Good Afternoon and thank you all for coming. Thank you to all my friends and family here today. Thank you to all the elected officials here today committed to making a change in the Town of Ramapo.

My name is Bruce Levine and, today, I formally declare that I am a candidate in the Democratic Primary for Supervisor of the Town of Ramapo.

I make this declaration with a sense of urgency, for nothing less than the future of our Town is at stake. Ramapo suffers from the self inflicted wounds of ever higher taxation to support an inefficient patronage heavy government: a government that is afflicted by a culture of favors, a culture of "you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours"; a government that has been sold out to those who are expert at the game of "pay to play". Tell me, have you had enough of this?

My first priority will be to cut your property taxes. Under Chris St. Lawrence, general taxes have gone up over 50% and police taxes have gone up over 76%. When he tells you that he didn't raise taxes this year, he is lying. Let me say it again. He is lying when he says that he froze property taxes this year. He raised your police taxes. He raised your sewer taxes. He raised your solid waste taxes. And if he is re-elected, he will do it again, and again, and again! In the last four years alone, sewer taxes have gone up over 12.5 per cent, town water taxes have doubled and solid waste taxes have gone up over seventy per cent. Have you had enough of this?

I have been reviewing budgets line by line for 25 years and I know all the gimmicks and manipulations that politicians use to create election year budgets. I have a record of proposing dozens of cuts in each budget I have reviewed. I know how to cut budgets and I know how to cut taxes. The only way to do it is to start reducing spending.

I have already begun reviewing the Ramapo Town Budget and I believe that it is realistic to set a goal of reducing property taxes by 10% in my first two years in office. I will start by eliminating St. Lawrence’s patronage jobs and I will end the practice of awarding high priced no-bid contracts to major donors to the Supervisor’s re-election campaigns.

Cutting spending is only the beginning of real budget reform. Tax justice will be my goal. The town is overcharging the Villages that contract for highway services. I will fix this problem. If you live in Spring Valley or Suffern, you are being overtaxed because you are paying for the administrative costs of both the Town and Village police departments, and you are paying directly for the cost of the Town Highway Department from which you get no services. Worse yet, the Supervisor is also misappropriating the sales tax revenues shared by the County. This must stop immediately. Sorting out this fiscal mess will take hard work but taking politics out of the budget will lower your taxes.

Now our present leaders glibly boast that Ramapo was named one of the best places to live by Money magazine, a designation that has already been lost, and is already referred to in the past tense. Ramapo was once one of the best places to live in America based on decades of wise leadership prior to St. Lawrence. Unfortunately, today we suffer from uncontrolled growth encouraged by the greed and mendacity of developers looking to make a quick killing. The current supervisor gives them free reign to make windfall profits, while leaving us to suffer from excessive traffic, insufficient drainage, bloated sewers, and higher taxes. Have you had enough of this?

To please the developers, our present Supervisor changed the Town’s master plan to satisfy private interests. In doing so, he made an historic mistake, focusing on the development of huge multi-family housing and ignoring the need of the town to foster business growth and modestly scaled affordable housing. When town residents protested, he shouted them down and accused them of being bigots. I was there. It was so shameful, it was painful to watch. Haven’t you had enough of this?

To this day, people all over Ramapo have a sense that they will not be heard, that their views are not respected and that they can expect to be trashed and labeled by the town machine as political at best and as anti-Semitic or racist at worst. This has got to stop and stop right now.

The corrosion it is causing to the social fabric of our town is sapping us of the energy and strength to confront our real issues. How will we preserve the remaining large parcels of land that can be developed into the biotech research parks of tomorrow, the industrial parks we need to create the products that will capitalize on our renewable energy future, the office complexes and warehouses that will house companies competing in the global marketplace? How will we educate our children so that they can fill the thousands of jobs we need to create right here in Ramapo to insure our future? How can we build housing so these children can afford to live in our Town? How can we keep the cost of our government spending in check so that high taxes do not strangle our plans for the new economy of Ramapo?

Consider the multitude of projects St. Lawrence dumps on Ramapo, such as the property near Auntie Els that will put 250 units of high density housing on a tiny strip of land by the Ramapo Mountains, pouring 500 cars each morning on local roads. What a truly dumb idea; another potential business site used up; what a waste. We need leadership that knows how to balance development with conservation; that knows how to attract businesses and keep our neighborhoods attractive.

Can anyone deny that St. Lawrence is in the pocket of the developers? When will he and his developer friends be held accountable? I say that the developers should pay for the consequences of their actions.

The plans for Patrick Farm are the most glaring example of a single-minded effort to sell out the public interest to a powerful developer. St. Lawrence’s Master Plan called for the down-zoning of this beautiful 208 acre piece of land into a densely packed urbanized development, despite the pleas of hundreds of residents. The Master Plan downzoned the property but kept it as single family housing. If this wasn’t bad enough, the Supervisor then proposed adult student housing, to permit up to 16 units per acre. Environmental advocates, neighbors and nearby Village leaders successfully went to court to block these insane plans.

But even this has not stopped St. Lawrence, who is helping the developer re-zone this parcel for multiple housing. Mr. Supervisor, Members of the Town Board. You don’t owe your positions of power to a private developer – You owe your jobs to the people. You hold your offices as a trust to the many future generations of town residents who deserve a beautiful town to live in.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not against all development nor am I against religious institutions. Nothing is further from the truth. I believe firmly that we must get our priorities straight: truly protecting key open spaces, reserving parcels for economic development, planning for modestly dense affordable housing developments and housing for our volunteer firefighters, ambulance corps workers, seniors and returning war veterans. We should promote re-development, not overdevelopment. Instead of starting with what developers want, we should start with what the land, the roads, and our scarce water supplies can support.

We must ensure that these developments are safely designed by enforcing the building, zoning and fire codes. We cannot continue to build huge buildings that are so close together that children at play can’t breathe fresh air and enjoy the sunshine. We cannot afford to continue to build huge buildings that are so close together that our volunteer fire departments cannot effectively fight fires. Mr. St. Lawrence trades our children’s safety for the sake of politics. Have you had enough of this?

In the last nine years, Ramapo has gone in the wrong direction and this can be attributed to one man - Chris St. Lawrence. He is a man who is habitually dishonest, a shameless self-promoter, a man of volcanic temper who never hesitates to punish his enemies and a man who can’t say no to those private interests who perpetuate his power behind closed doors.

From the clocks that spout his name hourly, to the huge St. Lawrence signs that seem to endlessly sprout up around town, to the lie on his resume claiming that he graduated from Harvard, our Supervisor shows his essential selfishness and his willingness to do anything to get into office and stay in power. I don’t know about you, but if I lied on my resume, I’m sure that I would be fired.

Even his crowning achievement, open space, is a lie. Indebting us for tens of millions of dollars, he supposedly buys land for parks but refuses to make any promises. As the proposed Tilcon quarry sale demonstrates he won’t hesitate to sell so called "open space" to meet his political needs. Have you had enough of this?

The Supervisor is a man who wastes thousands of our hard earned tax dollars to send out propaganda perpetuating what he knows to be a lie, that the Town of Ramapo is the safest town in America. St. Lawrence knows full well that that statistic omitted the crimes committed in Spring Valley and Suffern, but included their large populations when calculating our crime rate. Come on, for someone who supposedly got himself into Harvard, just do the math.

And then there was the incident when someone under arrest needed to be photographed while not wearing a wig as part of ordinary police booking procedures. Instead of looking into changes in the procedures that would be more culturally sensitive and supporting the police officer who was just doing his job, Mr. St. Lawrence threatened to discipline and even fire the officer in order to pacify his political supporters. This kind of behavior is shameful, even destructive. It must stop and I intend to stop it.

I offer a different kind of leadership. I have had the privilege to serve the public for over twenty five years as a County Legislator and as a municipal attorney. I have worked hard and know a lot about how government works. I have a long record of achievement for our seniors and youth, a record of helping build affordable housing and encouraging economic development, a record of protecting our environment and courageously taking stands for the homeless and those in need. I have a record of fighting patronage, ferreting out corruption and cutting spending and taxes.

Today, I am asking you for your support. But I cannot do it alone. It is vital to elect my running mates, Rodrigue Lustin and Veronica Boesch to the Town Council, and Mark Citrin as our new Town Judge.

Two years ago, we witnessed the Supervisor whip up fear in order to get out the votes. He slandered his opponents and their supporters as bigots. He told one group that his opponents were different from them. That they were the other – somehow essentially inhuman. This lie has been used before many times in our history as demagogues like St. Lawrence sought power for their own personal gain. This tactic has been used against Jews, African Americans, Irish, Latinos and Muslims alike. It is essentially un-American. This hatred divides Ramapo, breeding mistrust and intolerance. I will unite this town, not divide it. I intend to compete for votes from every area of the town, from every ethnic and religious group, from liberals and conservatives, from all who care about the future of our town.

I believe that it is time for change: It is time for honest leadership in Ramapo. It is time to open the doors of Town Hall. It is time to say that our taxes are too high and we won’t take it anymore. It is time to deliver fairness, justice and sanity. It is time to turn a new page and begin anew.

With your help, together, we can make the changes that Ramapo needs. By electing our team this year, starting with a victory in the primary on September 15^th, we will strike a blow for freedom and democracy that will be heard from Spring Valley to the Ramapo Mountains. With your help, our children and our children’s children can grow up in the Ramapo that we grew up in, not the same Ramapo but a Ramapo that experiences balanced growth as it changes to meet the future. Our children deserve a Ramapo rich in history and beauty, a Ramapo that can once again typify what is best in America. With your help, we can again make Ramapo the kind of place where families of all races and religions, living and working together, can build a community where all of our children can achieve the America dream.

Thank you and God bless you all.