But this is not a mandate or a necessity, as Scalera and the Assessor have mis-leadingly claimed. This is a choice, made by Scalera and executed at Scalera's orders.
We could have spent that $82,000 that Scalera just "gave" to the Booster's Club (never mind that it was not his to give) on hiring more assessors - possibly even ones with qualifications and experience who could do the work faster and more efficiently - who could have completed the re-val in one or two years, bringing all properties into relatively equitable compliance - and creating a relatively equitable apportionment of taxes liabilities.
But that was not what happened. And as a result, businesses - successful, revenue and payroll generating businesses - are being forced out of Hudson.
Maybe that's the way Rick and his protege/mentor Dan Grandinetti like it. Maybe they were happy when they could borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars from HUD in the City's name, and just allow it to trickle through their fingers, conveniently "losing" the records of how it was spent. That seems to have worked for them in the past, and maybe that's what they would like to see Hudson return to.
If so, what happened to Earthfoods may be just what they are hoping for.
If it's not what you are hoping for - then work for alternative candidates to the Scalera-Grandinetti "good-old-boy" Party.
Work for - and vote for - positive change for Hudson, that will build on and encourage growth, rather than stifle and strangle it. Vote and work for an administration that will spend tax money on the citizens of Hudson and their needs, not on bloated salaries for City functionaries - hired regardless of their lack of qualifications - in the merry-go-round of cronyism that has represented Hudson Politics as usual for the entire Scalera terms.
We'll have a another chance to change things come November. Let's not let it slip through our fingers.
The choice is clear - government by, for and of the people, or more of the same Good-Old-Boy back-room politics under yet another Scaleranetti Administration.
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