MORONEY SAYS STEWART IS NOT GOOD ON TAXES EVEN THOUGH HIS BUDGET PROPOSED TAX REDUCTION

To the Editor,

Andy Stewart repeatedly asks, “What is Moroney talking about?” when I refer to the fact that we cannot afford his tax increases anymore. He repeatedly claims that HE has kept the tax increases under the NYS Tax cap for the past four years. That is a lie.

In his first proposed budget, he asked for a whopping 9.2 percent tax increase, that ballooned up to 16 percent when two tax certiori settlements were added in.

His second budget included a 7 percent tax hike, and he voted to break Gov. Cuomo’s Property Tax Cap. In his third proposed budget, he intentionally failed to fund yearly recurring items, such as road salt, in order to make his budget seem smaller, and he planned to drain the Town’s Reserve fund by $3.5 million.

Finally, just six weeks ago, Mr. Stewart asked the Board to pass $9.9 million in new debt that would have increased the Town Debt from $70 million to $80 million dollars! That’s an almost 15 percent increase in debt!

And what was Andy Stewart going to do with the new debt?? He wanted it as an open-ended line of credit to fuel a spending spree without any concern about what it would do to taxpayers. He just doesn’t care how he spends our money.

Thankfully, in each case the Republican majority on the Board stopped him, but that doesn’t change the fact that Andy Stewart tries at every chance he gets to send taxes soaring.

Andy still claims that HE kept taxes down. What a joke! The residents of Orangetown simply cannot afford the chance that Andy Stewart actually succeeds at passing his enormous tax hikes.

It doesn’t matter if it is up front in a proposed tax hike, hidden from taxpayers in a dishonest budget that misrepresents what his plans would actually cost residents, or increasing our town debt by 15 percent in one fell swoop. These all amount to taxpayer increases, and that is what Andy Stewart is all about.

Sincerely,

Mike Moroney

Candidate for Supervisor 2015

Town of Orangetown