| What is the
Ramapo Democratic Committee?
It is the grassroots governing body
of the Democratic Party in the Town of Ramapo. In
Ramapo the Committee consists of 320 people who
represent the approximately 90 election districts in
the Town of Ramapo. Each election district (which
may be familiar to you as the numbered desk you go
to in order to vote at election time) contains a few
hundred voters. Each such election district,
depending on a variety of factors, elects 2, 3 or 4
people to the Ramapo Democratic Committee. The
election is held every even-numbered year at the
time of the September Democratic Primary. The
election this year is on Tuesday, September 9th
at your regular polling place. Only enrolled members
of the Democratic Party may vote in this election.
What are the responsibilities of
Ramapo Democratic Committee members?
In theory, the Ramapo Democratic
Committee members meet a few times a year and vote
to endorse Democratic Party candidates for public
office, vote on internal Democratic Party matters
and take positions on important issues affecting our
country, state, county and Town of Ramapo. In
practice, the Ramapo Democratic Committee does none
of these things. The Committee rarely meets, and
when it does, it is solely for the purpose of
hearing long speeches from Town Hall politicians and
obtaining petitions so that committee members will
go out into the field to obtain signatures to get
local politicians on the ballot for election or
re-election. All endorsement decisions are made by
Christopher St. Lawrence and his cronies behind
closed doors and simply ratified by the compliant
Committee. The membership of the Committee consists
largely of people who St. Lawrence has chosen or who
he allows to serve on the Committee. People who are
likely to disagree with Mr. St. Lawrence are not
permitted to serve on the Committee unless they have
forced their way onto the Committee by running for
County Committee in a contested election.
Why don’t I recall having voted
for this Party Office in the past?
Usually, Ramapo Democratic
Committee members’ names do not appear on the ballot
because St. Lawrence simply designates candidates to
run and no one runs against his chosen
candidates--so they obtain the job by default. There
have rarely been contested elections in the past for
Ramapo Democratic Committee. We are changing that
this year.
Are Ramapo Democratic Committee
members paid?
No. The position is a volunteer
position. Ramapo Democratic Committee people not
only serve on the Ramapo Democratic Committee, but
they also represent their districts in the Rockland
Democratic County Committee (which meets once or
twice a year) and, if they represent a district in
Spring Valley or Suffern, they sit on the respective
Village Democratic Committees of those Villages.
(The other Ramapo Villages do not presently have
their own Democratic Committees.)
What does "Ramapo Democrats for
Change" hope to accomplish?
Politics is broken in Ramapo. We
have a political machine at Ramapo Town Hall that
responds only to the needs of special interests in
our Town without regard to the impact its decisions
are having on the quality of life in Ramapo. We need
a local Ramapo Democratic Committee whose members
are independent of party bosses. We want a Ramapo
Democratic Committee that is open and transparent,
that will endorse candidates for office who care
about the entire community they will serve. We want
a Ramapo Democratic Committee that recognizes that
we have terrible polarization in our Town because
the interests and needs of the religious community
are supported, while those of the rest of our
community are too often ignored.
We want a Ramapo Democratic
Committee that will appoint a platform committee and
formulate a platform to tackle some of the difficult
issues facing our Town.
We have had overdevelopment and a
proliferation of high density housing in our Town.
This threatens our suburban quality of life in our
communities and places a tremendous burden on our
limited traffic, water and sewer resources. We have
a shrinking tax base due to the proliferation of
tax-exempt properties, and we face the need for
massive taxpayer expenditures on roads, sewers and
water resources. For political reasons Ramapo has
ignored the needs of many parts of our very diverse
community, ignored the cost of politically motivated
and unplanned growth, and encouraged the
environmental costs of its politics.
We need a Ramapo Democratic
Committee that will develop ideas to help provide
and enhance quality education to our public school
students- particularly in the East Ramapo School
District--at an affordable price, while finding ways
to incorporate public school parents more
prominently into the decision-making process. We as
the local Ramapo Democratic Party need to take a
proactive position regarding the various ideas
circulating at the state level to reduce the
crushing property tax burden facing our residents.
We as the local Democratic Party
also need to be active in addressing the needs of
all of our very diverse communities--including
our less fortunate residents--as the failure to
address the needs of all our communities for
more affordable housing, community centers and
programs, quality education, and traffic
mitigation--among many other issues--will only
contribute to the lowering quality of life in our
Town, the reduction of our tax base to an
unsustainable level for our Town, and the incidence
of unsightliness, blight and crime in our Town.
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